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Today was a day of firsts at Red Bull Rampage 2024. After five dig days for the women, and four for the men, today was the first day bikes were allowed on the hill to try out their creations. It was also the first day media squids like me were allowed on the site, and the first time I’d visited this corner of Utah and Red Bull Rampage. And here’s my first Rampage Diary.
The riders are given a start point on the hill – this is the women’s starting platform. They have to figure out a line down the terrain to the designated finish corral. This year, as you look at the hillside, or perhaps cliff face, there’s the women’s course is on the left, and the men’s on the right. The terrain is steep AF. If you’d ever been on one of those beaches where if you miss the tide there’s a crumbling cliff face between you and dry land? Well, walking up the fingers of the hillside at Red Bull Rampage is something rather like that. Except a lot, lot bigger. The men’s and women’s start ramps are 700 and 600ft above the finish corral, yet some way below the towering mesa tops above.
It’s not just the steepness of the terrain that provides a challenge. As the sun rises around the top edge of the mesa, the change in heat is instant. It builds during the day, until by lunch time it’s boiling hot. The teams do their best to dig with the sun, starting the day at the top while there’s still shade up there, then gradually retreating to lower features with pockets of shade. Eventually though, the sun gets everywhere, and it can be a constant battle to keep the features damp enough to work into the required take offs and landings.
It’s an impressive sight as teams work on different features, the process sometimes throwing up huge clouds of dust.
The soil – and dust – takes some describing. When dry, it’s like dust with lumps in – sort of like the early stages of rubbing butter into flour when making scones. The dust itself is sort of flour like, or perhaps like the contents of your hoover bag. It’s so fine that it gets in everything, and on everything, coating in a fine layer like badly applied fake tan. It’s so dry that shovelling it around is very efficient – you’re only lifting the weight of the dirt, not water. Wet it, and it forms something like cookie dough, which when slapped with a shovel quickly forms into the desired shapes.
The slapping of shovels onto cookie dough dirt is the soundtrack to the dig days, with percussion from the occasional pick section where rock needs chopping away to create the line. Some of the lines are so steep that they’re only accessible by rope – or passing rider come practice. You can see the two roped-up diggers making this steep chute rideable. Which brings us neatly to scale, if we zoom out…
That’s the women’s start ramp up top, with the cliff-hangers on ropes half way below in the shot.
So when you see a shot like this, of Georgia Astle waiting as her bike is handed up to the a spot where she can try out a feature…
…or of Vinny Armstrong practicing a jump in her line…
…that leads into a berm with quite an edge…
…then bear in mind this is what’s over that edge. If you look closely, you’ll see point A is where Vinny’s jump is, while B is that nub of red rock that Georgia is about to climb up. Georgia then rides down a steep and loose chute that’s out of sight of the media access area, on the other side of the ridge.
And then bear in mind that this photo was taken from the same spot, just looking down the hill to the event village – and using a zoom lens.
Of course, riders don’t just start at the top and roll through the course. They practice features one by one, gradually stringing them together. If they’re lucky they’ll get to try them all before competition day, and perhaps string together a full top to bottom run. Here’s Robin Goomes figuring out a drop into a kicker that sends her over the top of Vinny’s jump, above. Lots of the women have a line that crosses over at this point, known as Spaghetti Junction.
Vaea Verbeeck made ticking off this chute look easy, although it seemed like a bunch of dirt followed her down the trail. As builders work on the lines, they need to take into account that riders need the line to hold for a second run – or more if it’s a shared section.
Over on the men’s side of the hill, practice had also started. Tom Van Steenbergen was eyeing up this big drop.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Tom Isted was still building his line, hauling rocks to help build a little ramp towards the end of his line. Imagine doing this for eight days and then having the energy left to hold onto your bars and actually ride what you’ve built? It’s Tom’s first ever trip to the desert – except for a package holiday in Egypt – but he’s not holding back. Further up the hill he’s sharing a huge canyon gap line with Rampage veteran Tyler ‘T-Mac’ McCaul. I asked Tom whether he’d be letting Tyler take the first go at it, and he said they hadn’t decided, but they had agreed that whoever hits it first gets to name it. From what he said, T-Mac has a name in mind, but Tom hadn’t yet been struck by the muse…
There’s a lot of hanging around when it comes to practicing lines. The wind has to be right before you can hit a feature, plus you need to figure out what speed the feature needs. Too slow, you’ll case the landing. Too fast, you might go too deep, miss the landing, and get bucked off. Having watched Brandon Semenuk roll up to a lip half a dozen times, I suddenly heard the fast buzzing of a hub that wasn’t about to pull up, whipped my camera round, and…
Flip! In a couple of senses of the word.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is incredible watching these riders and dig teams turn a series of cliff faces into a trail and ride them, but after you’ve watched them ever so carefully building an extra inch just-so onto a feature, and think about it for 20 minutes, and run in to it, and discussed the right speed… it doesn’t all seem unbelievable.
That said, I didn’t see anyone doing any of the really big drops or gaps today, so in the scheme of Red Bull Rampage, the bits of live riding I saw were relatively tame. I’m still not sure I’m really looking forward to those moments – I don’t even really like looking at someone up a ladder. But as everyone is now another day further along with their builds, I’m sure tomorrow will see some more big air moments. Healing vibes to Cami Nogueira, above, who had a nasty crash in practice.
That’s it for day one. Or is it day two already? Despite my best efforts to drink tons of water, I still ended up overheated and ill, so now it is 3am Utah time and I don’t know if my stomach wants tea or breakfast. I guess we’ll see what happens when the alarm goes off in a few hours and it’s time to head back out to the dust!
Oh, and amusing side note for the day: Mr STWHannah and I were asked if we were the parents of one of riders. Must try to look younger and cooler tomorrow…
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Thanks to ABUS for contributing to Hannah’s travel expenses.
