(upbeat electronic music)
(soft relaxing music)
- 'Sup everyone?
I'm back in beautiful Squamish, British Columbia,
on my way up to Pseduo-Tsuga.
Gonna meet up with Christina and we're gonna
hopefully hit some cornering skills today.
I'm looking forward to trying getting some flow going on
and improving my exit speeds in corners
and working on a little bit of like line choice,
like hitting berms perhaps higher
and seeing what she's got to say with that.
So, stoked to see how it's all gonna go,
have me shreddin' by the end of the day.
Let's see how it goes.
So my name is Christina Chappetta.
I'm from the US but I've lived in Whistler, BC,
for just over seven years now.
Moved out this way to ride
the Whistler Bike Park specifically,
the biggest, best bike park in the world
and some of the best riders.
And that's really helped me kind of develop
my personal style and my independence
in this mountain bike world.
Started out, I really enjoyed kind of the downhill stuff,
just riding bike park every day,
and then eventually I learned,
oh, there's trails outside of the bike park.
Maybe I should check those out.
And then that's kind of when
I was introduced to enduro racing.
- Hey, Christina! - Hi, Zoe!
How are you? - Good!
- Good. - Nice to meet you.
- Yeah, you too, girl.
So I've heard you've been doing
a lot more enduroing these days.
- Trying to get into it, yeah.
- Nice, well, one of my favorite skills
that I think can make a huge improvement
on anybody's enduro life is just working on some corners.
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
- Yeah, Pseduo-Tsuga, sweet trail for just working
all sorts of different corners, body position.
- Yeah, perfect, that's what I need.
- Want to go check that one out?
- Let's go ride it.
- All right.
(upbeat electronic music)
- Oh, that's a fun little left-hander we have here.
Yeah, it's a pretty flat, sharp,
does like a full 180 degrees,
and you've got a lot of loose, rumbly kitty litter there.
Naturally speaking, what I would probably do
if I just had never seen this trail before,
first time I'd probably bring it out wide first
to make the corner a bit wider so you're not jackknifing.
And then as you're kind of turning in,
then you've got, you can see it open up more.
And if you can kind of break
before you're coming into the corner
so that you're not breaking in the danger zone,
then you can actually use this little berm to pump
and get your speed back.
Looking where you're going and then leaning the bike,
that's kind of my one, two, three, keep it simple.
Low, look, lean.
When in doubt, chin over stem.
Coming in, don't want to go too fast.
Low, look.
So yeah, it was awesome.
You were low on the bike.
You were looking at the corner,
and then as you're in the corner,
you're looking beyond the corner.
The steeper and the more technical the corner,
maybe the more you could lean.
That might be the only thing I noticed
on this corner in particular.
So leaning the bike for me is kind of
creating bike body separation.
So if you're coming in super hot,
and you and the bike are leaning into this left-hander,
there's a good chance that you're just gonna slide out
because you don't have that kind of counterbalance.
And just kind of still keeping your center of gravity,
your center of mass nice and kind of upright
so that you're not falling one way or the other,
but at the same time you're letting the bike
do what it wants to do.
So you've got a lot of room to kind of play
with going left, right.
- So you're staying upright
and you're getting that bike into that corner
and pressing the tires
kind of against. - Totally.
Yeah, and keeping that traction.
Traction is your friend,
especially when it's this loose out.
Nice!
- That feels smooth, like as soon as I was in there,
then it just carried around 'cause the line is set up.
So yeah, that felt way better.
- Yeah and your traction was good.
There was never like a skid or anything,
and it was pretty much ideal.
(upbeat electronic music)
Woo! - Really!
- That's fun. - All right!
- I like turns!
Sweet, how did that feel, Zoe?
- Yeah, it was good.
I felt I might have over leant a little bit
in some of the corners there,
sort of felt a little eh, had to catch it a little bit.
So probably just finding the end of that lean period.
- Absolutely, that breaking point,
the fine line of too much lean.
- Yep.
- Think about yourself being
in a push-up position on the bike.
'Cause when you're, you know,
you're thinking about a lot of things,
the trail's coming at you super quickly,
it's easy to kind of
pull back a bit-- - Pull back a bit, right.
- And then you're doing the lean out in front of you
as opposed to having like a nice, strong push-up position.
- So the handlebars are
underneath your elbows. - Totally.
- Oh, that makes more sense.
- You're just kind of going side to side.
So you have a little more control,
and when you have more traction and grip on your front tire,
you're a lot less likely--
- To wash it out. - To wash it out.
So yeah, now that we've come through the berm here,
we're on our bike, we're actively pushing down.
We want to gain some speed here with just natural gravity.
And then, I mean, the fun line,
that's what's so great about these trails
is they're so wide, and we have so many options.
So you've got your fun line.
Get out there, style it, lean the bike in.
- But it's not-- - A little--
- Necessarily faster? - Body separation.
- Okay, gotcha. - Exactly.
Not necessarily the fastest line.
As opposed to going straight and having like
a jackknife 90-degree turn there,
I would kind of follow inside and then outside.
- Oh, okay, so here you're starting
to like utilize that berm, versus?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Precisely. - You're right.
'Cause then that would be awkward.
(soft electronic music)
- [Christina] Yeah, pump it.
- Woo! - Nice!
- Woo! - Fun!
All right!
- Yeah, I probably still maybe cut this one
in a little more than I should have,
but it wasn't to a point where I had to really cut my speed.
Like, it still caught me, but as we were discussing,
like setting that one up for that following berm, it worked.
