A place to write about mountain biking and other stuff I do in my spare time.
MattPatt's Blog

- Aug 23, 2006

Aug 19, 2006 - 13 Photos

Deer Valley NORBA National – Day 2 - Jul 08, 2006

Day 2, Friday July 8^th

Today I got in 3 solid practice runs today and found some decent lines through some of the stuff that was bothering me from yesterday.

The Yella V-10 took the abuse well, but rider took a bit of a beating when I hit a tree with my shoulder and foot. The shoulder is ok, but the big toe nail got ripped back pretty hard and the next toe down is all bruised. Ouch. Note to self, keep those big nails trimmed.

After DH practice we refueled on a large Quizno’s Chicken Carbonara (mmm) and headed to the Mountain Cross event which was being held at a BMX track down in SLC. That’s right, a BMX track… in Salt Lake City…

As far as BMX tracks go this was a good venue, but it was obviously a disappointment to a lot of riders, Clinton and myself included. Nate Marsh was smart and stayed back at Deer Valley to do the Super D race.

Fortunately, Clinton was willing to lend me his Santa Cruz Blur 4x bike, a considerably lighter more pedal able bike than my Nomad. And so with the help of the Blur I was able squeak into 4^th place in Qualifying, just making the cut. Clinton also qualified, in 9^th, and went through to the finals round.

In my final round I got the outside lane, which wasn’t too much of a concern, but when the gate dropped I wasn’t quite ready and saw the other riders jump out to a bike length lead. I jumped on the gas and passed the 3^rd place rider down the first straight to put myself in a position to challenge for second. In the first berm I tried to come up under the inside of the guy but I was just a little too far back. Same story on the next turn, I was a little bit closer, but still unable to put any moves on. So I held on to my 3^rd spot and crossed the line pleased with the result, but knowing with some practice I could be quicker.

In Clinton’s final round he didn’t have the race he wanted and was unable to progress to the next bracket. It has to be said that when it comes to Mountain Cross, the guys with BMX backgrounds and the fastest pedaling legs were really thriving on this course.

Afterwards Greg and I had a few beers, watched ROAM and kicked back for a good sleep in order to be ready for race day tomorrow.

Deer Valley NORBA National Trip Report – Day 1 - Jul 08, 2006

Due a cancelled flight on Wednesday night day 1 turned out to be day 0. Now I’m here at last, in the Radisson hotel after a fairly long morning traveling.

Highlights so far were running into Bryn Atkinson and Katrina Strand at the airport and chatting on the Shuttle up to Park City.

Checked-in with time to spare before Practice. Greg Mueller, who drove down with my bikes and is sharing a room came to get me and then we headed up to DV for a course inspection and practice.

Both Greg and I were, shall we say, impressed with the DH course in the sense that it has a great deal of technical challenge to it in the form of sick drops, rock gardens, and loose off-camber turns in dusty ruts. This track could really use some rain!

We took some shots of Pro’s and Semi-Pro’s during their practice runs, which you can see here. The photos don’t do justice to speed these guys carry down a course that would make most folks wet themselves. Definitely a highlight to see the quality of riding you get at a national event.

http://picasaweb.google.com/HuckThat/DeerValleyNORBA2006Day1

Took just the 1 run in practice as we wanted to thoroughly inspect the Waterfall drop and Barney rubble, a couple of technical rocky sections which require precise lines in order to clean with even a little speed.

I was able to get out unscathed and Greg had a bit of tumble but wasn’t too worse for wear so all in all it was a good day!

I’ll try and keep a report going for each day.

Later!

--matt.

South SeaTac - Independence Day 2006 - Jul 05, 2006

The 4th of July this year turned out to be a fantastic day to ride in Seattle. After a couple of hot weeks without any rain we were treated to some overnight showers and cooler temps Tuesday morning.

What better conditions then for some freeriding at the local jump park in South SeaTac. Video linked below.

Video here... (right-click and Save As)

--matt

- May 11, 2006

Went and rode Exit 38 last night. It was Justin's introduction to the trails there and he was really enjoying it. Heard him say that it'll be even better when he has some body armor to soften the blow of the odd crash. But all in all, a good outing for his new Demo 9.

Tyler was out too, getting quicker and more confident on the steeps. Chad hooked up with us for some shuttles, and at the end we took a run with Clinton down the Gate trail.

- May 08, 2006

The First anual BENT Event, a casual race held on Snoqualmie Ridge that covers a
spectrum of MTB discplines was held this Sunday, May 7th 2006.

