Here are some more MTB crash pictures from Brian Head, Utah.

Brian Head Utah MTB Downhill Crash #3: John Clark, #475

Next up, we have some photos of John Clark, #475, who raced the men’s expert senior 19-24 class. First we see John approaching the drop. He’s looking it over. He thinks he can make it…

So far so good. He’s in the air. He’s going to land it.

He clears the dreaded hay bales. Whew, smooth sailing so far…

Uh-oh. Houston, we have a problem.

ACK!! He’s down!

Whose bright idea was it to put that post right there, anyway? I am sure it doesn’t make for the most comfortable landing.

I’m happy to report that John picked himself up and seemed to be OK after that. Way to go, dude! Hope that didn’t hurt too bad. I give you major props for attempting that course, which is pretty insane.

Brian Head Utah MTB Downhill Crash #4:

I have no idea who this guy is, but I sure would love to know. If this is you or one of your friends, please comment and identify the rider so that we can give him the props he deserves for this spectacular crash. Thanks!

He’s approaching the drop.

Did I mention, you’d have to be a complete maniac to even attempt this trail?

Not kidding. My photos do not do it justice. It’s impossible to get a sense of just how big and insane this part is unless you actually stood at the top, looking down.

OK, so he launched off of it… Not bad, so far. Looking good…Will he land this?

Looks like he’s clearing that sketchy spot here. YES! Rock on!

Wait a minute…wait a minute…UH-Oh. Here’s something you don’t see every day ~ an expert mountain biker face-planting right into a bale of hay. MMMMMmmmmm. Yummy hay!

Let’s take a closer look at that.
Oh my.
Yep, looks painful.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Whooohoooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! Very glad to see him get back up after that.

Great crash, dude. Hope you are not too banged up / bruised up / and / or scraped up after that!
You can click here to see more MTB crash photos from the downhill mountain bike trails at Brian Head, Utah, August 2008.
I have a few more Brian head mountain bike photos posted here, too. I recommend that you check back soon to see even more! We took nearly 1,000 pictures at the races- mostly from the Dual Slalom and Downhill races, but a few from the XC cross country races too. I’ll be posting some high-res photos for you guys to download for free. It takes quite awhile to process them, so please be patient…but definitely check back!
Thanks so much for dropping by.
Posted by: Amy S.

I spent a few hours just hanging out taking photos during the practice runs the guys were taking down the pro course from the NMBS (National Mountain Bike Series) race at Brian Head, Utah. This was an interesting course, because apparently there were 2 choices for the line you could take down. There was a “hard” line which took the riders down over a bunch of rocks plus an insane drop. My photos really don’t do this spot justice at all~ they fail to convey just how big the drop was. My opinion: You’d have to be a NUT CASE to ride a bike down that! And then there was the “easy” way down, which was not easy, either, by any stretch of the imagination. I overheard more than one person saying that the “Hard” way was actually easier than the “Easy” way, all things considered. On the other hand, all the crashes I witnessed ~ and there were quite a few of them! Took place on the “harder” spot. So, I thought I’d share some crash photos with you guys. I’ll be uploading some high-res photos for you guys to download (for free), hopefully within the next few days. So please check back soon!

Brian Head Utah MTB Downhill Crash #1:

This guy is off to a good start.

So far, no indication that this is going to go way, way wrong…

He lands it! Excellent, so far, but wait, there’s more…
Note: Notice the location and position of the hay bales, important details which will be even more significant in later posts showing other crashes.

Uh-oh. We’re starting to suspect that perhaps something is wrong here. His rear tire is off the ground, which is not really a good sign at this point.

Not good, yikes. At this point maybe he’s thinking, let’s see if we can save this somehow. The foot goes down. Can disaster be averted?…

Maybe!! Maybe!! Maybe he can pull it off.

NOPE! He’s down.
OUCH.
Sorry, dude.

Good recovery though! Gotta give you props. Glad you weren’t hurt.
Well. Maybe you were hurt. If you were, hope you’re healing OK…

Glad to see you got right back up after that spill, anyway. BRAVO!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I have no idea who this guy is. If this is you or one of your friends, please comment and identify the rider here. Thanks! We’ll be happy to send you hi-res photos of the crash if you want them. Just let us know!

Brian Head Utah MTB Downhill Crash #2: Brad Jensen #598

Here we have some photos of Brad Jensen, who raced the men’s expert-master 45-49 class and was sponsored by Oneal / Azonic.

Brad started off strong…looking good so far, dude…

Until right about here, when all of a sudden I’m thinking that something looks amiss.

WHOOPS!
AAAAAACKKKKK. Who put that hay bale there?

OUCH!!!

Double ouch. Nothing like getting whacked by your own bike.
Right about now, I have to ask, where’s the rest of your padding, Brad? Are you nuts? Dude, if you’re going to ride down insane terrain like this, get some elbow pads. Seriously. A longer pair of protective Shin guards wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

We’re SO RELIEVED to see you got right back up! Major props, that looked like quite a spill. Hope you didn’t suffer any lasting injuries after that one.

