Progress on the wheelie drops (AKA ‘slow drop to flat’): surprisingly hard, fun

bridge rock at Lebanon HillsI started practicing doing a wheelie drop this summer when I thought it would be the best way to manage a fall off a high skinny. (It might be, but in the meantime, I’m relying on dismounting.)

My other motivation: to be able to ride off tall obstacles that were too steep/high to roll off. I’d like to be able to wheelie drop off the big round bridge rock at Lebanon Hills, for example.

In the Drop Like a Feather chapter of Lee McCormack’s book Mastering Mountain Bike Skills, he has a one-pager titled Slow drop to flat, which is the same thing as a wheelie drop. He writes:

Mastering Mountain Bike SkillsDropping off a rock, ladder, or loading dock at low speed is actually a lot harder than soaring off an outcropping at Mach 5.

This move is both old-school trials and new-school North Shore. It requires you to lift your front wheel and keep it there, and then absorb a blunt landing. Practice on a low curb from a standstill.

Mastering Mountain Bike Skills: slow drop to flatAs you get the hang of controlling your bike’s altitude, step it up a little at a time. You want to avoid the thing where your front wheel falls to the ground and your rear wheel or chain ring tags the edge of the drop, sending you over the bars for certain. Use this approach anytime you don’t have enough speed to quickly clear the takeoff. The slower you go, the more you have to pop your front tire up and accelerate to keep it up. If you can pedal wheelie consistently, you are ready to try small low-speed drops.

Lee’s right: it’s surprisingly hard to do a well-balanced pedal wheelie from a dead stop or going very slow. Also, accelerating all the way off an edge is counter to one’s instincts to stop pedaling as soon as the front wheel is in the air and over the edge.

As you’ll see in my video below, if I have time to get set up for a wheelie drop, I can usually do it. But I can’t yet do it reliably from a dead stop when I’m struggling to keep my balance on a skinny or round rock. So I’m not quite ready for Leb’s bridge rock.

Wheelie drop off the stockade skinny at Lebanon Hills skills parkWhat’s cool is that I found a wheelie drop to be a surprisingly fun maneuver.  I’d somehow had it in my head that it would be just the feeling of accomplishment of being able to conquer an obstacle.

But landing rear wheel first means you can absorb most of the impact with your legs, making for a softer impact. So it’s a pleasurable sensation when done right. Someday when I get a little older, I hope to be able to pause mid-wheelie, jump further off the edge and then land very softly like the trials guy in this 24-second video.

Here’s my 50-second wheelie drop video, with a slomo segment at the end:

httpv://vimeo.com/80043200

5 Comments

  1. Chance said:

    Great job! That is hard to learn on big bike like that! keep up the hard work! I can see it paying off with progress!

    November 22, 2013
  2. Maybe there is hope for me. Ha!

    I have to consciously practice that.

    November 23, 2013
  3. Philip said:

    I like that last one a lot. Living in Vancouver around 2000 that’s what we worked on all the time. I’d also suggest the quarter pedal wheelie drop as well. You don’t need more speed for it you just need to give it a little more umph. I can demonstrate one if your interested.

    December 20, 2013
  4. Griff Wigley said:

    Phil, I love to see a video of you doing a quarter pedal wheelie drop. I seem to remember Ryan Leech demonstrating it in a couple of his videos but it always helps to have another view, especially if it’s not on a trials bike.

    December 20, 2013
  5. Philip said:

    No problem, I’ll show you next time I get the camera out.

    December 24, 2013

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