We had a good turnout, 16 riders, which considering the cold and wet weather was very good.

I got 1st the XC and DH races, and tied with Bryce for the FR race through blue bucket, preventing the clean sweep. Next time! Actually, next time we'll probably have an even better turn out and some more competition, so look for more fun races like this in the future. Some photos below, and more on Flickr (search for the Tag BENT2006)

The Field of riders

Matt on the Cedar monster trying to pull the bike over the top.

- Oct 31, 2005

Tool time

As I mentioned in the trail work progress report from this weekend, I'm digging my new Stihl chainsaw, the wee, but mighty MS 170.
There's another tool from Sithl that I own which is perhaps one of my most prized trail tools. The Stihl PA 30 Splitting Axe, which apparently is a rare find these days.

While the axe still going strong, it suffers from the inevitable trail-builders envy. In other words, everyone wants to use it and we only have one.

So in the interest of productivity and peace-keeping, I did a little research online to find out where we could get a hold of some additional splitting axes, ideally like the Stihl we've got.

I found this one on Ebay for $41 (if it doesn't get bid on a whole lot more now that is ;-)
Then there's the Fiskar 'Axeman Cometh' on Amazon for a veritable bargain $25.

Speaking of Fiskar, I've always admired Saimo's Fiskar hand axe, great grip, dangerously sharp and light enough to not notice it in your pack. I'm pretty sure in fact that Fiskar made the PA 30 for Stihl and just rebranded it. There's way too similarity between them, and technology this good isn't easily imitated. So guys, if you're listening, as much as I love to share my axe, maybe it's time to drop $25 + shipping on another one or two of these excellent splitting axes.

Oh, and Stihl, if you're listening, I'm more than willing to continue publicly endorsing your products, so please feel free to send whatever tools/equipment/swag my way... huckthat@gmail.com =)

--matt.

Busy work weekend in Blue Bucket - Oct 31, 2005

This weekend turned out to be better, weather-wise, than what we were expecting. It also turned out to be quite productive in terms of trail work on The Ridge.

On Saturday, with brand new Stihl chainsaw in hand, my son Sam and I took to work on clearing out the fallen logs blocking the exit of Ballstein. Knowing that this was cedar I cut the logs into sizes that could be hauled over to Blue Bucket, since we always can use more good cedar slats for our contraptions. Sam was having a great time out there too and managed to capture the tiniest frog I've ever seen, it had to be no bigger than a penny.

Once the truck was loaded, Sam and I moved on to Blue Bucket, dropped off the cedar near the entrance so that it could dry out a bit, and then we headed in to finish topping the log ride into the Cedar Monster. The little saw, one of Stihl's least expensive models, which was on sale down in North Bend for $159 is surprisingly good for the kind of work we need it to do. It's light-weight, making it easy to haul around, and I purchased a plastic case for it to protect it from the elements should it need to camp-out on the trail from time to time. Satisfied owner.

From there we moved over to last log in El Dorado, right after the Lizard Tongue feature, and did some more log topping there, with the goal of making it wide and grippy enough to allow the rider to open it up on the downward sloping log ride. With any luck we can carry enough speed and control to allow for a small lip to catch a bit of air coming off the log.

By this stage, about 3 hours into things, Sam was getting tired, so we headed out for home. As it happened, we wouldn't be leaving for a while though. When I got back to the truck, which I had turned around just past the entrance to BB, I managed to get completely stuck in the mud, and no amount of four-wheel-low or digging would get me out. You see what I hadn't realized was, when I pulled past the entrance to Blue Bucket to turn around, I had driven right into a area of soaked dirt (that's how mud is made ;-) that had freshly been laid after the developers got done putting in the new sewer line that connects with the Echo Glen complex. Tyler & Bryce showed up at this point, and did their best to try and get me by digging and using boards, but it was no good. So we got Marcy and Melissa to come in with Tyler's 4WD but we didn't have a decent tow rope or anything, just some hitching straps, which we promptly snapped.
By this stage, I was getting a little fed up with it all, so I gave Chelley a call and asked her to contact a local tow-truck driver, who came out, hooked up his winch and had me out in no time. Expensive lesson learned.

Sunday was an even more productive day, I met the Twins out in Bluebucket around noon and already thay had got to work starting to top two new logs that will become our version of the famous Upper Oilcan U-turn log ride.

