SolVista Bike DH Weekend

I got a couple of days of riding in this weekend up at SolVista Resort. They opened a couple of DH trails for the season.

They opened up 2 legit DH trails and a few others than seemed more like Super-D courses. The 2 downhill courses were named Drifter (i didn't find myself drifting more than once or twice) and Cougar (it was old school, and out to get the young and inexperienced)

Drifter was a fun course, with some good rock garden sections and fun turns in the trees. The Rock gardens have a couple of lines through them. Truth be told - I've pinned it on some really bad lines through the rocks, and still managed to get through unscathed. I forgot to time myself on this course... I suck.
Cougar was definitely a faster more racy course. Cougar starts off with a ramp to a pump to a road gap right under the lift. The only real tech section on Cougar was a double drop section. I definitely recommend rolling it the first time or two you try it - I launched the first drop with some speed to clear some of the debree at the bottom, only to find that i didn't have enough room to clear the 2nd drop. I'm sure that you know how this ended up... torn up shoulder, bruised hip and a$$, and a tweaked wrist (I don't think that I broke it). Otherwise - the corners are fast and you can pedal through lots of the trail. With my bad wrist, I was top to bottom in about 2:30-40. I would guess that race runs will be in the low 2:00 for this course.

The 2 trails above are a little on the shorter side - but fun racy type of trails. SolVista just doesn't have the vertical to put in a long and fast run, but they definitely make use of what they have.
The crew at solvista is led by several top notch racers and get some help from a few guys at http://www.thefixbikes.com/bikes/. The plan is to put in an additional 5 trails this summer as well as a Dual Slolumn course.
Just having a Dual course at the base will assure my attendance... I miss the old school Dual Racing Format. It ruled... like Steve McQueen.


All in all - it's a good place to be if you are a racer type, but doesn't have much to offer the Free-ride type... Given the schedule for this summer (they are hosting 2 mountain states cup races and 1 G3 race) - this makes sense.