Since hearing about it, I had been thinking about entering the Rockville Rockhopper Enduro that happens on Halloween day. I try to do a few races a year, just to keep honest. Recent years, that’s meant downhill, flow, and cyclocross. Finally an easy to attend enduro close to home. Typically, they are 4-12 hours of driving away. Too rich for my blood. I’ll be there, in Rockville, out on course for Halloween. Expert men 40-49. Boom!
Rockville Hills Regional Park is a very small but nice place to ride. Most of the trail is fairly smooth and easy leading into some epic session spots. This is not the place to just bypass a rockgarden without stopping to session. There are lots of lines and features that are easy to miss but huge and challenging. You go to Rockville to work on skills. There are many to learn there.
Ian Massey had a planned group pre-ride there on October 17th that I went to. An easy loop around the course. It had been about 8 years since I’d been there last. I got Ronen to show up for some play on rocks after the pre-ride. Ian, a local and a pro, knew every tech line and rode them all super big in front of us. Super sick stuff. We got some video on my phone.
We returned on the October 24th and with a real camera. We were determined to go big. We did an OK job. Another trip will make a huge difference. We both really did push ourselves well to our limit of fear and skill. It’s a funny thing when you struggle for a large part of the day just getting up nerve. We built a lot more consistency and flow on the big rock. We cleaned ‘snake bite rock’ (named for the 5′ Gopher snake we found there on the first trip, they don’t bite but whatever.) and got a ton of photos. Lot’s of lines were done.
I have to say that Snake Bite Rock is an amazing thing. A difficult entry to about the steepest, rocky, rooty chute into a pair of drops that give almost no time to set up. I did the line nice and clean about 10 times but 3 or 4 were completely out of control and I don’t understand how I rode it out. It’s one of the coolest tech hits in the bay area for sure.
I’m looking forward to another play trip to take more pictures of bigger hits.
