Here’s a little summary of our recent rides over the snow Christmas 09 period. With a video with footage left over from two rides from the latter part of 2009.

24th Dec 09 – I (Jeff) went out for some Christmas Eve riding on Win Hill, with the group of young people collectively know as ‘The Kids’ (this name could stick til they’re well into their 30’s). There was a reasonable depth of snow at that height and we sessioned a corner, with mixed results – some slid like a squid, while others went down like a clown (editors note Jeff wrote this bit!). We also went up and rode the root section below the steps – knowing where all the roots are here pays off. It was signification colder at that level, once out of the woods, so it wasn’t long before we headed home.

09-12-24 WinHill JK+The Kids, 16 Pictures by Jeff

26th Dec 09 – The Epic Christmas ride was even more epic than normal! With a serious amount of snow even at lower levels the full epic route was going to be a serious challenge. But we (James), Shane, Jeff set off with that route in mind. It soon become obvious that we might have to rethink the route! Although the snow made for a very picture perfect December calendar shot. It wasn’t so great for riding in with the up hills being rather tricking epically once we had made it up onto the western side of Win Hill where the drifts were even deeper meaning that pushing and carrying your bike were the only options in places. Once we reached the ridge we had hoped that the gradient might be enough to all us to ride the bikes. We headed off down the ridge just about staying on the bikes. After stopping off to test how deep the snow was in some of the bomb holes (answer very deep). We carried on down towards hope cross. Where the snow had completely filled in the bridleway approaching the the start of the Hope Cross bridleway. So although it was rather nice to continue the tradition of a Christmas ride we might have been better heading out on the sledges or just making a Giant snow man somewhere!
See the the footage from this ride in the second half of the video at the bottom.

Our route – roughly 11km / 7miles long, plus some road afterwards
09-12-26 Aston+HopeX DH+HaggSide JI+JK+ST, 19 Pictures by Irwin & Jeff

31st Dec 09 – After the rather disappointing Christmas ride (in terms of riding) myself and Jeff decided that we would head up to Hope Cross to do some riding. With the Trees around this rocky bridleway providing some welcome shelter from the still snowy conditions still effecting most parts we thought we would be onto a winner. I (James) was eager to test out the full capabilities of my new Transition Bank. The idea behind the build was to create a all purpose bike that i could ride down the pump track, take to Bolehills, ride some longer epic rides on and still be able to enjoy the downs on. And so far i think it easily covers the job! With both myself also taking our cameras there was a fair amount of pictures taken on various parts of the track.

09-12-31 HopeX DH JI+JK, 22 Pictures by Irwin & Jeff

21st July 09 – On a damp Tuesday evening we (Irwin, Shane & Jeff) headed out after work to ride some of the Hollins Cross and Mam Tor bridleways, which are great for short rides as you can park at the top of the hill and don’t have to ride far to get to some pretty good tracks. Shane was on his first outing with his new SPDs (that magical invention that lets you attach yourself to the bike so you don’t need to be as fit when climbing hills ). It wasn’t long before the inevitable and he stopped but didn’t manage to unclip, fortunately (for Shane) Irwin was stood next to him and made a good temporary leaning post.
We rode the top section of Hollins Cross – BackTor Bridge and first section of Hollins Cross – Greenlands. Shane manage to get two punchers – one on each bridleway (the second in exactly the same spot as a previous ride), probably caused by a bad mix of XC single ply tyres and his DH riding style. While fixing the second puncture we decided it would be more fun to head back up the ridge and ride the short descent that goes around the side of Mam Tor. We weren’t wrong! With the previous rain it was quite slippy and muddy in places, this made for a great final run, with water flying everywhere and sketchy moments had by all.
See the the footage from this ride in the first half of the video below.

Irwin and I (Jeff) went out for a medium length ride up onto the ridge from Aston and down to Hope Cross, then turning right down HopeX DH. We sessioned this rocky descent for quite a while and took some pictures on different sections to normal. Unfortunately my flash refused to work when we got down to the corner in the woods, which was frustrating. We looked at and tried quite few lines on the bottom two corners before the Ladybower turn off, but the standard ones were generally the fastest, if a little unadventurous.

I found more parts to add to my collection for ‘Project Trail Bike 2009′, which is a challenge involving building a bike from parts I find on the trails in 2009. So far I have two orange pedal reflectors (so I’ll be able to legally ride it on the road at night ), half a (genuine) Shimano large front ring guard and the end part of a large metal brake lever (obviously another victim of a tumble on HopeX DH). Inner tubes should be easy to find, although unpunctured maybe a little harder. If anyone finds a frame on a local trail (preferably green and with air rear shock) let me know.

After that we went up the fire-road to Wooler Knoll on the ridge and then rode Brinks Road, which was quite dry and dusty and more smoothed out than previously. It was a very quite day, despite good weather, we saw more motor bikers than mountain bikers and unusually few walkers were out.

09-04-25 HopeX+Brinks Road JI+JK, 13 Pictures by Jeff

Right in some exciting news Jeff has bought himself and new HD Video Camera, so videos from now on will be in much better quality. So a couple of weeks ago myself, Jeff, Josh, Nicky, and Jonny headed out to test it out. It had been a while since we had all been out riding together and was probably going to be the last time in a while. But the weather turn out to be alight, just a bit on the windy side!

Hope X was the first port of call. I was surprised how dry it was so we all pushed up for the first run of the day, down the main straight. Which I really enjoyed on the new bike. Although Nicky was having lots of problems with his Gears skipping due to a worn out drive train. But we came up with a longer run in so he could get enough speed to make things interesting.

First ride in my new troy lee gear, got a bit of stick off everyone about it I decided that it was time to get some popper all weather riding gear so I went for the Grand Prix air Jersey and Pants. After some trial and error Nicky got his gears to work, but only in granny ring which I thought was quite ironic! As I think doing to the coast to coast might have worn them out. Half way up Hagg Tor we stopped off for a break from pushing and had a look around for some different lines to hit. We all spotted a gap/drop just off to the side of the main bridleway, it is something I had looked at before but was put off by the line. This didn’t seam to put Jonny off, saying “I don’t see how it’s actually possible to mess this up”, watch the video to see what happened…

Hagg Tor was good as always, but a little less wind would have been nice! Josh and I did a couple of fun runs down the upper sections while Jonny and Nicky messed around further up. Jonny was his normal creative self finding different lines to ride and mess around on. That boy’s got skills, unfortunately Jeff missed Jonny’s other crash of the day. So I will try to describe it to you instead; after an impressive huck down the near vertical bank on Hagg Tor, Jonny then went flying off the small jump/drop in the run-out, but due to the wind the back of his bike was blown out from underneath him. It almost looked like he was doing a tail whip and he landed with his hands still on the handle bars but the rest of his body completely separated from the rest of his bike. An impressive crash!

Jeff didn’t take his stills camera, guess he expected to be having too much fun with his new video camera. So the only pictures we have are ones that he took on the video camera, but I think the video makes up for it!

We’ve uploaded the video in HD (1280×720) onto Vimeo. You can watch it in full resolution by clicking Vimeo to view it in the Vimeo page then toggle HD on and go into Full Screen.

A video from 2008, filmed in May and August on HopeX DH, with James W, Irwin, Shane, Nicky & Jeff. The lesson to be learnt here is when Jeff rides sparks fly.

Using Shane’s fancy helmet camera me and Jeff filmed Hope Cross a couple of weeks ago. The plan is to do a runs down all the tracks on the tracks page. We have created a new sub-page in the videos section. So for more information and to download the video go here.

08-05-10 HopeX DH Head Cam MID