Sweet day of riding at Vail with a crew of flatlanders

I rode downhill at Vail yesterday with the Tulsa Freeriders and it was SWEET sweet action... We hit the '94 WC track first: fast, flowing, rooty and fun. We took a little detour at the bottom to the Mini-Bailey's drop, which is like a smaller version of the Bud Light Bail Out near the bottom of the 2001 Worlds DH track. Mini-Bailey's might have been mini, but it was techy and skeery lookin' - I passed but several of the Tulsa Freeriders crew hit it. Nice! At the bottom of that, our tour guide Kyle realized he had snagged his shorts on his shifter and broken it clean off the bar. Doh! Since it was about lunchtime so we hit Moe's Original BBQ for some grub while Kyle searched for a shifter, and it was super tasty. Refueled, we headed back out, with plans to hit the Magic Forest/Old 9/Main Lane decent.

So all morning one of the Tulsa Freeriders crew nicknamed the Russian was hounding me: "You know that log double that Minaar jumps in earthed 2? Can we go check that out? It looks big!" I almost didn't have the heart to tell him that section of trail was closed...yeah right... ALMOST! I don't think he was buying it anyways... and it turns out that upper and lower magic forest was indeed open, so we'd get to hit the video-famous spot for sure. Although I passed on the double myself, a couple of the Tulsa Freeriders crew, including the Russian, hit that thing proper! It's not untimely huge, but it slightly hipped, made out of logs, and has a freaking tree right at the crest of the landing.

Next we dropped into Old 9, and I swear the Tulsa Freeriders crew felt right at home: steep, techy, loose, rocky, and sketchy as all get out. Sweetness! Old 9 gives way to Main Lane, with sweeping turns and perfect berms, fun hits and jumps all over the place. SWEET!

Next we rallied for a Matterhorn run. Off the gondola and up the ridgeline, looking out over Vail's massive back bowls the view is not one to be reckoned with. Matterhorn drops west down a fast, flowing ridgeline into west Vail, and necessitates a rather unpleasant pedal back to the Lionshead Village. Well, unpleasant on a DH bike with full armour, but the trail itself is definitely worth and just fun fun fun. Super fast, flowing corners, dusty and loose would be the way to describe it. Super sweet SINGLE-track in a lot of spots, some of it with bushes and grass encroaching from the sides and barely over a DH tire width wide. Although it was never built as a DH trail, it's sure fun to sail down on a 6" travel bike and just hug the turns and rip the descents!

Everyone was pretty whooped, as we'd ridden Keystone the day before, but for a final run we settled on the '94 WC track again. Everyone rallied hard and wrung that thing OUT, we snapped pics at a few choice spots - berms, hip jumps, that sort of thing. Just before the bottom, we detoured again to Mini-Bailey's. Everyone got their a-game on and dropped it like it was HAWT. Only one casualty was Russ, and I was above so I don't know how it played out except there was a lot of hootin' and hollerin' and laughin' from down below so he must have gotten right up, and it must have been pretty funny. All I saw was a cloud of dust. Everyone else hit it first, and I almost bitched out on it, but dropped it with no problem...

I had to hightail it for Denver, I'll be "working" through the middle of this week, but I'll be back up in them there hills on Friday to get some quality DH riding in. heck yeah! Not saying I ain't riding this week... while the Tulsa Freeriders crew is taking a day off to raft the Royal Gorge today, I will be in boulder getting some skills training with my friend Lee. Extra bonus? Brian Lopes is cruising through town, and will be rallying at Lee's pump track this afternoon before our session, probably have to head up a little early and watch the master of form in action.

He's kind of a big deal.