This Kid

Check the homie Ola straight murderin this park!

VIRGIN UTAH part 1

If you want to prove yourself as a mountain biker as far as I'm concerned there is nowhere that compares to Virgin Utah. The place is the home to the Rampage and for good reason. As proven by Where the Trail Ends, there is nowhere that offers such perfect terrain to push yourself and depending on your skill level what is possible on a bike. So some friends and I decided going there for 5 days would be a fun idea.  

After a long drive that honestly wasn't that horrible due to constantly changing scenery  Kent and I finally made it to Utah and met up with Will Sharninghausen and his homie Treven. The next day we went out to the old rampage site. It was pissing rain the first day,but we didnt care. The excitement was at an all time high. The first thing we did was hike around and just take in the vastness of the zone. After hiking around and checking things out it was time to bust out the bikes and start riding. Rain is a good thing because it makes the dirt amazing, however too much rain turns the dirt into spinning clay. We hit what we could for the conditions and decided to call riding early because hitting big stuff with 5+/-lbs of mud on your tires is sketch. It resulted in me doing a nice ronnie mac impression in front of Cam McCaul hahaha.

After calling it on the riding, we decided to go make a line to ride. It took about 4 hours of digging and we had a line that looked pretty fun. Granted it was an incredibly pussy line compared to what goes on at rampage, it was still a fun experience to go build a line. We left it and decided pack it the next day when the dirt wasn't sculpting clay.

On day two we started with messing around riding, then went to pack the line in. After packing the line in we went back to do some more riding. While riding we ran into Antoine Bizet and Nick Pescetto. They asked us if we wanted to go do a shuttle run. Sure, why not we though. Once we found out what we where going to ride, stoke turned to fear. We where going to do a run down king kong, a trail built by Josh Bender. To put it mildly, king kong is the scariest shit iv'e ever ridden. Ill admit I pussied out on one drop, but it wasn't even the gnarliest so I don't really care. I'll let this helmet cam of lecondeguy tell the rest of the story, my go pro died halfway down it. All im saying is riding down that trail is my biggest accomplishment in biking so far.


               
Lacondeguy full run KING KONG from Andreu Lacondeguy on Vimeo.

UK with the goods again

This is probably one of the best edits I've seen in a long time. Its also fucking hilarious to watch pilgrim try to corner. Blows my mind how good some guys are at tricks and jumping, but put them on a trail and they shit the bed.



Fairclough, Pilgrim, Reynolds and Wilkins "Backcountry" Extreme - S4P - More Mountain Bike Videos

Soooooo

Community college sucks, minus the bullshit, this video doesn't.


There are enough good whips to make up for the bullshit though.

BAD ASS

Now THIS is how to use a GoPro. Holy shit I felt like I was this dude, mad adrenaline rush

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' Official Music Video from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

Scott Gambler Review

From the first time I saw the Scott Gambler until now. Having finally had the opportunity to ride one, my opinion remains the same. I will own one, at some point. Hopefully soon, if all works out.

Build: Being that this bike is owned by a sram rep, it was decked out with all the recent goodies from Sram, Rockshox etc. The drive train was XO carbon crank, shifter and type 2 derailleur. All preformed flawlessly through the testing. Brakes were dual piston XO trails. I weight like 150 give or take, so they were spot on. They had the best modulation of any brake I've used, which lead to holding better traction while hitting corners and they could still stop on a dime. The controls were a generic Truvativ direct mount(nothing special here) and a Stevie Smith blackbox bar. I have always liked the feel of a boobar, so the Smith bar felt great. Suspension was a Boxxer Worldcup and a Vivid R2C. The fork preformed just as I would expect from a boxxer. Now the shock was what got me stoked. After the launch that the shock had, I was very curious to see how it felt. I thought that the shock preformed up to par; it tracks insanely well, takes big hits like a champ and stayed solid throughout the testing. Also, I gotta hand it to rockshox for the counter measure, it is surpirsing how little force is required to activate the shock. Wheels were covered by Novatec demon dowmhill wheelset. They had stout rims at  a decent weight and very quick egaging hubs which made pedaling out of corners noticeably faster due to quick power transfer. Overall, it was a very solid build that I had no complaints about. 

The Ride: The first thing I noticed in the parking lot is how damn aggressive this bike feels. With a low bottom bracket, short chain stays and a head angle that might leave some scratching their heads. I was pumped to get it on the trail. The first place I rode the bike was a steep loamy trail that I am very familiar with. I was stoked on how the bike rode. It would hold a corner like a bobsled,  something I dont do well. In addition to good corners, the trail has a solid huck to test on. The bike aced that one too, it was astounding how well this bike takes big hits. The next test was at Squaw Valley to race the beast; It was a 10 minute run, that a trailbike would have been ideal for, but it was a test for the pedal-ability of this bike. Seriously, this bike scoots under pedals, I was beyond impressed. Aside from the pedaling, Squaw had some awesome real downhill. The top was an awkward  rockgarden similar to Fontana; features like these usually are challenging because it can be hard to carry speed. The gambler floated through the rocks where it could and felt incredibly solid while plowing when it had to be done. The last place I tested the Gambler was at Northtstar at Tahoe the closet lift access I have. What Northstar gave me was a great place to test the bikes jumping ability. Honestly, this bike is almost too good at jumping. I never had to really preload a jump to clear it. Whenever I preloaded the suspension hard, I over jumped whatever I was jumping. After riding the bike, I can conclude that this bike has a very confidence inspiring feeling. It stayed stable in 99% of situations and there wasn't anything that it wasn't good at at or a characteristic that made it not fun.  


Here is a vid of some testing



Scott Gambler test + shredding on Pinkbike

SCHLADMING!!!!

RAW: Adam Brayton Crushing Schladming - More Mountain Bike Videos