Way before the advent of trail centres and their associated gradings, the colour of the Black Mountains was all about the vast quantity of coal extracted, rather than a nod to perceived difficulty. I’m ambivalent over creating a riding class system based on colour, but since we’re stuck with it then this 50k loop in the heart of the South Wales valleys can be thought of as ‘none more black‘.

Not because it’s technically edgy – other than there are a few technical sections most of which seem to be only vaguely glued to the edge of the mountain – or it’s festooned with man made ideas of what an obstacle might look like; no it’s a splendid collage of tough climbs, long descents, pushes and carries, windswept summits, people-less views and endless rain which greeted us when we hit the border, made us welcome all day long and waved us goodbye with a mighty thunderstorm.

Proper mountain biking then. For proper mountain bikers. That’s us in case you were wondering, and we’ve been here before with my vaguely pretentious attempt to define the joy of natural riding and a rather more scary episode where Hyperthermia was hidden under deep snow cover. How would such a proper mountain biker be defined? That’s a whole post all on its own, but it’s hard to see any agreement for the inclusion of ‘inability to map read‘ and ‘inability to use a GPS with special consideration for misunderstanding grid references‘. I’ve never thought of myself as that type of proper mountain biker.

Still I should receive a little credit for nudging a few like minded souls into a damp car park at quite early o’ clock. The forecast suggested intermittent light showers with heavy drizzle later. Or – as anyone who has ever read such a forecast will wearily explain – pissing rain from dawn to dusk. Lots of different types; light, heavy, sideways – the kind of rain that’s on a mission to seep into every bodily crevice before partying on with all its friends. By rides’ end, my feet were a watersports park for lemmings*, everything marketed as waterproof had been outed as the emperors damp clothes, and we’d all been in unhappy receipt of grit based facial scrubs that still has me chewing sharp sand even now.

The bikes didn’t look too pretty either. There’s a noise a chainset makes when stripped of every last molecule of lube. And that noise is ‘expensive‘. Somehow none of this mattered, nor did my inability to find the excellent 500 yards of singletrack I’d insisted we start on, so adding about 9k of road trudgery to the route. Eventually the kind and supportive group stopped laughing long enough to point us up a big sodding hill that went on for a very long time. Eventually – and already thoroughly soaked – we passed the point where the less navigationally challenged would normally park; some 1 kilometre from the proper off road.

I think they were fine about it. We weren’t talking much anyway 😉 Familiarity with the route saw us set off up the first hill at speeds unlikely to trouble a sprightly tortoise. It’s a lovely climb this, alternately grassy and rocky with little challenges in and out of stream crossings on the first half and then a pull on a good but steepening track leading deep into the mountains. Amazing views here I remembered while adding another layer and shivering slightly. Up here the temperature dropped into single figures with a strengthening wind whipping away the warmth of the climb, but refusing to split the stubborn cloud cover.

Four times I’ve parked a bike at the top of this climb and taken a picture of it. Four different bikes obviously. Not today tho – regrouped we head to the summit and after a never-to-be-repeated navigational triumph headed straight to the Rhiw Trumau descent. Classic in every sense – clinging to the side of the valley, traversing gently downwards at first in wheel swallowing ruts before plunging down the spine in a deep gulley stuffed with loose rocks. The crux of which is a committed step that really has only one line and a fast one at that with speed needed to clear the rock field on the exit. Never properly cleaned that before. Have now 🙂

The rocks were properly wet, glistening even under a stone-grey sky, yet the grip was phenomenal. I’d like to put down solely to my awesome bike handling skills, but really it was the combination of 23psi in the tyres and a fantastically sorted bike crouched atop them, with my contribution merely picking a spot on the dirty horizon and bellowing out a Clarkson-esque ‘Pooowwwweeeeerrrr‘. I’ll be 46 next week and see no reason why acting as if I were in fact 11 is in any way a problem. Riding mountain bikes feeds the inner child in us all. Some, admittedly, more than others.

Three full-suspension bikes made it down at a decent pace followed by Hardtail Haydn who had the look of a man recently pardoned from a capital sentence. Vague memories of riding that descent in the dry on my Ti Hardtail engendered a very brief spike of sympathy before blasting off again on more rocks carelessly interspersed with slick mud. Which may explain why Matt decided to attack an innocent tree with his head although he maintains he was ‘fully in control‘ at the time. As we removed a good sized stump that had breached his helmet’s defence, I couldn’t help thinking ‘head wound, probably delusional‘.