But I think I probably need to come up a little bit,
but this felt really good.
- This looked super good.
- Way better.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- You know, you were up there
and you were already looking at this,
knowing that I'm not looking up at the berm,
that's a waste of time for us right now.
We're focusing on this, carrying good speed,
and then yeah just pumping the rollers.
- Using that for speed--
- Absolutely. - Instead of going
up and down the berm.
- Totally. - That makes a lot of sense.
And way smoother, way faster,
a lot less complicated in the end.
- Yeah, and you didn't look like you skidded
or lost any control at any time.
(upbeat electronic music)
Ye-hoo!
Using that berm!
(laughing)
- Yeah, so Zoe?
- Yo!
- I think, as I was following you through here,
I kind of noticed you took the lower line.
- Yep.
- Which ironically is similar to another corner
that we did earlier, a low line.
And then just as a different line choice,
I went a bit higher.
- Oh, okay.
- I personally liked that one for this particular corner
'cause coming in wide then you can really set up straight
and miss that little hole there.
- Yeah, this was awkward for me.
Like I said, it was fine to here,
and then I was like, whoa, and then I wasn't set up.
- Totally, I think that's your
little skid mark there from earlier.
Coming in super hot, super fast, you streaked.
But you've created this 90-degree corner,
so if we can kind of pop up on the berm,
a bit more up onto the wall,
then you can really use the pump on the downslope,
create a ton of speed,
and then you can shoot out of that right-hander.
It's a really nice right-hander.
It's not too sharp.
(soft upbeat music)
Oh, yeah!
- So we just finished shredding
some bermy corners on Pseudo-Tsuga.
Now, we're gonna head up and look
at some janky, loose, fun kind of corners.
So let's see what skills we can get nailing those.
Woo woop!
(upbeat music)
- Yeah, I mean, we'd ride this differently
than we'd ride like a berm corner versus a flat one.
Way more line choice here, too,
to keep your speed, or to be safer,
or to be more efficient.
Naturally, your eyes are kind of--
- This right here. - Taking you right straight,
But that couldn't set you up any worse for that corner.
It's just a whole jackknife
with a little baby stump in the middle.
So this is probably the corner.
I mean, forgetting all that, when you get here,
definitely I would try to set up a bit wider.
And then it kind of goes against
some of the things that we've been saying,
like straight, direct lines and fast lines.
But in reality-- - It's you setting up.
- Setting you up right outside on the left--
- Oh yeah. - What do you have?
- That continues the corner much nicer than this looks like.
It's like, err.
- Totally, 'cause that's a pretty
tight, spicy corner there, too.
So if you're jackknifed in here,
and you're jackknifed in there--
- Yeah, you're ditching a lot of speed.
- Yeah, your whole mojo is kind of gone off.
Sometimes braking can be seen as like a negative term,
and, oh, you're braking, you're going so slow.
But if you're just controlling
your speed at little sections,
then it also gives you a moment to just take a deep breath,
and then you're into the next section of trail.
So the faster you're going, the further back--
- You start preparing. - You actually need to start
your braking or your speed controlling,
'cause it's gonna take
that much longer to get your reaction.
So yeah, from this zone,
seeing as I want to get around that turn,
not get sucked into the straight line,
I'd probably do my braking kind of back here
on a nice surface material.
(soft upbeat music)
Oh, yeah, yeah. - Oh yeah!
(laughing)
- That was good! - Woo!
- I kind of saw your your eyes
kind of halfway through this little section
drop for a second, but then you brought them
back up just in time to do your break check
and make it around there.
And that looked super smooth.
- That was sweet.
That was way better.
- Even though you're going way out and around,
and you can see there's barely any tire tracks over there.
- Yeah, I didn't feel
that I lost my traction. - Most people don't go there.
- No, it looked smooth.
You looked strong in the corner.
- That was good, like putting that all into play,
body positioning, where I'm looking,
that little bit of a lean.
Getting that lean and being more over the front wheel,
I feel it's so much smoother and got so much more control.
- [Christina] Totally, just a little room to play.
It's like your arms are your suspension.
- [Zoe] Yeah.
- Yeah, girl! - Nice!
(whooping)
- Nice! - Ye-woo!
- That was nice. - Oh yeah!
Ah, how was that?
- That was awesome!
Thank you so much! - It's all good.
- A lot of heats in that session.
- Yeah, some good takeaways.
- Yeah, body position, getting more over the bars,
line traces, like lines I wouldn't have
thought to have taken,
and then how we went from doing a longer one
to set you up for the next corner
versus taking in a short line
that also set you up, depending on the situation.
So it's cool to like ride
different styles in different lines.
- Absolutely, and just realizing every corner is different.
You've got your flat corners, your fast ones,
your berm ones, your techy ones.
- Totally.
- We love corners, and they're all good corners.
- They're all good.
- Fun, as well.
- Yeah and then breaking timing-wise and where to look,
I think they're all huge key factors
that hopefully now will make it more sendy.
- Sweet, I'm glad you had some good takeaways.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Yeah, it's gonna make a difference.
- All right, shall we do some more?
- Yeah, I think so. - Okay.
- Send it? - Send it.
- After you.
- [Zoe] Yeah!
(upbeat electronic music)
- [Woman] We have a classic example of line choice.
This is a feature of the mountain that's pretty well-known.
- [Zoe] It goes and it's super smooth,
so I was stoked to get that one down.
(birds chirping)
(whooping)
We're coming!
We're coming for you!