A good, bad and ugly weekend

[crashnburn'd]

After banging myself and my confidence up pretty bad last weekend,I really wasn't sure that I'd be able to ride this weekend. All week, my hip, side, and left arm hurt from crashing in a rock garden at Mtn. Creek. Here's the damage about 2 days after the crash.



Strangely when I woke up Saturday I felt great, so I went up to Plattekill for their closing weekend with a couple friends.

The Good:
After riding for a couple hours I was feeling great. Pretty much all of my soreness and stiffness had gone away. We ripped out a bunch of runs in the morning despite some long lift lines. Didn't really take many pictures, but I snapped one quick of a friend hitting a little rock jump at the top.



The Bad:
At about 1 o'clock, on of the two people I was riding with hit some slick roots and wrecked pretty bad. She ended up landing on a small stump and hurting her leg. Doesn't appear to be anything serious, but she was done for the day. The other bad is that most of the trails are completely trashed. There were really only a few rideable trails because there were so many trees down. Having not been up there for a while, I have no idea when it all happened. For a place that bills itself as one of the best places to bike in the east, the management really, really sucks.

The very Ugly:
3 people were taken out in ambulances on Saturday alone. One girl who knocked herself out racing 4x, and two guys practicing on the DH course for a race on Sunday. One, according to talk in the parking lot was a 15 or 16 year old kid (who crashed about 50 yards from the bottom), was airlifted out. From the sounds of it, his neck was broken and he had no feeling/movement of any of his limbs. Send some vibes out for the kid, it's a dangerous sport, but stuff like this really sucks. After seeing the helicopter come in and the EMTs, etc come down from the hill, we were pretty much done for the day...

All in all, a good weekend for me, but it sucks that thing went down the way they did for some of the others who were there.

edit - I just heard that there was another person who was airlifted out during the race on Sunday....

[CantDog]

Plattekill was the reason I stopped DH riding. I've seen so many things go wrong at that area during races/practices that I decided to take up a sport that involved more aerobic punishment and less broken bones. A riding buddy broke his neck in practice about 8 years ago there and is now confined to a wheelchair, while another closer friend broke his back(which healed). That about did it for me.

I also forgot to add I stopped DH riding because I sucked, as I remembered riding will Bill/Jenny/et al this weekend.

[crashnburn'd]

Trail management/ownership issues that I have aside, I love Plattekill. There's some really amazing terrain there to ride and it is completely different from any other place I've been. I think one of the things that results in a lot of injuries is that because of all the shale and loose rock (especially on the newer side), the conditions always change.

[yentna]

That really sucks. +++++++ vibes to all injured, and to those planning to go back. Have fun, but be safe too! Let us know if you find out the status of the neck injury. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[bagtagley]

Positive vibes for the kid. Hopefully the rumors are worse than his actual condition. One of the issues w/ Platty in the past (as I'm told) was the complete lack of safety concern on the part of the course designers. They had regular people designing courses (rather than racers) who were more interested in seeing carnage and big drops then a competetive event. My understanding is that that's changed in recent years...as crash can attest to. The above is blatant internet rumor/conjecture, completely unsubstantiated by myself, as I've never actually been.

[crashnburn'd]

I think that's the case, although I've only been riding there the past couple years. The people building the race courses now are riders. But, aside from the race courses there didn't seem to be any maintainence done this year, that's what bothers me.

[CantDog]

Positive vibes for the kid. Hopefully the rumors are worse than his actual condition. One of the issues w/ Platty in the past (as I'm told) was the complete lack of safety concern on the part of the course designers. They had regular people designing courses (rather than racers) who were more interested in seeing carnage and big drops then a competetive event. My understanding is that that's changed in recent years...as crash can attest to. The above is blatant internet rumor/conjecture, completely unsubstantiated by myself, as I've never actually been.

Agreed. This is what I witnessed, it was like suddenly the courses got a lot more hairy. It seemed to coincide with the influx of bikes with 10 inches of travel, when the DH market kinda hit a extremo maximum point about 5-6 years ago.