Up until now I haven’t been posting mountain bike crash photos. Why not, you might ask? Well…I thought it would be kinda mean. (Note: I am a girl.) If you post crash photos of me, for example, I would probably get all embarrassed and feel completely stupid. I crashed a bunch of times on this trip and am seriously hoping no one took photos of it from the chair lift! haha. So anyway, Mike and Chris keep bugging me to take crash pics. They insist, “people like seeing crash photos“. Well, to my way of thinking, not everyone likes seeing their crash photos posted on the internet, at least not when they are actually the ones who ate it.

So, here’s the deal. I will be posting crash photos because the word on the street is that people do want to see them. But if for some reason you have any objections to crash photos I’ve posted of you, PLEASE let us know and we will be glad to remove them.

I am wondering at this point, is there anyone who raced the downhill pro course at Brian Head who didn’t crash? I saw plenty of injuries, scrapes, bruises, and ripped jerseys. (If you need to buy a new jersey because yours got too thrashed, make sure to check our cycling gear comparison search engine to buy the best gear at the best prices.) Anyway, good thing they had a medic hanging around…is it just me, or were there a lot of DNF’s at this race?

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you are enjoying your week, and that you’re getting plenty of riding time in… Be sure to check back soon for even more crash photos, plus a lot of pics of guys that actually made it without crashing. Brian Head, Utah, Aug 2008…FUN times and happy memories.

Posted by: Amy S.

Update:

Click Here To See Some MTB Crash Photos from the Pro Course at the Brian Head Utah NMBS Downhill Mountain Bike Race.

You can click here to see even more crash photos.

I have even more crash photos (as well as more photos of people who made it!) to post soon.
Three of us plus 4 bikes made a road trip from Santa Barbara, California up to Brian Head, Utah for the NMBS mountain bike races. Chris W. was planning on racing the downhill course and Mike wasn’t planning on racing, or maybe just racing the Super D. But in the end that’s not exactly how things worked out. Mike doesn’t have a downhill bike, so he wasn’t sure if he would be able to race the downhill course. Then when he actually saw the downhill courses, he thought the sport class downhill trail looked easily do-able on his bike, so he decided to go for it. And he definitely wanted to race the Super D too after seeing how much fun that trail was. In the end, the Super D got rained out and rescheduled to a time that conflicted with his downhill race, so he just ended up racing the downhill. And got a flat. Bummer! His time was not bad at all considering the flat. And he did walk away with a medal too.

Chris, on the other hand, hadn’t been planning on racing the Super D until Mike told him how much fun the Super D trail was. He had just been planning on racing the downhill. So he did race the Super D, but never made it to the downhill. Here’s what happened to Chris just hours before his downhill race:

Funny because I’d been taking plenty of crash photos of everyone else eating dirt, and Chris had been laughing his head off. I told him, “dude, make sure you don’t do anything stupid unless I have the camera there to take photos of it.” Did he listen to me? NO. So I don’t even have any photos of his crash, although I do have plenty of pics of him where he made it down the mountain just fine. He made it look easy actually. For those of you who weren’t there, I just have to say that none of my pictures really do justice to just how crazy that course is. The first thing I said when I saw it was “You’d have to be a nut to ride a bike down that!”



That’s my friend Chris for you…he was nuts enough to ride a bike down that, and he has the cast to prove it.
We took almost 1,000 photos at the races last weekend. All of them are HUGE pics- measuring about 10″ x 15″ @ 300 DPI. We’ll have the best of them available for FREE download for you guys. With the exception of the Dual Slalom race photos, most of the photos were taken during the practice runs. We have a lot of downhill MTB practice-run photos and a lot of Dual Slalom race photos. We have a FEW XC cross country photos, not many at all, but there are some.

So if you want to see what we captured, please check back! As always, it will take me some time to get the photos all uploaded. Since they are gigantic files, they take a lot of time to edit and upload. If you want to see all the photos, it would be a good idea for you to add this blog to your feed reader or bookmark it and check back. I’ll be posting updates when more photos are available.

On a different note. If you’ve had trouble using the bikeoptions.com bike comparison search engine, please accept our sincerest apologies. Between the California wild fires and some personal drama we won’t go into, we got really behind schedule with updating the gear and deals shown in the comparison search engine. Sorry about that! Also it was having some kind of weird issue with the datafeeds from ebay. Mike tells me that he fixed it and hopefully it shouldn’t be an issue any more. And he’s busy updating the cycling products on the site too.

So, if you completely thrashed your bike at the races and you need some new bike parts and / or gear, we invite you to check out the comparison search engine to find the best deals on bike gear. You can use our site to search a whole bunch of different bike stores including Jenson USA,
Price Point, , Randall Scott Cycles, and quite a few other sites that have bike gear, like backcountry.com (did you know they have a new cycling section?) and ebay. In the very near future we’ll hopefully be adding products from Eastern Mountain Sports and a few other sites also.
Thanks so much for visiting!
Posted by: Amy S.