Draper Black Diamond report

[OldMaiconut]

Well Lorin and I got together this past Sunday at Draper to finally ride the new "expert" trail. I had not fired my bike for most of the summer since getting into my motorcycle shop, so I was a little rusty. The weather was great..80 degrees in August?? Anyway, we rode the regular trail about twelve miles or so until coming to the ominous warning sign at the entrance to the expert trail. 18 miles of extremely technical trail blah blah experts only... I don't know about experts, but we were going in. The first half mile or so was nothing too tricky... then we rounded a bend to see the trail ending at a cliff. A little inspecting showed about a 25 foot drop to a river crossing then a ledge to climb out on. The top of the drop was about a 60 degree slope and the only line was a 2 foot deep by 8 inch wide rut. Then no real run out until you are in the river. It looked scary, but we got across ok, then paused to try and give bad advice to a couple of spodes coming up behind us. A lot of the trail reminded us of "The Farm". The rest of the trail varied from the nastiest tightest most off camber root infested log crossing drop off with no warning mess I had ever ridden through to fast grass track stuff and also a few endurocross-style tire jumps (Lorin chickened out) It was a lot of fun and it about wiped both Lorin and I out. My legs cramped up on me in bed that night, and my arms are still sore as I type this three days later. We need to get together and do it again!

 

[craig_enid]

When Lorin gets all the 'easy' routes down, I'll be there. Air is for IN tires, not UNDER tires! :yikes:

 

[tx246]

Sounds killer. Im game when it cools a bit.

 

[OKKX'er]

Sounds like a good time, let's let it cool off some.

 

[DWreck]

Sounds like a good time, let's let it cool off some.

Like late January when I have insurance again!

 

[Lorin]

that is sooo not fair. as to "chickening out," I actually went up (once) to go over the tires, didnt carry enough momentum, and them went backwards from whence I came. Since I was a little shaken, and it has been a while since that has happened to me, I (wisely) decided to wait for another day. As to the technical, it was that. Looks as though they purposely left trees across the trails every little bit just to keep you honest. quite a few spots with narrow trail that if missed, could send you down 15-20 feet into a creek bottom. Not really the place to go if you are in the mood to showboat. I will say that my rear trials tire did really well on all those tree crossings. I will be back again to ride the trail, it is well worth riding multiple times. Lorin.