It's Always Sunny in Port Angeles

And we’re back to racing! Having moved last summer to Bend, Oregon, this season I will be racing the NW Cup series throughout the Pacific Northwest (and Montana and Idaho). The distances to the race venues are much further compared to the East Coast for the Eastern States Cup, but the drives are much more scenic. It takes roughly seven and half hours to get from Bend to Port Angeles, the first stop of the 2021 NW Cup, and we rolled in a little after 11:00PM on Friday night.

Practice on Saturday went from 8:00AM to 12:00PM for my Cat 2 group. The venue was Dry Hill, a classic spot for NW Cup racers. It’s not much, you bounce up a logging road for about five minutes until coming to a narrow clearing under a powerline easement where you simply pull of the dirt road and drive as deep into the salal as you can to park.

There was a huge amount of people attending, over 500 racers. This included over 200 groms in various categories. There were 28 kids in my Cat 13-14 group, and me still being 12, I was going to be one of the youngest this year. I really liked how there were three different courses for the various categories and two different races times. I thought this was much better than the Eastern States Cup where the pros and the groms where all put on the same track and practiced at the same time.

One unique quirk about the Dry Hill venue is the shuttles. U-Haul vans are rented and the riders load into the open cargo bay at the back of the truck and stand with their bikes. A dark, dusty, bouncy rides gets you to the top in a few minutes.

The race course was an amazing trail with lots of flows and a huge tabletop hip jump near the bottom. Hardly anyone tried clearing the full hip, so I knew if I could it would help huge with carrying speed. After a couple attempts in which I ended up 50/50 the lip and scaring myself, I decided to go for the high line scrub like the majority of riders.

I did a bunch of practice laps and felt good about my riding and speed. At noon, practice was over and it was time to head out and explore the area a bit. We went into the Olympic National Park and checked out the amazing huge trees in the Ancient Grove.

Race day began early with perfect weather. We were allowed one practice run, then racing began. I had about 3 hours to kill before my drop time.

I had a good clean race run that I felt good about, but the kids I was racing against were fast, really fast. I now know what I’m up against and will work hard the next few weeks look to improve when we meet next, back here at Dry Hill for Round #2.