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Tuesday, 24 February 2009

A few of us made it over to Gisburn on Saturday for a bit of dh fun.  It hadn't rained for a good few days so we guessed the trails would be fairly dry...that and the fact that the run ins and run outs to all the launches are laid with surface hardcore meant it was a fairly safe bet.  

We met up at Tosside and drove up to the unofficial dh parking spot close to the trails.  As we rode over to the dh area we noticed that a lot of felling had started to take place which was a bit worrying.  Especially as Wiswell Woods trails had been destroyed late last year by blanket felling.  On speaking to one of the local builders it turns out that the trees around the dh area will be felled but certain ones (or at least there stumps) will be left in to protect the features of the trail.  Lets hope that the guy with the big tree felling machine remembers the agreement when the day comes!

Anyway, we had a good session on right hand side dh trail (the left was clsoed for building and had a great mini session on the last gap jump.  We were loving this feature as the launch has a real nice kick to it.  The main gap jump next to the fire road, as always, also got a hammering as well.

Later in in the day we bumped into Steve (one of the main builders) who had a van full of hardcore destined for the build work on the left hand dh trail.  So we gave him a hand putting the finishing touches to a couple of features...which also meant that we could get freshies on them.

We worked on two features on the left side dh run.  The first feature was the first gap jump after the entry drop.  This had been built up about a foot higher then previous and  just needed some surface hardcore laying down.  We used about 5 barrow fulls and managed to get the shape there or there abouts.  There is still a slight back end kick to it but this can be retweaked once it beds in.

The second feature we worked on was the next drop down the trail.  This had also been built up and once again just needed a bit of hardcore laying down. This feature was a bit more tech with a narrow uneven run in but still rode pretty nice.

 

After the build work was complete and tweaked we decided to take a few runs from the top to christain the new features and then called it a day.

There is a lot of build work going on at Gisburn at the moment both on the dh trails and also the XC route.  The dh trails can usually be ridden as the work is in progress as there are a number of different lines.  It will be a good few months though before the XC route, which by all reports is looking pretty tech and tasty, will be open for riding.