After a little bleed, we started to get properly lost after deciding one GPS and three maps was an inferior route finding approach to vague memories of fire roads that all looked the same. Fortified by soggy sandwiches we somehow co-located ourselves with the official route beeped out by my Garmin, only to go off piste about five minutes later having ridden through water deep enough for it to be considered tidal. I was still loving my bike at this point feeling it was a perfect compromise between climbing and descending. Although if I’d had a choice of most appropriate vehicle for the day, I’d have plumped for a Navy Frigate.

Admitting we were lost – that’ll be the big mountain-y thing we can no longer see then – upgraded our navigational stupidity to a ‘short cut‘ comprising mainly of a 15 minute calf-screaming push into a bastard rainy headwind. Y Das is always a push as you snake round the summit. It’s steep and nasty but I’ll never bitch about it again having now made what must be the first bike-ascent of Y-DAS direct. Except we didn’t quite make the summit being pushed around the side where my GPS and map reading came to the fore again. Visibility was now about zero and the wind screamed wet expletives at our ineptitude, but good humour was mostly maintained as we tracked on a increasingly defined path in the direction of safety.

Found the summit. Went the wrong way again. Mainly because by this time I couldn’t see the GPS for mud and I’d assumed the ‘off course‘ whining beep was it committing computer suicide** Eventually we realised our mistake and splashed down the always brilliant descent past Grwyne Fawr dam. Oh it was properly wet today and rockier than I remembered. This muse accompanied me on atop my lovely full suspension bike while wondering if Haydn was enjoying himself as much. He was apparently, but it was clearly hard work and by days end, he was mostly ruined.

Fast splashy blast to second sandwich stop under dank trees, munching away happily while Matt replaced a set of ‘backing plate‘ brake pads. One last climb through Myndd Du Forest and then home for tea and medals. Matt’s route up there appeared to involve pushing up impossibly steep drainage channels. I knew another way but felt any navigational suggestions would not be taken very seriously, so I sucked up some mountain air and got on with it. Rode the last climb on tiring legs only to find a view of sun lit lowlands mostly hidden by cloud clamped on this hill.

We had our only fall on the way down with Martin failing to make a steep, slick corner on the final brilliant descent that was a rut hopping rush at the top and a fall-line plunge from half way down. Having survived that I nearly lunched myself on the final set of steps, narrowly missing a trail marker by depositing myself in a damp bush. Which isn’t anywhere near as exciting as it may sound.

Rode home on the road home up a couple of unexpected climbs, which had me pointing out since I’d abandoned any navigation many hours ago this could in no way be deemed my fault. Surprisingly such a well considered argument may not have won the day. Beer did tho, consumed in a lovely pub apparently unconcerned by damp mountain bikers clothed in anything not suffering local flooding.

Cold and wet don’t make me happy. Not at all. It always feels like a test I don’t want to take. But mostly warm and wet – well that’s a damn fine way to spend a day compared to – say – not being in the mountains with your friends. Evidently riding bikes is what I like to do, but what I REALLY love is adventuring by bicycle. More of that please.

* beginners mistake. Stuck the waterproof socks on which were BRILLIANT for almost minutes before becoming a perfect sock-pool for cooling water. A feeling of chilly moistness than lasted only about five hours. On removing the sock, a number of fish made a break for it.

** which it did when I got home. Bag of rice and all was well. Although only because I explained if it didn’t start working, I was serving it up Garmin A l’Orange.

 

Back in a time before marketing ruled the world, us plucky brits took one look at the brash offerings from our US cousins before stoutly refusing to adopt the term ‘mountain bike’ for the bastard offspring of a cruiser and a spindly road bike. Over-Priced, Over-Hyped and Over-Here we decreed, while the rump of our once world leading bicycle industry churned out slightly crap copies under the guise of the ‘All Terrain Bike‘ or ATB.

