This ‘diversion’ about what constitutes ‘mountain’ unicycling arose because of a flippant comment by Greg, and of course no one is saying that riding ‘mountains’ is inherently more praiseworthy or impressive than any other difficult terrain. I imagine someone trying to ride the sand dunes at Wells next the Sea would find the riding at least as challenging as riding down the Llanberis Path from Snowdon.
I’m impressed to see that some of you really do ride mountains, and it is clear that there are riders out there who have reached levels (ho ho) that most of us could never hope to achieve. I suppose for most of us, it’s partly availability or opportunity. I live on a flood plain and can find miles of flattish but rough and muddy tacks within 1/2 hour of home… or I can drive for 4 hours each way to the ‘real’ mountains, when I know that my stamina levels are good for only an hour or two of hard riding on rough terrain.
> Not wanting to be rude or anything but 11% isn’t really that steep. I’ve
> seen Paul Selwood (climber extroadinaire) climb a 28% max (as checked on
> a map) hill using 150 cranks.
Where was this Joe? Leith Hill? Thanks for the compliment but
I’m not much of a climber really - Nathan and Roger leave me
gasping in the dust on anything long …
>From a fractal point of view, a mountain is exactly the same as a small
>rock, or something like that.
Phil is sooo right. As a Dutchman I like that statement. So YES WE DO
HAVE MOUNTAINS TOO!! I grew up in a hilly part of the Netherlands
where a high point of 44.3 m was called Paalberg (Pole Mountain). My
father was born in a flat region, and there was an area called
Hogeland (High Land) which was barely 1 meter above average sea level.
>When I was riding in Nepal people were telling me that anything under
>4000m isn’t really a mountain. Hence places like Poon Hill (3150m) on
>the Annapurna circuit is really just a hill
So indeed everything is relative…
Klaas Bil
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
I live on the west coast of BC. Our whole province is litterally a cliff ripped
out from the ocean, it’s deffinately “rough-terrain.” We need long cranks.
