Downhill Mountain Biking

Dylan Writes: Warning - really geeky bit on biking coming up.

Well I tried to get Kat to come on this one, but she wasn't having any of it. She booked her self into a 5 star hotel instead. Unfortunatly she spent most of the day re-arranging our flights while I was out putting fresh scabs on my knees.

My original idea was to ride "The Worlds Most Dangerous Road", but due to my medical need to drop altitude and therefore doing the road twice in ill-maintained minibuses I decided that I had done it enough. To be honest, the road from La Paz to Coroico IS very dangerous, but not that much cop for mountain biking. I think most of the people that ride it, do so for the bragging rights. I was more interested in some decent riding so I booked myself on some "advanced single track" with Gravity Bolivia.

A day before my ride I found out that there wern't enough people that wanted to do the single track stuff so I jumped into someone elses group to do the "Zongo Valley".

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The ride was fast, dangerous and spectacular. 46KM of dusty downhill track through some amazing valleys. We started at almost 4000 metres ABSL, all the way down to just over 2000 metres I think. We started up at the top of the valley next to an old miners graveyard and imediatly hit a series of tight switch backs which had us sliding all over the place. I think I am fairly competitive {thanks mainly to riding MTB with Derek} and wasn't over taken easily, it sure made for some short-filling moments.

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I also managed to take out an instructor {who later claimed that we where going to fast} and killed a bike {well bent the chain anyway :o} You really do need to have your wits about you when you are riding along side a 500 odd metre vertical drop, the road surface is awful, and using the brakes really is a "one finger job" to save your self from just locking up and sliding out of control towards the edge of nothingness. For my bragging rights at least it turns out that the second guide has won the national downhill comps 2 years in a row.

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For anyone thinking of doing it I would recommend Gravity over all the other companies doing it, they seem the most togeter of all the others I went to. They are the most expensive but have the best bikes {Kona's mainly}. Also the guides are all english speakers {mainly Ausies, Kiwi's and Septics}. Both bikes I used felt great right away and I learnt a few useful skills from the guides. By all means the worlds most dangerous road is a sight, but I did feel a little uncomforatble riding a road that people seem to die on every other week just for pleasure, I'm glad I picked a different route.

Oh and Kat managed to re-arrange all the flights and still had time to watch hours of english telly in a room with a hot tap on the sink!!