I like that; it speaks of a bike to go adventuring on. While we’re short of mountains certainly in the bits of geography not delineated by Celtic borders, we’re at the spiritualepicentre of rolling hills and wooded acres. So what happened to the plucky Muddy Fox and the generation of class defining ATBs? Marketing, that’s what happened; a huge rolling slab of hyperbole and nonsense sliced into ever thinner segments of niche.

I should know, I’ve owned most of them. A special bike for any terrain, but no bike for everything. Some with gears, some with suspension, some with neither of those, some with one size wheels, some with bigger ones, some confused examples with different ones at either end. Short top tube, long top tubes, four bar, faux bar, single pivot, virtual pivot. I’m put in mind of Billy Joel and ‘We didn’t start the fire‘ – endless stuff passing us by and somehow missing the point.

The point being mountains. Where mountain bikes should live. Not domesticated onto flat lands and herded into trail centres. Not polished, upgraded and paraded in virtual show rings. There’s something viscerally bipolar about mountains – both comforting and forbidding, warm and cosseting within their deep valleys* and terrifyingly vertiginous attheir peaks. And there’s human magnetism in those rocks, attracting seemingly normal people to risk injury and even death on slopes made up of something like sleeping adrenaline.

Wake it up with waxed planks in winter or chunky tyres come summer. Where bike parks click with the tortured transmission of the downhill Stormtrooper collective – sweating in heavy body armour and astride massive forgings holding mighty springs between two burly wheels. It’s a long way from the all terrain bike, and a long way from what I come to the mountains for. For balance, there are some truly brilliant bike-park trails that you could ride every day for the rest of your natural life without boredom setting in. But there are many, many more in the wild mountains which flick the soul-switch marked ‘now I’m truly alive‘.

Much of the PPDS was ridden on bike trails across seven centres all of which were under assault from heavy rain and – in the case of one epically chilly chairlift – sleet. I have never been so cold on a bike before – five layers on top, waterproof socks down below and multiple sodden pairs of gloves at hand. We started early and high after finally ejecting ourselves from the world’s most expensive coffee shop. I’m pretty nesh but staring at stair-rod rain at €8 a coffee isn’t my idea of a good day out.

Neither is hiding in the lift station above Champery with 3 degrees registering on the GPS, a group shiver shaking mud and rain from barely recognisable forms and another 60k to ride. One descent from there into a brilliant food village serving Tartiflette, proper coffee and even beer perked us up enough to appreciate Nigel was suffering from something like first stage hyperthermia. We ran for the lower hills to get him home on a rooty trail made slick by the constant wet.

Riding this was a lot of fun. Now the rain was more warm than icy and even with brake pads thinning as every kilometre passed and twitchy blinking replacing glasses, we had a blast first picking likely lines of slick-wet root systems that offered only molecules of grip easily wiped with the barest caress of a brake lever. And then on loose rocks hissing evilly and piling up on endless hairpins. This blue trail was as full on as the black discovered the day before rocking twice the gradient but none of the dampness.

In the mountains, everything is bigger and scarier. You trust your brakes and tyres like your best mate. They’ll save you time after time, as long as you don’t take the piss. The bike suffers in this environment tho – chewing through pads, loosening bolts, seizing bearings and rattling the shit out of anything not bolted down. Including vital body organs. But God it’s life affirming. Like a masochist, you know it’s going to hurt but you can’t wait to get back and feel the hit again.

This mentality was clearly responsible for – having deposited a still shivering Nig at Morzine – a jolly jape to adventure our way back to the car at Champery. The rain had lessened to torrential now and a map-lookage suggested we were a few lifts and some nifty navigation from something that felt like success. The beer we’d just quaffed probably helped. Or – as became quite quickly apparent – didn’t.

First peak accessed by telecabin – so far, so squelshy but at least it was warmish and, most importantly, inside. Navigational plan followed precisely saw us arrive at the exact place we’d left some two hours before. Not ideal with the required country being in somewhat the other direction. Back up, shivering, and after a few falls but no submission we found the right lift and headed into Switzerland.

Very slowly. And increasingly cold as we breached the snow line. Earlier in the day, we’d ridden on the track far below our feet, fingers numb and braking an approximation, and we weren’t keen to do it again. Finally cresting the last pylon, we shivered to a decision on exactly how much riding we had left in us. Not enough for 600 metres of mud, wind and rain so instead we took first the chair and then the cable car down. Cowardly? Possibly. Pragmatic? Absolutely.

