The entire Cannondale OverMountain crew - Aaron Chase, Chris VanDine, Mark Weir, Ben Cruz, Jerome Clementz, and Jason Moeschler - met up with DH Productions to go ride Mark Weir's private California ranch trails.
Its too bad Im local and have to break the law to experience such epic straight downhill lines I wanna do 50+ on the dirt. Wier ranch pass? Id pay to a charity to ride there.....Mark are you listening, business opportunity pay to use your trails and donate the proceeds to charity or to build more. Why be a hoarder?
Yeah calling him a hoarder is totally going to win him over! How come there's nothing "legal" for you to ride over there? They mentioned that in the video too about nobody being able to ride that county.
That 50 mph drop is not on a private ranch. It is Mt Taylor in Santa Rosa. It is open spaces and is open to everyone. They have special permission to shuttle. If you are willing to climb then it's yours for the taking. He aint kidding though that is a steep hill.
another local here...also bummed out i've got to risk the $200 ticket to ride any singletrack trails, but more bummed out that he's got all those tree features, berms, rollers, and jump trails to himself. basically, he's got proper bike trails and everyone else has the illegal and blown out hiking trails.
@ Black-Bottlerocket - trails in Open Space (etc) are illegal because the area is full of rich hippie hikers and horseriders with lots of political clout. They say they are liberals, but in order to sustain their hippie tree-hugging peaceful lifestyle they ban mountain bikers from their hiking trails - so not so liberal afterall. They don't understand that most of us are environmentalists too.
Ohh gotcha, yeah that sucks when the self-righteous hypocritical tree huggers get their way. One of the great local dirt jump spots over here just got levelled as a result of the same mindset.
That sucks that they get their way, looks like some prime riding spots could be had if it werent for them!
I think jumps are a different story - councils see them as potential for causing injuries which they could be liable for if it is on public land, so they doze them straight away.
Thats true, these jumps have been around forever and whilst i appreciate that they are concerned for safety, only those that know how to ride them would ride them. They are big enough to scare off someone that has only ridden lame table tops at the Hoots mini bike parks around town.
I'm also a Novato native. The ranch is private land, not owned by mark, and the owner is really selective of who rides their because of liability. Just to put it in perspective, I turkey hunt at the ranch all the time and I'm still not allowed to ride there. You're never gonna ride there, so get used to the idea.
a thing that gets on my mind is that when they hammer these uphills standing, I'm pretty sure they don't do it like most of us, just for to make it look fast & fancy on a short shot - they really do climb that fast on a regular basis on these, say whatever you want, big bikes. Lee McCormack said that before seatdropper era, Weir did such epic rides with saddle down... bloody animal...
it's also wicked to see Chase there, he reminds me so much of Lars Urlich from Metallica that it gives additional epic value to the whole thing
Great trails, great riding! looks like some really good times.
wait. your comparing chase to lars, dont get the similarities.. im sure chase was just as mad when lars decided to put an end to Napster because Lars was not going to make any more money. Screw Lars !!
i knew someone will put that up... ffs. So what? Napster, Piratebay or any other e-sink for shit and sperm were clean like a Pope's panties, and no one (like Lars)who's hard work was put in there, has nothing to feel cheated about? and to fight for his rights? - get a life FFS...
Sorry really... I do like Metallica, sorry. I did not know it is so lame that I can insult Chase... I meant visually fkn visually reminding, I don't give a damn, whether Chase like to post lawsuits fk...
I agree this time with WAKI, chase does look like lars, physically ahahhaha. And about the climbs, yeah, we all get up and pedal when a camera is in sight. Then when no one is looking we sit back down on the long haul position of efficiently climbing that gets us slowly but surely to the top.
Last time I saw Weir on Pinkbike his garage/house had burnt down. Did he rebuild, re-buy... anyone know?
I must say those open space trails in NorCal can be lots of fun - but geez, you tickle off a lot of elevation real fast. I had to pedal to earn my descents. I'm glad they showed some cows - you'd spend the entire descent avoiding cow pats.
if you found that RAINBOW bumper sticker magnet thing on the ground then it is from my roomies truck, we lost it a year or 2 ago. used to stick it somewhere inconspicuous on each others trucks as a joke. . . . . .
having ridden with weir and cruz before, this video pretty much sums up how they live and ride. balls out all the time. they really do climb like that, oh yeah and drink like that too.
The Jekylls are freak'n badass. But they are hard to find. The Carbon 2 Jekylls are sold out across three states at least until the end of July. Oh, well.
