Full Tilt in Telluride - Women's DH
words and photos by Beth Roberts
After a few year hiatus, mountain bike racing was back at the unique venue of Telluride’s Mountain village. Telluride is unique because they have managed to keep the gondola that connects the quaint town of Telluride, CO to the resort on the hill. On Friday morning, they were still putting the finishing touches on a very very fresh course. The course followed the "world cup" track mostly, fast berms and huge road gaps included. Mid-way down is a drop located above a yurt on the slope, referred to as the Yurt drop. After this, the course was completely new, coming off the yurt drop at full speed, you were sent floating over chunky grass mounds before diving in to the gnarliest part of the course. A steep rock line to wet root climb then on to a shoot straight down through the trees, where if you had much of any brake on you were going down hard and fast. This dropped you in to a hard right-hand turn over some boulders and then on to the off camber rock slab that sent you over another completely fresh grass mound section. 