Technically, I think this log ride will prove a little trickier than Upper Oilcan, because the logs aren't laying perfectly flat on the ground, but we'll see. There's a gentle climb up the first one to where the U-Turn will be, and then a nice coast back down the other where we are going to continue the fun by connecting to more downed logs in the area. We really are quite fortunate in a sense that the big storm of 2 winters ago knocked down so many perfect log rides for us to activate. Let's just hope this winter we don't get any falling on our existing structures.

The new parallel log ride, which I'm thinking Paraplegic might be a candidate for the name, is going to be fun to ride for sure. We tried out a new technique in on/off ramps where we used a dirt construction method instead of wood planking. We did the usual forage and gather of old logs for fill, followed by a top layer of dirt, which of course provides plenty of traction and also a nice asthetic. We'll see how it works out over time and we'll probably improve on the basic design, but in general it seems like a sound technique, and I liked how quickly we were able to build it (2 guys ~ 1 hour). It's also worth pointing out, that from a materials stand-point, this method has clear advantages, since there's quite a bit more dirt and old logs lying around than good splitting cedar.

Aarron Suave, came out on Sunday to check things out and lend a hand. He made short work of the trail clearing into the new line, so thanks for the Help dude!

- Oct 24, 2005

Nate Marsh came to visit the ridge for the first time this Sunday. Appropriately, he paid his respect in the Holyland and I'd say all the wait was worth it to see him sending it so smoothly over the Momma Gap here.
Come back anytime Nate!

- Oct 24, 2005

Saimo's absolutely sending it here over the Momma Gap. High Score in the Holyland!

SRC Work Items - Oct 21, 2005

Hey guys, it’s been too long since we chatted about the ridge trails and what we should do to keep them safe to ride and at the same time fresh and challenging.

I was thinking on my way to work this morning how stoked I was to ride with Tyler and Bryce the other night, through Ballstein and Blue Bucket in the dark no less. My fire to get back out on the trail has totally been rekindled and so I’m naturally thinking it’s time to get some work orders cut and some progress made on our backlog of tasks.

As I see it this is the list of things we need to look at, let me know if you guys have anything else or want to change it. It would also be great to get everyone’s input on the order in which we should attack them so we hit the high pri items first.

Blue Bucket

Top the following logs:

storm entrance

storm exit log

eldo entrance log

eldo exit log (between lizard tongue and off ramp)

cedar monster completion

Grip the following areas (ideally by replacing lumber with split cedar stringers)

storm deck onto last log

eldo log 1 to log 2 connection deck

Condor landing and berm.

Create a simple bridge through the blue bucket mud hole (the one half way around the lake where there’s a dip and it gets water in it when it’s wet)I always end up struggling through this area and coming off my bike, so it will be nice to solve two problems with one project. Had been thinking it would be fun to use a technique I’ve seen applied on River Runs through it where you place a series of full-rounds (cut from a downed log). They can be of varying heights and sunk into the ground to make them stay up right. Or we could just build a simple bridge here… not too worried.

Clean up the BB entrance.

Clear the return line on the other side of the pond.

Brainstorm for new features on Blue Bucket, particularly on the other side of the pond so we’re compelled to use the back door entrance, ride the back-side loop and then carry on around the original loop.

Twin Peaks

Build another line from the Log jump in Twin Peaks which connects directly through Island into Ballstein to make it all flowy and fast.I’ve scouted this out and it looks ripe for an alt line with a bigger straighter air at the log jump which shortly after landing berms left and across the hill with a gentle descent until hanging right crossing/gapping the road into island and then again into Ballstein. This would potentially provide enough speed for some ridiculous big stuff if we want…

R-Line. Makes sense to get the trail so it’s a prelude to Twin Peaks.

Trail needs to be cut in properly so it can be ridden before we can start planning features. We’ll want to know how much speed can be carried through it.

Holyland

Connect the trail after it goes under Momma over to the run in to the Sand Pit.

Create a hip and step up line on the far side of the pit (below the original sand-pit ledge).

Put in a line the follows the ridge on the west side of the pit down into the road kill trail. Goal here is to have some easy and intermediate sized kickers and make it flow.

Clean up the berm below the lump jump to make it cleaner for carrying speed into the vanderham booter.

Phew! That’s a long list, we’re not going to get all that done anytime soon, but it’s good to have a list. I’m going to try and get out tonight and definitely again in the morning (planning an early (8am) start so I am back for time with the family).

Looking forward to knocking some stuff off the list… give me a shout if you want to join me or tackle some of this stuff at some stage.