A couple of beers restored enough spirit for the bike jetwashing to escalate to rider jetwashing, before I smuggled myself back into France (having abandoned my passport to Hadyn who’d we left on a different plan many hours ago) basking in the heat of the car heater.

45k. 3000m of descending. 6 hours in the grim. Quite an experience. No big crashes – I saved those for later in the week. Where the mountains were kinder to us opening up endless vistas taking away any remaining breath. Getting lost, finding the best trails in my riding life, missing the last chairlift home on the wrong side of the mountain before doing it all again the next day.

This is where Mountain Biking actually lives up to its name. There’s nothing all-terrain here. It’s more all or nothing, full on, consequence ridden but full of reward. Stunningly beautiful and more than occasionally scary. Next year we’ll find a way to get back, but already my withdrawal symptoms have my Flickr photostream on repeat.

Luckily tho I live near some mountains. Not as big or impressive, but still full of all those things missing from my mountain biking life. So this weekend I’m off to get my fix. Because mountain biking works best in the mountains.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

* I know what you’re thinking. And I wasn’t thinking that. I just knew you probably were. Hence feeling the need to bring it to your attention that I am more than aware of the predilections of most of what I charitably think of as ‘my informed readership‘

Yes, yes I do. Firstly a soggy romp through our Alps trip with special consideration given to the PPDS,which didn’t quite match up to a previous post promising wall to wall sun and ground to axle dust. Unless sleet counts. I don’t think it does because warm and dusty are not generally early warning vectors for hyperthermia.

So we’ll be back to that and other stories of mild peril once the therapy kicks in. But first, I’d best come clean with another bike purchase even if I hold true to the maxim that the person espousing ‘honesty is the best policy’ had clearly never tried it. Counter-intuitively this funny-wheeled addition to the shed of dreams is not a knee jerk reaction to the Rocket not being brilliant in the alps. Because it was. More than brilliant and more than once. On every trail from loose and dusty to sodden and rutted.

So one bike to rule them all then? Of course not, but 2013 isn’t about divesting myself of bicycles- it’s more about restrained kleptomania. Next time a riding agenda has big rocks or big mountains on it, I’ll take the rocket and try and forget the brakes. Because that is where that bike works; the rockier, steeper and faster the better. And those all mountain credentials don’t stop it being a heap of fun on lesser trails as well. But it’s a bit much and a bit heavy and a bit slack and all the other things I bought it for.

Whereas the Solaris is bloody lovely and with a better rider on board more than adequate for my superb and varied local riding. However, not being able to upgrade the rider, instead the irresponsible fiscal winds blew towards this South African inspired frame based on a few reviews and recommendations, a close perusal of the length/breadth/angles and a long chat with the importer. And then, by some random chance, a real world look and a sit while high in the French mountains. That pretty much sealed it.

It’s a PYGA in case you’re struggling with the ZX80 inspired graphics. The only translation of which I can find is ‘buttock‘ in a medical dictionary which is off the irony scale. My friends worked hard to come up with something better including Pay Yearly (to) Gain Ability which I thought was both funny and bloody hurtful 😉 It’s also a lovely colour in the flesh if you like your greens tinged with a hint of acid. More importantly than even that is it’s a bloody hoot to ride.

I say that after exactly one of those rides. In perfect conditions and still in the shadow of purchase anxiety. Of course I wanted to like it and of course I may find an excuse to change various bits up to and including the frame if I decide i don’t, but so far so groovy. It’s more than a couple of pounds lighter than the Rocket and sporting tyres some way away from the small tractor size I’d hauled around in the Alps. But for all that, it’s a dancing climber, finding traction anywhere and punching up climbs if you’ve got a bit of leg-grunt going.

In the singletrack, it’s remarkably composed considering there’s ‘only’ 110m of travel out the back*. Some of this is clever suspension design, some is the mythical roll-ability of 29inch wheels, some of it is the frame’s amazing stiffness. The Rocket is the stiffest bike I’ve ever ridden and the PYGA isn’t far behind. Whereas the ST4 could happily have the front triangle and back axle in different post codes.

