Reigning Dust

This weekend’s Eastern States Cup was at my home mountain, Mountain Creek and was utilizing an old skool double black trail called Slayer. I have to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled to hear this at first. I had ridden Slayer for fun earlier this summer and I remembered it as a chunk fest nightmare. Also, I really liked the course that had been used in previous years. The Trail Crüe had made some adjustments though, and with the volume of riders now headed down, lines were starting to take shape (I had never stopped to figure out lines when I rode it earlier). I found my race lines eventually and they were never easy - this was one tough course. For example, the photo above shows the entrance to the Slayer portion of the course and it’s much tricker that it appears. The rock drop is completely blind on the ride up and the landing is in a jumbled rock garden, and the trail changes direction at that point. If you jump straight you’ll go right into a tree. This was just the start of the difficulties.

That said, I was happy to be on my home mountain and racing a course that was within a mountain bike park, allowing me to run warm up laps and party laps with friends on the other various trails. I got to show my racing buddies that came from out of town my home hill, taking them down my favorite trails and towing them off some of the gnarlier drops.

There hadn’t been much rain in the past month and that made for some dusty riding on some of the sections of the race course. There were some fresh berms and corners added to the course and they got pretty blown out. The soft brown pow was a nice contrast to the blocky rocks but you had to be careful that you didn’t get stuck or slide out like my buddy Colt.

My race run was fast and clean and I came in fourth behind the older kids. I was happy with my run and that I got down without incident (lots of people were crashing). Next race is the Eastern States Cup final and it’s a Plattekill. Just send it!