A small vertical face is quite easy to ride up, but as they get taller than your front wheel
you'll need to use trials based techniques like the punch technique to get up them
successfully. This is also useful for undercut logs as the bike literally jumps in the air.
Before attempting vertical faces, we recommend you first try some steep
banks that aren't quite vertical. We've done a training vid on these.
Next learn the basics of the small practical wheelie, and the log punch techique.
The punch technique involves a small wheelie that punches the log at around the 2/3 mark.
This converts your forward movement into an upward movement. And you keep the power
on until you drive off the log. Here Chris Birch uses the same technique on a log stump.
You can use the same technique to climb vertical faces. First,
we strongly encourage you to have plenty of spotters to make it safe for the rider to make
mistakes. Make sure you see our training vid about spotting so that the spotters and riders are safe.
Ride in slowly, speed will just mess things up. The height of the obstacle should be the same
distance you start your wheelie. Keep your body in the default body
position to weight the rear wheel. Remember to weight the bike or you
won't get enough bounce upward. See the compressed suspension?
Punching the vertical face has now stored extra energy in the suspension that will
lift you up the face as it rebounds. Keep the throttle on hard until you've
got some drive up the vertical face, then you can immediately chop the throttle.
Extend your legs to maximise grip on the vertical face for that last bit of push.
As the bike bounces up and over, it's important to deweight as much as possible by bending your
legs and deweighting. With luck this will let the bike rise up and over the vertical face.
You can do a controlled drop of the clutch for extra drive but
I'm not using the clutch here as it's forcing me to get the technique right.
If you start with smaller vertical faces and work your way up, it's surprising how
easy it can be to do faces that are taller than your front wheel. I was pretty excited
about making it up. So was one of the local guys. Potential problems? You can see I barely punch the
face here at all, so I get less lift. Even more common is not punching
the vertical face at all. If you wheelie too late you'll punch
too low and you'll lose that upward movement. It's tempting to cut the throttle early because
if feels as though the bike will backflip, but the moment the rear wheel hits the face it will
slam the front wheel down no matter what. Stay committed to that throttle until the
rear wheel has some drive on that vertical face. This technique will be invaluable if you get into
any serious endurocross or hard technical riding. A huge thanks to our northern BC volunteers for
not only spotting but having a go at this face too. Hearts of gold, balls of steel!