- Oct 16, 2005

Just a random blog entry... Today Sam and I saw a deer munching on our neighbors shrubs, and so we grabbed the camera and went outside to get closer look and a snap if we were lucky.

This young one wasn't too worried about us, he let us get close enough to get this nice shot.

Matt dropping over the crowd at SST Trail Gap - Sep 12, 2005

Matt dropping over the crowd at SST Trail Gap
Originally uploaded by MattPatt.

Had a great session at SST yesterday with the Project529 team and Dan & Sam Saimo. On our way out I hit the Trail Gap 3 times. This was the second attempt and this photo really does justice to the height of the drop (15') as you can see the bike is well above the bystanders.

garbo wallride chad 2 - Jul 06, 2005

garbo wallride chad 2
Originally uploaded by CBlack.

Love this shot of Chad getting waaay up on the wall on No Joke.

I'm doing mental photoshop's of myself for next weekend. Stoked!

- Jun 27, 2005

Wanted to let you all know we got back from Silver Mt safely, uninjured and with a good result (2nd in Expert).

After riding what seemed like the Longest Gondola Ride in the World (oh wait, it is) you get out at the top of Mtn. Haus some 2800’ above the valley floor below. The course, known as the Hammer, starts out with some pretty fun, albeit freshly laid, jumps and berms. The jumps had a certain rhythm to them, which for me meant backing off from top speed to keep it flowing smoothly and not overshoot them and land in the pit of the next berm as I found out a couple of times in practice. There was a pretty fun little road gap jump which was followed by a nice berm so you could maintain speed well through that section, but other than that the jumps weren’t that much fun and they ended too soon, making up perhaps about 1.5 mins of 14min (in my case) course. Once out of the jumps, there was a bit of tight twisty tree slalom and then a long cat track traverse across the hill which was top gear pedaling but at the same time an opportunity to sit and breathe a bit before the lower section. The lower section has very little to talk about even though it made up about 2/3 of the course. It started out being a total brake burning kamikaze downhill on 1 ½ wide track (with the odd runoff rut to avoid) and blind off camber corners that came out of nowhere (at speed anyway). Once through the steeps there was some flat tree slalom on a duffy surface followed by a short climb (WTF!?!) and then some more dodge the trees, try to keep pedaling as much as your lungs allow, and pump the bike through the roots and tight hairpins. One thing to note was that there was NO TECHNICAL FEATURES to negotiate other than the jumps which were all pretty mellow really compared to the stuff at Beacon. Kind of lame really. Apparently the owner thought the race was in July not June and didn’t give his builders enough time to do it right. I did get an opportunity to chat with the builder (Scott) and he recognized the shortcomings of the trail but was very optimistic for the future with some big plans to get top to bottom fun. I’ll be looking for positive reports of improvements before I make the trek back there.

I registered for the race on Saturday, the practice day, and I decided that it would be best to move back up to the Expert class so that I could ride the ‘good course’ at Schweitzer, so I bit the bullet and paid for the annual NORBA license (which cost $60). Nobody said this sport is cheap. I had also heard (from one particularly outspoken, read: whiny) racer in the Sport class that it wasn’t fair that I should be able to ride in Sport after being in Expert my first race. Whatever, he’s probably right, but someone needs to remind the guy he’s in Sport and that’s probably just not going to cut it with ‘his sponsors’. Suck it up and ride faster buddy, no names.

So like I said, I went back to Expert and I was a bit nervous about how that might affect my race. The difference between my approaches to the Blastoff to the Bomber races was night and day. As I discovered at the Bomber, being in sport class allowed me to relax enough to keep it together and as a result it made the race fun (and fast). So I just reminded myself that in order to do well in the race I would need to approach it the same way and not let the pressure of being in the company. Chelley was a bit nervous for similar reason, she knew there is more pressure on me when I race Expert and that translates into a higher possibility of injury so I did my best to assure her that I wasn’t going to race any differently and that I had the benefit of a little experience this time.

Anyway enough background, the course as I said was *very long* and as I discovered on the practice day, it took a lot out of you. I decided after a couple of runs that it was unlikely I would gain much advantage from doing any more practice runs (it would take a long time to remember the whole course) and so it made more sense to me to save the bike and body for race day.

