One of the rules of mountain biking should be: 'never attempt a descent on a path that has a safety rope to stop hikers from falling off.'
But rules are made to be broken. Especially when it comes to mountain bikers finding new challenges. That’ll probably be why there isn’t actually a rule book for mountain biking. It’d be the most pointless piece of literature since The Surfer’s Guide to Death Valley.
Certainly, when snowboarder, MTB guide and all-round adventurer Marco Bassot spotted this trail in the Italian Dolomites – complete with safety rope (which reminds us: Is it time to give your hiking first aid kit a safety check?) – it was like a red rag to a bull. And in the video below, he’s certainly proud of his efforts when he gets to the bottom. At least, we assume all that hollering and whooping means he’s happy.
From his Instagram message, it’s clear Bassot has attempted the descent a number of times previously without success, which may explain why he loses it so exuberantly at the bottom this time. “I told to myself: ‘Never surrender’, and I tried again and finally I succeeded!!! Yuhuuuu… It was such a liberating scream after all that effort.”
Having said that, on this attempt Bassot makes the steep, exposed descent look easy. One of the trickiest things about tackling a mountainside on two wheels ia avoiding all the larger boulders which are impossible to hop over – the actual path of manageable rocks is deceptively narrow.
At least he didn’t run into any indignant hikers trying to clamber their way up while he was coming down
