The GT Mountain of Hell enduro DH race at  Crankworx Les 2 Alpes saw 700 riders fighting their way ice, snow and rocks as they dropped 2.600m in the space of the 20km!

Jerome Clementz took the win in the men’s race, which Anne-Caro Chausson was victorious in the women’s race, making it a French double – check out the video of the action below.

You can read all about MBUK writer Jake Ireland‘s experience of the Mountain Of Hell in a future issue of the magazine, and we’ve got a full feature on Jerome Clementz coming soon too.

Of course, our thoughts are still with Sam Reynolds, who fractured two vertebrae after a particularly nasty crash during the Teva Best Trick contest at the same event. Get fixed quick, Sam!

Part 1 – Gee reflects on the world cup season opener in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and assesses his chances for the rest of the season. He reveals how he’s getting on with his new race bike, the GT Fury, before hitting the dirt jumps his brother Dan built in their back garden.

Part 2 – Rachel talks about her recovery from injury, her hopes for the 2012 season and her favourite new bike the GT Force, and then takes us on a cross-country ride with her dog Angus.

Part 3 – Dan talks about his plans to race gravity enduros as well as some longer events like the Trans Provence and Italian super enduros. As he says, for someone who grew up on a diet of dirt jumps and skate parks, these are likely to be tough to adapt to.

Get the lowdown in the video below and in MBUK 276 – on sale now!

This took Dan five and a half months to build using a digger, spade and a moto trike with flat tyres to roll in the transitions.

They’ll be a feature in MBUK soon, but for now check these shots out and dream of having this in your garden…

Insert own caption. Ours is too explicit.

Some of the lines don't even make sense. Just wait until you see them ridden...

It’s not just the garden that’s cool at the Atherton’s place either- it all is. I would happily live in their workshop and eat my dinner off the work tops.

They double up as mirrors too…

we're a little green looking at this...

Atherton Racing HQ

Is this some kind of Voodoo doll symbolising Dan out digging?

If we stick a pin in, will Dan stop digging?

Prototype Shimano brakes on Gee’s DH bike…

Shh! Top secret!

Felt tip doesn't fool us!

And bars too….

See what they've done there?

First up, the current World Champion bares his Hart & Soul (part one)…

Specialized riders Sam Hill and Troy Brosnan’s pre-season training in Perth…

And ealier this week, GT Factory Racing unveiled their new look. It’s certainly a lot stealthier than the Athertons’ previous blue-and-white look with Commencal…

This year’s UCI World Cup series kicks off in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa this weekend. Red Bull will be streaming all rounds live.

MBUK 275 is in the shops now! But what’s inside it, we hear you cry?

Well, for a start, there’s a six-bike test of long-travel hardtails. Their geometry is ideal for the UK, but which should you buy if you’ve got up to £1,500 to spend? Find out in the test!

If techniques are what you’re after, then you won’t want to miss Ric’s Trail Bike Trials feature – with the help of Chris Smith he looks at how the often-overlooked discipline of trials can do wonders for your overall riding.

Plus Doddy teaches you Real Skills For Real Hills and how to overcome all the natural obstacles you’ll find when riding natural terrain.

Stunning shots from Whitestyle

There’s a host of stunning images from this year’s Whitestyle, with exclusive behind-the-scences stories from course builder Grant ‘Chopper’ Fielder and winner Sam Reynolds.

Mr Reynolds also tells us all about his recent trip to Indonesia with Polygon Bikes, where he rode the slopes of a volcano!

We also go on a Big Ride to Swinley Forest, and the Wrecking Crew visits Wharncliffe Woods – stomping ground of Steve Peat and Will Longden.

1998 GT Lobo vs 2012 GT Fury

We put old against new with two carbon fibre kings of the the past and present – the latest GT Fury goes head to head with a 1998 GT Lobo.

All this, and you get a free chainstay protector and four free pull-out route maps!

MBUK 275 is in the shops now – or why not subscribe and never miss an issue – head to www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk to find out more!

 Back in issue 269, I wrote a piece in Out Front called ‘Pushing the boundaries’ which basically tried to highlight the increased use of carbon fibre when it comes to constructing the worlds fastest DH bikes.

