You’ve probably seen a folding mountain bike before but this one is different - it’s meant to be carried in a backpack! The “Mountain Monk” is from German designer Thomas Kaiser and the idea is that you hike up a mountain with the bike on your back then ride the thing back down - sorta like a self-shuttled downhill run. Although at least one prototype exists Kaiser is still looking for production partners.

The Mountain Monk sports both front and rear suspension and disc brakes but skips the pedals since it’s meant for downhill riding only. The bike isn’t light - the current model is about 21 pounds - but it still beats pushing your 40 lb. rig uphill. The 3 gallon backpack also includes a pouch for your helmet and gloves. Could this be the start of yet another mountain biking offshoot - bike hiking? We’ll be keeping an eye on the Mountain Monk…

Via Wired Blog.

Photo courtesy woodwardmtbpark.com.

The Fresno Bee reported on a new freeride area at Woodward Park in the city of Fresno, CA that sounds pretty gnarly, although many area residents don’t even know it exists. The park was designed by Hillride Progression Development Group out of San Francisco and they built the place with everyone from beginners to experts in mind. Skinnies, jumps, and ladders are marked for difficulty making it easy for anyone to build or hone their freeriding skills.

The park even includes a downhill run with 20 continuous jumps plus a freestyle jumping course that will host state and national BMX events. Check out the website, woodwardmtbpark.com for more info including pics, videos, and maps.

Yeah, we’re a little late reporting this but last weekend the Mega Avalanche Downhill mountain bike race was held at Alp d’Huez with thousands of competitors vying for a spot in the final downhill race of the week. This isn’t like most downhill mountain bike races you’ve seen since the final downhill race features 400 riders careening down the mountain at once! I’ve heard of 4-cross but I guess this is 400-cross…

The course makes a total descent of 8,500 feet - more than a mile and a half of vertical drop through snowy, rocky, and just plain difficult terrain. The race itself is open to all comers, though there does seem to be a requirement that racers wear a full face helmet, elbow protectors, and full finger gloves (gotta protect the digits ya know).  As you can imagine the race is full of crashes and if you can get out front and make it down without being involved in a pile up you just might take the prize. This year’s winner was Rene Wildhaber of Team Scott - Red Bull.

Here’s are a couple videos from the start and during the final race last weekend:

A couple mountain bike videos to spice up your Thursday morning:

10,000 foot downhill

Sacred Rides runs a MTB tour of the Olleros trail in Peru and they claim the descent is 10,000 feet (and I’m assuming this is a shuttle ride). The video doesn’t show the entire 10,000 foot descent since this would probably take hours but it does give you a good feel for the trail. Actually trail might be a bit generous - this thing looks like a sandy, barren slope where the “trail” is any line that gets you down the mountain.

Mountain bike unicycling in San Diego

This clip came from one of our members, unigeezer, and shows the unigeezer himself ripping up the Iron Mountain Trail in San Diego, CA on his mountain unicycle. I really like this video because it isn’t edited to make it look like mountain unicycling (municycling?) is easy - you actually see unigeezer jump off the unicycle every now and then. Amazing stuff.

Don’t get your hopes up, at least that’s what a USA Today article leads us to believe. Cross-country mountain biking was added as an official Olympic event just 12 years ago, almost 20 years after the sport itself was invented. Of course you could argue that the original mountain bikers who clunked down Mount Tam were more interested in downhill than cross country riding but that’s another story…

This year’s Olympic games will include BMX for the first time and some big name downhill mountain bikers are crossing over to BMX for the competition. It’s tough for me to imagine that BMX will stay an Olympic event while dowhill mountain biking is excluded but only time will tell. The USA Today writer argues that finding or building a suitable downhill course could be impractical for some Olympic cities but that doesn’t stop the whitewater kayaking event from happening, does it? At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games the whitewater events were held in Tennessee of all places, a 2+ hour drive from Atlanta!

Anyway, this article ties together a couple themes from this week’s singletracks blog nicely. First, it’s interesting to note that people are complaining about the site for the 2012 Olympic mountain bike course outside London as being too flat - at least they’re not trying to find a spot for the downhill event! Apparently even siting a cross country mountain bike course for the Olympics can be difficult enough as it is.
I also came across an interesting fact about the 1996 Olympic mountain bike race results. The winner, Brent Brentjens of the Netherlands, averaged 13mph over the approx. 30 mile course - not much faster than the 10mph I said was a “fast mountain bike ride” (well, ok, 30% faster but still). If you’ve ever ridden the Atlanta Olympic MTB course out at Conyers you know this is an intense course with some serious climbs - a single lap is enough for most riders and very few will average close to 10mph.

I don’t know what the process is for adding a new event to Olympic competition but it seems like downhill mountain biking should at least be considered. Downhill mountain bikers are serious athletes who deserve the chance to compete in the Olympics - let’s see what we can do to help…

The Icycle Mountain Bike Event at Fontana Village is set for this weekend and a wintry mix is in the forecast. About 300 riders are expected at this year’s event which includes cross-country events and a nighttime downhill race. Race organizers say it’s the only nighttime downhill race they know of and combined with potentially icy conditions, you’ve got yourself an exciting race (to watch, that is).

If anyone is planning on going out, definitely send us some photos to post after the race!