On Friday night the ride the night mountain bike freeride race took place in Davos, the event involves a timed downhill run next to a ski piste. In theory it sounds easy, in practice it was a little different!!!
The course was set from Weissfluhjoch down along the side of the funicular line to the mid-station at Hohenweg. The competition format allowed participants to do as many runs as they could in the 2 hour qualifying time with the fastest 50% of the competitors going forward to the final. This meant no mass start and people could go any time they wanted to try to get their fastest run in.
Riding on the snow was like riding on the worst possible mixture of mud and gravel, traction was negligable, braking almost impossible and crashes guaranteed. Within 100m of starting I was already trying to avoid 3 people that crashed in front of me on a really steep downhill section, about 50m after I avoided this I was taking a trip over the handlebars myself!
After my third run I was finally starting to feel like I was getting a bit more comfortable at riding in the cut up snow but was then out of time to get any more runs in. My fastest time of the night was 9mins 10 seconds. The fastest run of the evening was done in less then 4 minutes!!!
There were some organisational issues that did let things down a little:
- The transport to the top to start the event was ridiculous. The train brought one group of riders up about an hour before the event, these riders were then waiting on the top for about 30mins before they were allowed on the course. Meanwhile the riders down in the valley waiting to get up did not have another train until 6:20pm, this meant getting to the top after 6:40pm missing out on 40 minutes of their qualifying times and missing out on the time period when the track was at its fastest.
- The track was prepared over soft snow rather then a ski piste. This meant it got really cut very quickly. Most peoples technique was not so much riding the bike down as half riding, half skiing using one foot as an outrigger. If the organisers had roped off a section on the side of the night ski piste the underground would have been firmer and possibly the track would have stayed in good shape longer.
Despite these issues the event was fun and I will probably take part again.
After a good night of riding our bikes on snow a great weekend of skiing and snowboarding proved that bikes are not the ideal tool for snow sports. It was fun trying them out on snow though.
