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Day 16: Wiriehorn iXS and switch-back trails

URT Day 16 Wiriehorn

Day 16: The iXS Downhill and crazy switch-back trails. This is a lesson learnt. Don’t come to a small bike park when a race is on if you want to ride the bike park trails, as they will be reserved for the racers. Totally fair enough – but we will have to wait until Monday to check out the course; as I said yesterday there really is only the 1 DH trail here. So whilst Tim worked his magic taking pictures of the iXS race Dan and I went out exploring on the bikes to see what other trails there are in the area.

For the XC ride we were joined by biking mates Rob and Dani, who drove over from Luzern for the weekend. Rob scoped a route on the hiking map and off we went. For some reason after more than 3 years of riding with Rob in central Switzerland I have not learnt this lesson – Rob’s rides are tough. There was some incredible scenery but it was hard to take it in as Rob and Dan set the pace on the 800 or so metre climb up to Seeberg. After a quick sandwich and coke we hit the single trail down. I now never want to see another switch-back in my life; this was some crazy swiss goat trail descent that can’t have seen many bikes down it EVER. There were some really fun sections when the gradient finally reduced, and for the technically gifted there are plenty of swtich-backs to challenge. But keep in mind that on most of them the penalty for failure is severe!

We’ve moved to a campsite tonight to join Rob and Dani, so are just having beers and a BBQ down by the river – not a bad end to the day at all! Tim returned with some back problems, presumably caused by lugging 15kg of camera equipment up and down the course all day. So Dan (the WBP PTI!) got down to some interesting gymnastics with him to straighten it out – all looked a bit weird given Dan was still wearing his all-in-one white lycra outfit that I am sure belongs to an Italian women’s road team! No pictures – it’s not that sort of blog. Storms tonight and even snow down to 2100m – so probably not the best night to start camping!!

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