this is a better place to blog for mouatin bikers. even though it is used by a bunch of little kids http://www.pinkbike.com/ is teh best place to blog.
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the name of this post really says it all. the race at tamarancho was truly carnage. like i say in my review of the place if you mess up and go down you are going to be pretty beat up. this fact was heavily backed up. in the cat 1 junior race there were many crashes, funnily enough most of the cat 1 guys are on the Whole Athlete team which is a very elite training program, and if these guys were going down you know it had to be tough. the reason is that tamarancho isn’t very forgiving if you go down. i am pretty sure that at least half of eat category had one crash. i can speak for myself not having crashed but i did say hello to a couple trees which turned out to be a lot harder then i would have anticipated. the course started on a fire raod which was smart so the field could spread out a little bit before the single track was hit. as soon as the single track strated going down it was crazy i was going faster then i had eve and the next thing i know one of my teammates is off the edge not hurt but still be did go over the edge. after one of the scariest descents of my life we started to climb. i have done this climb before but instead of continuing on the singletrack then send you up a fire road called dead heffer. i would have to agree with that name, this hill was a royal pain in the ass to go up. it was the steepest thing i have ever gone up. i never made it up with out stopping. when you go to the top of that thing your legs were burning sooooooooooo bad. when you finally get to the top you do get a little downhill, but it is short lived when you hook up with b-17 and begin to cimb to the top which really isn’t that bad. when you finally start going down again you end up on a fire road. this was hands down the fastest part of the course and wasn’t that bad. after a short ass burner of a climb you hit single track for a tricky downhill that is really tight. this was were i encountered the tree, it is this section that is really tight and f you mess up like i did you will be a pinball for the trees. after the really tight downhill you have to start a actually pretty fun climb that isn’t too steep but is slightly technical making it fun. after this climb you end up on a fire road to the finish. the highlight of the race was seeing Mark Weir just completely dominate the pro field.
camp tamarancho is located in Fairfax California. this makes it cool because Fairfax is also the home of the repack. the significance of being the home to the repack is that is is the first ever legitimate recorded downhill race. to me this is pretty cool because i race downhill and it is pretty cool to have the first track in my back yard. now back to the tamarancho review. to me this is a fun place to go ride because I like technical riding and tamarancho provides a fair amount of the technical dish. the trail loop there is a 8 or so mile long loop that has three types of terrain one is rocky as hell and exposed on is in red wood trees smooth and fast and the laast is a mix of the two with a shit load of root. the one thing is, it is single track and this makes it hard to go really fast. the reason it makes it hard to go fast is not that the terrain is hard but the fact that if you happen to mess up in most places you are going to go flying off the edge and go for a nice painful tumble. other things that make going fast a challenge are the fact that at points the trail is pretty damn tight and if you happen to clip a handle bar you are for sure going down. i can at least back this up with experience. to me tamarancho is fun to go ride the trails are all either rocky, covered in roots or nice and smooth. the thing is though, or at least i have found is that tamarancho is fun to ride slower then race pace and to me when i am pushing myself i am not usually having that much fun there. the reason i say this is that on some of the downhill sections like i mentioned above if you happen to eat shit and crash you are going to be pretty messed up. i have ridden there a good few time now and what i seems to me is that even though it is challenging to people who don’t ride a lot or don’t have good handling skills it is easy for me but what has happened to me a few time is i think it i too easy go to fast and have a close call or crash. i look forward to racing there even though it will be really scary in the sense in races people don’t usually think straight, i just hope to get on the single track first or in the lead and not have to worry about the inevitable crashes.
The Reasons I Ride A Bike 1) It make you in a sense unique, the reason I say this is most people who aren’t avid cyclists tend to not understand the culture that surrounds it, where as most cyclists can relate in at least one way thus making finding friends easy. 2) It is cool because al most any one can do it. 3) Getting good is easy compared to other sports, such as soccer that take lots and lots skill, talent and practice to get good at. All mountain biking requires is ridding your bike a lot. 4) You don’t have to wear a specific uniform to race. Unless you are racing in UCI world champs downhill. 5) It is fun to learn new things on a bike such as a wheelie or a manual. You really do fee like a bad ass riding a wheelie through an intersection. 6) You can usually end up with really good views after a long climb. 7) Going downhill is the only reason I go up hill. 
Cars can scare the crap out of you and can be duce bags. 9) Horses are your enemy on the trail. 10) Pissing hikers off is almost a typical thing to do on any ride.