The black shiny stuff is back on the agenda as far as DH frame builders are concerned. Better production methods (well, they do use the odd bit of it in something called ‘F1‘) and an industry push to produce more entry-level/price-tagged machinery has resulted in the top of the line kit becoming even faster and dare I say it, flashier.

If you take a look at the top twenty ranked men in the world according to the official UCI rankings,  as many as 11 of the top 20 riders will be on carbon fibre-framed machinery come the Pietermaritzburg start-gate in six weeks time.

Now, bear with me here, this is making a couple of assumptions… Firstly, that the rumours of Monster Energy Specialized (Troy Brosnan in this case) are testing a carbon fibre framed Demo. Secondly, that you count the extremely hard-worked backends of the Lapierre DH 920‘s of Cameron Cole and Sam Blenkinsop.

However, forgive me those assumptions and consider that Sam Hill isn’t within those rankings (currently 36th) but could be on the same machinery (IF it exists) as Troy and also that there are extensive rumours that ex-team-mate Brendan Fairclough will also soon be running a prototype black and shiny all-new Scott DH bike.

Look outside the top twenty teams and Intense (still a staunch privateers favourite) have long pondered a carbon fibre framed DH bike too but, as with everything else, are striving to produce it as in-house as possible. That said, the arrival of their Carbine SL could be the precursor to something along those very lines.

Also rumoured to be popping wonderment out of steaming hot moulds are Yeti Cycles with their team allegedly set to be lining up on full carbon fibre machinery at Pietermaritzberg. That would fit in well with the fact that the alloy version of their new 303 DH looks set to arrive in February, every Yeti of course gets two years of race R+D before launch.

With weight limits dropping all the time, will we one day see a road race style UCI weight limit that bikes can not dip under? The questions are (reasonably) endless.

But what does all this hypothesis and supposition mean in the more immediate future? A move away from the time-hounoured world of bits of metal welded together with glorified strings and glue leading the way? For the top-whack machines it would appear so but hopefully companies like GT can shine a bit more light on the future for the rest of us. They produce their Fury in a more wallet-friendly alloy version with the top-whack machine coming in full World Cup spec carbon fibre (they’ve yet to confirm that this one will be available in the UK though). Whatever the answer, the future looks fast!

Rooting through a pile of my back issues the other day, I found a few cool things worth mentioning. Maybe this can be a nice little regular spot. There’s a really interesting history on the MTB scene, and we’ve been lucky enough to see it unfold in front of us.

MBUK- Sep 1990

That’s MBUK Tech Director Steve Worland on the cover there- Steve’s been testing bikes since the very beginning and has ridden more bikes than most people have ever seen…

Herbold- H-Ball. Looking Moto with a tiller instead of a stem.

And check that ‘All that Jez’ coverline, referring to stunt rider Jez Avery. Who’s still about now!

Nick Craig- November 1992.

Known then as Nicky Craig.

Riding for Peugeot, and in a DH race- no kneepads, just lycra shots, XC helmet, Goggles and Full Dainese Armour!

The Peugeot DH bike was a renamed Fox bike, with a steel/alloy mixed material frame.

MTB pro- September 1994.

Recognise the cover star on MBUK’s old sister magazine? It’s non other than ex-Trials superstar Martin Hawyes, who now works for Fisher Outdoor, in particular with Norco bikes.

Hawziee is still an awesome rider, and we’ve been riding with him in some really cool places around the world.

And check out the cover line- Bikes do LESS damage that feet. I might resurrect this and get a little militant to the red sockers out there…

MTB Pro Feb 1995.

MBUK’s sister magazine, with Brant Richards on the front cover. Brant used to be a Dep Ed/Tech Ed on MBUK many moons ago, is the creator of On One bikes and is now working under the Shedfire guise on the Ragley brand. Great guy, incredibly enthusiastic and talks rather fast…

John Tomac.

He was always ahead of the times. Check out his custom painted Bell helmet, with Troy Lee peak, as painted by Troy Lee Designs.

The Tomes always looked fresher than fresh, and had the skills to pay the bills. Be it stringing the field out on a punishing climb, or making them look like novices on the downhills.

John Tomac is still an incredible rider, and with close friend Joel Smith (son of the infamous Motocross Racer Malcolm Smith), has an incredible range of bikes on the market.

