Napa Valley Dirt Classic

Can anyone describe the course? Mud, dirt, sand? Tire suggestions? How much climbing? Easy,
technical?

TIA -WG

 

warren at [email protected] wrote on 3/20/03 4:16 PM:

> Can anyone describe the course? Mud, dirt, sand? Tire suggestions? How much climbing? Easy,
> technical?

Great.

Rolling fireroad start with mild climbing.

Three x Elevator Drop whoop-de-doos (fireroad)

Lots of nice singletrack (climbs and descents)

Long winding descent on singletrack and then on increasingly sketchy old jeep roads.

Then a pretty good climb to get back up out of the valley to the airport. Couple of places where the
mortals are walking.

Then drop down with a trick or two before the finish.

It's not super-technical anywhere, but you can really mess yourself up on some of the sudden drops.

Mud status will depend upon rains. The course is not muddy/mucky in my memory, although you get
pretty splattered by the time you finish - there are some mud puddles and watery bits, but it ain't
a cross race...

For the first time last year, I tried fairly short multi-knobs to get a little more speed on the
fireroads. Felt they were too sketchy for the sketchy jeep road bits. This year I plan to go back to
proven knobbier tires.

It's definitely more technical than the Sea Otter Classic, but not quite as singletracky as the
Boggs Mtn Bash.

Hope that helps -

here's a couple pictures:

http://home.earthlink.net/~cyclofiend/races/nvdc_02.html

-- Jim