Red Route Open! Perfect weather for the grand opening of Nevis Range Red Route…. Expect a full length helmet cam video before the end of the day.
The ‘river has fully dried up today and the downhill track is running sweet, and really fast. All the sections which were badly damaged by the rain have been fixed up and the world cup woods reopened after being quite badly affected by the rain. the new woods section from the most recent world cup is still quite wet as quite a lot of water runs in this part of the forest howeever it dries quickly and some work will be done in the drainage here, this section was reopened again this afternoon and will remain open providing it holds up well to riding in the wet.
The sign posting and marking out on the red route is now complete and a few helicopter drops off material will be happening on tuesday to sort out a few little bits before the grand opening on wednesday which should be awesome.
On another note, there is a round of the british national downhill series, the nps, here next weekend. There should be some really good riding and its definately worth getting out to watch some of the action.
DH Track is slowly turning into a river today, may be open for kayaking in the near future… On a serious note, track is closed today due to very high winds and torrential rain… Red route has reached completion and will be open on Wednesday 24th, in the mean time a few photos to keep y’all eager!
The track has held up well after a weekend of world cup racing. The whole track including a section of the world cup woods is open and ready for riding. The Red Route is nearing completion and looking sweet.
Work started on the downhill ealy April. The Nevis winter skiing & boarding season still underway and snow still on the ground, practically to the car park which sits at only 100m above sea level. Certain areas of the track were heavily damaged by the rain, and washed away by the melting snow. “Probably more damage that we’ve seen for a couple of years - lots of snow and the track is getting older” according to Donald, the longest serving member of the Nevis bike track crew. This year, there’s 4 … Donald (burger n chips), Liam (will work better if fed regularly), Elliot (happiest when behind a machine), and Duncan (the new boy). They’ve been busy ‘fixin stuff … man’ since April.
Work first starts on the foundations, re-shaping the ground, ensuring that the drainage ‘works’ and that the base of the track is solid - and if its not, it gets filled up with rocks of varying random sizes. Next job is to transport the infill material onto the track. By hand, it would take forever. Using the gondola would mean loads dropped some distance away from the track. So a helicpopter gets called in. Even then, it still takes a millitary precisioned operation to schedule the 4 minutes lifts and drops of the fifty 700 kilo bags to ensure the right construction materials arrives on the right place on the track! The team then work, by hand, to spread the material out into the right area, and into the desired shape.
They’ve also been working to change some of the lines thru the rock gardens, as well as re-profiling the take offs and landings on most of the jumps.
The downhill track opens for the 09 season on Saturday 9 May. It’s lookin pretty good.
NEVIS BIKE TRACK TEAM