Race Report 2011 Ancient Peaks MTB Classic

Just so everyone knows, this race was freakin sweet.

raced DH, and the course was quite gnarly, and totally deserving of riding a big bike on.

top part is steep, loose, and has lots of tight, kinda bermed out corners. think of skiing on a DH bike, except its over rocks. there's a couple good drops tucked in here and there as well. the jumps in the middle are great too. the step-down to huge berm is fantastic, and you can easily fly a good 30+ feet off of it into 2 of the sweetest berms ever. then its a double/stepdown, and a really big step-up triple.

then theres a good bit of fast, flat or off-camber sweepers that are super fun and drifty, a few dialed berms (with some trees thrown in for good measure). some more loose turns, a small step down, and you end up at the rock garden. beg/sport take a mellow low line. pro/ex take the gnar gnar line. chunky rocks garden, pedal grabber slot you've got to ride through, then there's a blown out 3' drop onto a kinda blown singletrack. sketch for sure, but nuts when you get it down. this is followed by a solid pinballer rock garden. then there's a few more crazy loose turns, one pretty sweet jump, and a bunch of sweepers to the finish.

fantastic course though, Nate really did a great job with it. everyone was talking about the gnarliness, but everyone was super stoked about it at the same time.

So yea, when this rolls around next year, I suggest making the trip. its definitely a good race. very well organized, you get a bunch of swag (t-shirts, etc), sick courses (I hear the XC was quite good), and just a good weekend. I also hear that they did well enough this year that they will be planning a bunch of improvements for next year (like firming up some corners on the DH, and possibly adding a slalom course).

and as for me, I had a kinda blah run, got 17th in expert, but I didnt die, so I'm good. poison oak is a different matter (bring technu!)

 

Rowdy Racin!

I also wanted to throw my two cents out there and help promote this awesome race. I did an adventure race with these guys last year so I knew they put on a great event and a fun time. The more I watched the videos the more excited I got for checking out the course but the videos did not do it justice. It was way more technical then it appeared but still had a good variety of everything. High speed, tight turns, loose ground, huge super berms, fun jumps, ladder drop, 1200 foot descent, tricky off camber rocky sections, all around rowdy.

I grew up in the area so I'm always looking for any excuse to go back up and visit and since this is on private property there won't be many chances to ride this course so I decided to go race it with a buddy of mine. This was only my second race so I decided to try the sport class. The track skipped a couple of gnarlier sections, a sketchy rock garden that I didn't even really look at and a really fun step down jump which I was kinda bummed they blocked it off because it looked crazy fun like bryguy said.

Had a pretty good race run, had to slow down in one spot to pull a big stick out of my tire/fork and ended up getting third. I was definitely surprised and stoked to be on the podium since I don't ever really race. Got about 6 runs down it total for the weekend and that was all I was really after, well a few more wouldn't have hurt. Lot's of locals raced but only a handful of socal folks, gotta spread the word for next year.

I also learned no matter how fast or how clean you ride you will still get poison oak.

 

bry.. i'm really bad with visualizing things.. need PICS!!!

 

didnt touch the camera for the race. too busy avoiding poison oak and blowing corners :lol:

ian at downhillnews got some sick shots though: http://downhillnews.smugmug.com/Sports/Downhill-Racing

still looking around to see if anyone else got any sweet pictures, but no luck so far. I know there were a lot of photogs out there, but not sure how many were pros...

amusingly, I just did a google search, and I was at the beginning of the album. blowing a turn :lol:



more that I lifted from pinkbike:

the bottom (easier) part of the rock garden (henceforth known as the Shoe Garden. You'd know if you were there)