Come race day I was feeling good from getting a good sleep and not hurting from too much riding from the previous day. I got to the bottom of the lift with enough time to do a practice run, but in the end opted out and instead walked the entire jump section of the course prior to the race just so I had a reasonable mental picture of the stuff that would most likely be where a crash could happen. In the end I think I would have better off to do the practice run because, with the one minute intervals, and being in expert, my start time wasn’t until 2 hours after the first racers started. It would have been good to get one more run to dial in the suspension a bit more… It really didn’t feel quite right for the whole weekend. Nothing serious just could have been better.
When my start time finally rolled around I felt the butterflies start to dance in stomach, but this time, rather than let them get the better of me I reminded myself that I just needed to ride like I was still in sport and treat this run like it’s practice.
I got a clean start, hit the first few jumps nicely, nothing flashy, just kept it together and tried to get into my groove. By the time I got to the road gap everything was going well and I launched it, complete with a turn-down and a ‘WooHoo!’ for the style points (a trick I learned from watching Clayton at the last race). There’s something to be said for letting yourself hoot and holler during the race. Another part of my relaxation strategy I guess…

From there on down it was a bit of a blur. I remember hammering it across the cat track section and forcing myself to breathe hard and soak up the O2 for what was to come, and then it was just a matter of trying to let the bike go on the steeps, weave cleanly through the trees, try not let up at all on the little climb and just pedal the whole lower part of the course. one thing I knew was that there was a lot more time to be gained (or lost) on the lower stuff than the upper stuff, so I was pretty determined to give it all on the bottom. Through the lower loamy forest section there were a couple of nasty little corners where it looked like there was a rut/berm you could use to help keep speed but it turned out to be dust and so on 2 occasions I slid and put the bike down for a little loss (I think I might have given up 20s to those two drops). As I neared the finish line I noticed a rider up in front of me which felt great to know I was catching people. I pulled out a little extra I didn’t know was there to try and pass him and as I got up behind him I discovered he had a mechanical problem and he let me by with no trouble which was cool. From there it was a sprint to the finish line and I dug deep and pushed hard to get there, crossing the line and suddenly realizing how much my lungs were burning and how the heat was beating down. I ripped all my armor off and tried to cool down before I made the 1 mile flat land pedal back to the base (another thing that kind of sucks about the current setup there).

When I got back to the base Chelley and the kids were there and they were glad to see I was all in one piece and smiling. When the results got posted I was blown away to discover I had taken 1st place (that’s right first). And I had it by a decent margin. My time was 14:04 and the next guy was in the mid 14s. So that was too good to be true, and sure enough, about ½ hour later Chelley said, “have you looked at the board lately” and I took another look to discover a guy had taken the top spot with a time in the low 13’s. Wow, thoroughly beaten, but still stoked to have 2nd. Apparently the guy had missed his start time and did his run at the end. Oh well, it was nice to be 1st for a half hour . Chelley later told me she over heard someone talking about the guy and apparently he wasn’t sure if he was going to race or not… I guess he was in the XC race the day before and made a last minute decision to race the DH. Kind of tells you a bit about the course when an XC racer wins the DH eh? How humiliating. 

So we hung around for a little bit to see if they would start the ceremonies quickly, but given this was the final and they were working out the overall series standing, as well as collecting those late times, it didn’t start soon enough and with the 7 hours of towing the trailer ahead of us, we decided to get going (which I don’t regret as it was a pretty grueling drive home).

Wow, well that turned out to be a bit of a brain dump, but hopefully somewhat interesting to read.

Glad I could represent the list and the ridge crew. Hopefully we’ll see a few more folks make it to the races in the future. It’s really a good time and most of courses have more to offer than this one from what I’m told.

--matt.

PS. Didn’t take any photos this time. Probably due to mainly riding solo and also the lack of photo worthiness on the trail .

- Jun 23, 2005

We’re off to Silver Mountain, Idaho this weekend for the WIM finals, and I’m excited to see what the riding’s going to be like there.

Apparently it’s a pretty long course (12-15 mins) compared to the stuff we rode at Beacon (2mins). It’s going to cost $6 to ride the Gondola all day (9am to 6pm) on Saturday and $4 on Sunday for the practice and races. Seems like a deal to me. Over on the Silver Mt web site I saw this quote about the trail: http://www.silvermt.com/MTB.html

“We went and rode it today and it is crazy town!!! It isn't just a huck course like Beacon. It has everything you could imagine: huge tables, gaps, steep shoots where you just literally haul #@! until your hands cramp onto your bars, tight tress, slick roots, road gaps, drops. Come prepared to ride next weekend cuz the DH is off the heezy. "
--Mtn. Biker Quote from Sunday, June 19

If anyone’s keen to come along (just to ride and or race) let me know… should be a blast!

- Jun 06, 2005