Chatel Mountain Style

As I'm sure a lot of you will be aware; the results, videos and pics are already up of the Mountain Style contest held at the weekend. It was a busy day in and around the Chatel bike park, with around 1200 people passing through the Lindarets Express lift. I went in the morning to watch so only caught a few of the early runs. Sam Pilgrim was first man down and stayed ahead for quite a while. Gareth popped over in the afternoon to have a gander, and got stuck in a lift queue for hours on the way back! Cam Zink won in the end, with a good mix of tricks and some really smooth riding. Check the videos online to see some crazy back flipping of the massive step-down and double jump at the end - Cam Zink's winning run 

Here are some of my shots, hopefully they give you an idea of how steep and gnarly the course is:

The Mountain Style event is part of the Freeride Mountain Bike Associations World Tour

The top of the course - you can see some huge drops and jumps

The finish area at the bottom, I got a lot busier later on

The take off for this jump can just be seen on the left hand side

These Swiss/Germans (couldn't quite tell) had a camera mounted to a mini helicopter

It meant they could get some interesting angles

Some people were taking another look at some of the drops

There are plenty of flowers around at this time of year

There was a big screen at the bottom for the masses

The judges also had a screen to watch the action

This road-gap/step-down was absolutely huge, still people were throwing down

They got a helicopter camera guy in for some of the riders

Another shot to show the sheer scale of the big jump at the start

So that was that. It's definitely an event to watch if you get the opportunity. Maybe even just try and ride down the track to see how steep it actually is!  

I'll update again soon to let you know how the tracks are running. At the moment they are really dusty but there is a bit of rain due over the next few days.