PORT ANGELES — A congregation of dirt-eating die-hards hit Port Angeles’ Dry Hill to finish off the fourth leg of the six-race Fluidride Cup downhill mountain bike racing circuit on Sunday.
Not even a steady downpour could rain on their parade.
Rather, a little sloppiness turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for Port Angeles’ final event of the season.
“It was more fun,” event organizer Scott Tucker said after the races came to a close. “We’re lucky it rained. It leveled the playing field a little bit more.
“At the top [of the hill], everybody was saying, ‘I just want to get down without crashing.'”
A good number of 214 participating mountain bikers — several of which came from outside the North Olympic Peninsula — were able to survive the sloppy conditions.
Of course, there were more than a few crashes as well. That’s just the way things work with gravity-assisted mountain biking.
“It actually wasn’t as bad coming down in the nasty mud and rain as I thought it was going to be,” Pierce County resident Stephen Dzierzanowski said.
Like most of the riders on hand, Dzierzanowski’s face was speckled with mud, the price one must pay for riding down a soggy Dry Hill.
“I went right through some of those mud puddles,” the 21-year-old beginner class rider said.
There were puddles aplenty on the freshly cut King Diamond portion of the pro course.
Members of the Olympic Dirt Society, which maintains Dry Hill’s extensive network of trails, put in approximately 120 hours of work over a three-day period to create the technically challenging portion.
Much like the stretch the group put in before its last event in May, playfully named “Justice,” the new addition was a hit with riders.
Pro class competition winner Bart McDaniel of Seattle, said King Diamond makes the course a “legit” downhill venue.
“This course is super,” the 44-year-old mechanic said. “It’s definitely the best in the Pacific Northwest. Now with King Diamond, it added some real technically tough stuff, so it’s just unreal.”
Adding new trails has become a calling card of sorts for the Olympic Dirt Society, as has its attention to detail.
Just like the events the group hosted this spring, riders were treated to rides up the hill 20 at a time via large moving trucks.
The riders then went down one of two courses, depending upon their skill level, with a group of volunteers waiting at the bottom to record times.
“People can’t believe that every time they come here there’s a new trail,” Tucker said.
One third of the trails for this weekend’s races at Dry Hill, which included a dual slalom competition on Saturday, were new.
And Tucker said riders should expect more of the same in the future, vowing to return racing to Dry Hill next season.
“The demand is there,” Tucker said. “We could put on even more races and people would come.”
Dry Hill is cut through roughly 100 acres of land owned by Green Crow Properties and the state Department of Natural Resources.
Mount Hood is the site of the three other races in the Fluidride Cup series, which concludes this fall.
Port Angeles’ Lars Sternberg, also a member of the Dirt Society, currently sits atop the Cup’s pro standings. He finished second to McDaniel on Sunday.
New Zealand’s Cameron Keene was third.
For more information about the Olympic Dirt Society and downhill racing at Dry Hill, visit olympicdirtsociety.blogspot.com.