And 29ers turn differently. Once you’ve got them pointed in the right direction, and assuming you’ve developed a fundamental belief system around the grip of your tyres, they absolutely leech into the trail and fire you out of the apex. I’m sure 26inch wheels are just the same, but it’s the one big difference I’ve noticed on first the Solaris and now this. It may be all placebo of course but I care not, it’s bloody great fun placebo.

Talking of the Solaris it’s missing a few bits I purloined for this build. But it’ll be getting them back. Because with a 29er HT, a 29er Full-Suss, a big 26er Full Suss, a cross bike, a road bike and an old jump bike, the shed nears perfection. Well if it doesn’t it’ll be nearing an extension, and I can feel the full force of entirely appropriate spousal disapproval for that idea.

I guess it comes down to this. I’ve ridden my road bike once this year but I bloody loved it. I ride my cross bike when I’ve an hour spare and I love that too. Every fat-tyre-head has to have a hardtail and mine is perfect. And while two tricked out boutique full-suspension bikes may look profligate, they make me stupidly happy when I ride them.

I’m sure there’s almost as much pleasure to be had for a fraction of the cost. Almost sure. Almost. Best not take the risk eh?

* and 120 on the front. Unless you’re an idiot like me and decides ‘well 140 is 20 more than 120 so that’s going to be better, yes?’

First up, that’s a non ironic Genesis hook. Although obviously this particular track was penned well after they’d rolled down from the peak of prog-rock light. Or to put it another way after Phil Collins somehow conned himself into singing vocals. Anybody under the age of about a hundred has absolutely no concept of what a travesty this was. Still they were also born after Jimi Hendrix died so their musical opinion is of absolutely no consequence 😉

Right then. See that ^^^, it’s like my Rocket only subtly different. Things you cannot see are a 30mm bar shave and a further short, back and sides on the fork steerer. Two reasons, none of them terribly rationale; firstly the all-Ross-how-bloody-heavy-is-my-bike roll call saw even a trimmed Cotic tip the scales as 31lbs. Not a big surprise nor a big worry – that feels ‘about right‘ for a 160mm* hill-hooligan with proper tyres and all sorts of elven magic breathed over three different suspension platforms.

The second thing is more of a worry. Since fitting those long forks and longer bars, most of my riding has been regularly interspersed with stupid crashing. Including falling off while riding uphill. Pathetic, pilloried and frankly rather painful. Deploying a strategy best thought of as ‘deckchairs‘ and ‘titanic‘, I’ve hacked chunks off various parts and switched back to flat pedals.

Flat pedals are fab. Years ago in my ‘lobotomy lobbing‘ days when ‘perfectly normal’ was chucking oneself off mini-cliffs in full storm-trooper kit, flat pedals absolutely rocked. Especially during exit manoeuvres where going down with the ship was likely to end with coming up for air in A&E. And traction.

In those days I really could bunnyhop, look evidence and everything:

But that was a long time ago which was really rather sadly apparent after digging out that bike and trying the same had me mostly digging just into the ground. Or, as the DMR is equipped with the shortest chainstays in Christendom, flailing off the back missing the rear brake but finding the concrete. With my arse. Thankfully this was away from human ridicule but the cows were pissing themselves.

Being a bloke, I’m on a serial hunt for crashing solutions. Being old and wise, I don’t expect to find them on tomorrows’ monster FoD ride full of fast, bumpy, jumpy trails. Some stuff will be co-located although it’s likely to be a spikey pedal and a soft shinbone. Still no point dying wondering eh?

My decision making is clearly miles off kilter anyway after today’s attempt to wrap new tyres on the balding Yeti. Announcing myself with a brisk ‘Good Morning, do you have a couple of tyres for my car?’ to the bemused shop owner, I was rebuffed with ‘No Sir, this is a gun shop as demonstrated by the simple fact that you have walked through all manner of small arms on your way to this desk’. That was awkward.

The rocket and me feel like we’re on different orbits right now. It needs to be ridden faster, but to do so I need to get some confidence in what the bloody thing is doing especially round the front. In five weeks we’re in the Alps which makes this next month a pretty focussed ‘stop crashing‘ exercise. Or at least learning to crash with a bit more style and a bit less pain.

I blame that road ride. It’s clearly bloody ruined me.

* I am aware of a metric/imperial switcheroo but there’s always google for the hard of arithmetic.