Schladming Austria
Schladming Austria is home to one of the sickest downhill course ever in my opinion; it is the course that is probably the by far the most fun to watch as well as if I could ride it and one day I hope to ride it. Schladming has now been on the world cup circuit for a while now and for past two years and this year has been the end game of the world cup series. This means that it has been home to the world cup finals that tend to bring out the best of everyone as well as extreme crashes. It is a really sick coarse because it is very fast, steep, rough and usually wet from rain. This combination is usually pretty fun to watch. Another cool thing about this combination is that the people who are really fast usually aren’t the big pedaling riders and the weaker riders usually end up dong well. A prime example of this is last year the winner was not Sam Hill who has won the race many times but Sam Blenkinsop a very good rider that may not be the strongest peddler but is very fast and loose in the way he rides meaning that this course was almost perfect for him. A quote from him is that “you only need to pedal out of the start gate and a few corners but otherwise you can just hold it wide all the way to the bottom”. This is pretty much what all the pros say.
Bike reviews from my point of view
Yeti dj: I personally own this bike and love it with a passion because it can do almost anything. I have used it as a cyclocross bike a xc bike a trail bike a dh bike. Even though it can be used as all these things were it really excelled was as a 4x or a slalom bike. This is not surprising as Jared Graves has used it for 4x and pretty much shown everyone how 4x cross is race, unfortunately he has had some luck problems. Now back to the bike review, one of the weird things about it though is that it honestly it isn’t the best dirt jumper I mean sure it will jump bat as far as tricks it isn’t such a killer bike because it has a pretty high stand over unlike the p2 or blk mrkt that are meant for tricks. What this lack of trickage translates to is the bike in my opinion is a hardtail 4x bike.
Yeti kokopeli: the yeti kokopeli is a pretty solid bike. First off the one I use is set up with the lower end components and it has been ridden rally hard so it isn’t as good as it should be but it doesn’t disappoint. To start out with it is the predecessor to the as-r which is probably one of the sickest bikes out there so to have such a sick bike it had to have a good origin. The kokopeli lives up to all the standards that I have come to expect from Yeti, it pedals well on the flats and climbs as well if not better then hardtails due to having a rear shock. In my opinion like most yetis I have ridden it excels on the downhills better then climbing. I look forward to riding the bike to a podium finish at the Norcal Mountain Bike League finals.
Intense Tracer: this was a bike that I must admit I really looked forward to riding, but I was so disappointed. I know most people will hate me for saying this but honestly the bike just didn’t fit me. When I went to demo it there was a GT demo next door so I ended up taking a GT. I did ride the intense a little, I know I cant really call this a legit review because I didn’t take it on a trail but just riding it around the parking lot was enough. The bike was way to relaxed and the vpp just didn’t really suite me very well, the reason for this is that I mainly ride a single pivot or a kokopeli and the cool thing with those bikes suspension is that it is springy when you want to hop but when you need to stick you can trust it. This was were I ran into the problem with the vpp when I would try to hop I would get off balance and pretty much fall over. I know the tracer is a very popular bike and I have seen many of them on the trails, but when I rode it I was just i was just not feeling it.
yeti asr: this is a bike that i have been lucky enough to ride quite a bit. the first thing that stands out when you ride it is how responsive it is. what i mean by this is that for a xc bike is is super nimble. when it comes to pedaling the bike straight up kicks ass. when it come to descending the bike is just ass good as the 575 which is there all mountain bike. it does not handle rough stuff as well as the 575 but it stll is a awsome rig. my final verdict on the bike is that it is in my opinion the best xc bike. personally though i do prefer teh 575 because it is more versatile.
this is not a joke! all of the good trails that make a dh bike worth having are illegal. But if you are willing to go out on a limb there are quite a bit of trails, but as stated above they are illegal. the best place to go if you can persuade your parents or drive yourself is pacifica. pacifica is awsome it has some pretty cool trails but in my opinion the highlight there is the step up that you really can launch off also on the positive side it is legal. another option that isn’t too bad but is pretty much illegal is the back side of china camp. this s a pretty cool trail system that offers some gnar in the sense that it is pretty damn steep and when it is wet it is slippery as owl shit on leaves or vassaling on a toilet seat, but that is only when it is wet and other then some off camber drop turns it is relatively easy. i will update this over time when i discover More trails worth riding on a dh bike.