Tomac- way ahead of his time.

Martyn Ashton and Martin Hawyes may have been two of the coolest MTB Trials riders around- and Martyn Ashton still is, but they weren’t always super cool!

In their early days as young whipper snappers they brought experience from Moto Trials and 20in trials bikes on to bigger 26in wheeled bikes- and kicked off a huge craze. Without them, it may not have happened- and certainly not to the level it has.

Luckily, Martyn Ashton has matured in to a fine looking fellow. Well, someone in our office certainly thinks so…

Martin however, well, the years have been… shall we say kind?

Messers Ashton and Hawziee. A long time ago.

Little Deb Murrell- even smaller than our man Rob Weaver- on her radical little Formula 1 carbon fibre bike, with her British made Quasar leading linkage fork, which looked staggeringly similar to the Girvin Vector fork that Brant is running on the MTB Pro cover…

Pint sized Deb Murrell on her Formula 1

Dave Hemming, if I’m not mistaken, taken at Puddletown Forest in the early ‘90’s. I was stood on the outside of the turn by the ‘Ski Jump’, and we could hear his Tioga Disc Drive rumbling way before we saw him come in to view.

If you look closely the purple sticker on his helmet, you’ll find it’s the cape from Coleman the Cow in the Mint Sauce cartoon, in the strip where he appears as the Fabulous Fantastic Formidable Fuchsia Freishen.

Dave’s also was wearing a cut up Gul wet suit as a pair of kneepads. It could be that Dave forgot his regular choice of Hammer pads, but more than likely, knowing Dave, it’ll be because they vaguely matched his Ringle bottle cage…

Dave 'Pee Wee' Hemming. Named so because of his likeness to Peewee Herman, or for another reason..?

Jason McRoy set the pace for UK riders- he oozed style and grace on a bike where others looked frankly amateur.

Even when not racing, JMC have it everything and was a monster on a bike. You definitely wouldn’t want him to be chasing you down on an XC race…

The late JMC, with what he did for British mountain biking may be gone, but he’s sure as heck not forgotten.

When JMC had fire in his eyes, he was going to catch you. Out the way, severe skill coming through...

Sam Humphreys now rides for Charge bikes when he’s not rescuing cats from trees or living up to the ’80′s housewife fantasy of being a hunky fireman. He’s a sterling guy and another one of those riders you really don’t want to be behind you as he’ll push you until you drop. The GT Xizang was one of the nicest frames ever- essentially a titanium version of the Zaskar, and oh-so-sexy…

Bad to the bone.

Remember Grip Shift?

Some things are certainly best forgotten. And these early units, despite being incredibly sought after, we’re frankly crap. You needed bionic wrists to change more than a couple of gears in one hit due to the huge throw on them, and if they were muddy/wet and/or your gloves were, you could forget changing gear. Rubbish, thank god they’re long gone.

Grip S**t?

Remember Cosmic Trail? I’m sniggering writing this, even though I went out and bought a bunch of this stuff. I think I had the frame bag, saddlebag and fannypack… Oh yeah!

Now Jez Avery is a name that still hovers. He made Team Hot Pies famous, held the bunny hop record for ages, appeared on You Bet on a couple of occasions, rode for MBUK, refused to eat anything on photo-shoots except hot sit down meals and popped a Switzerland Squeaker at every opportunity.

Reckon his forks look bent here?

Insert own caption...

And extract the urine from his clothing choice you might, but he was with the times back then. He’s wearing Axo Pony MTB specific riding boots- which later came in an SPD version with the Axo Mission sole. Remember the Mission? What a shoe…

His riding Jersey is Bean Bag, and I’m assuming his trousers are too. Although they do look like the kind of thing weightlifters wear…

Squeaking his way to the gym, ready for some power lunges...

Many people have been kicking up a fuss about Alpinestars making an appearance on the MTB scene, but they’ve been involved before, but with bikes as well as clothing.

They used to make a great shoes, which was white with fluro paint flicker- although cost a bomb. Most people had the Carati Sport version, which was a cheap copy…

Check out this whip though- the Alpinestars Al Mega, with huge oversized tubing. At the time, this was one super desirable bike!

More, next time. Hope you liked this little nostalgic blog of random stuff found on my desk!

Over and out, Doddy.