day trippin in wine country

Paul boosting, despite cheese grating his arm in the rock garden earlier in the day.

Autumn has settled in in the Cape, bringing with it some of the best riding conditions of the year. Tacky dirt and powder blue skies. What started off as a chilled Saturday morning ride turned into 4hrs of burning down trails, sending it and then hiking back up for some more. The weather was perfect and everyone was throwing it down, as the craziness unfolded.

the first stepdown at the top of the track gets everything going. after that instinct kicks in.

It is easy to take this for granted when you are surrounded by it every day. 

Although the perspective is good, helmet cameras don't always do justice to what's happening on the ground underneith the bike. But this clip at least gives a reasonable feeling:

the reason why we love this trail so much is because it has all the elements a good trail should have: flow, speed, hits and a couple of rock gardens to make it interesting. the incredible panorama is a bonus.

This kicker comes straight after the mine shaft gap (yeah, really). Riaan flies through the fynbos.

Riaan forgot his kneepads in the car, but it didnt seem to bother him. This roadgap leads straight into the rock garden where Paul grated his cheese.



Shade? Not here. Even in May it's pretty much cooking. So if you gonna push up, better make sure there is a good reason to come back down.

stop. breathe out. relax and enjoy the view.

I cant really claim this. Landing on the trail didn't seem too important at the time and I took a few bushes out on the way.

The day ended at least for some (we were hungry, Paul bleeding, but Riaan and JP kept at it) at the bottom of the trail. Watching Riaan over jump Paul's kicker in an attempt to get enough speed to clear the table, we decided that it might be a good time to call it quits and drown our smiles with a sip of wine...

JP floats over the table... to get into the landing on this huge hit needed more speed than most were prepared to give.