The weekend before last, I headed to the famous Wharncliffe woods in Sheffield to ride one of its most technical features: The Skipper. Built by James Pettitt, this line is not only pretty intimidating, but a work of art in itself. This staff story looks at the jump behind more 70K likes on Merlin’s Insagram page.
What were you thinking going into this?
The evening prior to going to Wharncliffe, I had watched Craig Evans do something similar on the feature during his 50:01 Orange video segment. From this, I saw that it was possible to get enough speed to clear the whole thing. However, when looking at the jump in real life the next day, I had many doubts about whether I would actually be able to clear it. From the takeoff of the gap I was planning to do, you couldn’t see the landing. This increased the scare factor massively.
How did you prepare in the run up?
For me, the first thing I had to do was ride the line normally which was scary enough in itself. Once I had ridden it cleanly however, I felt much more comfortable about the gap I was planning on doing. Four more goes of riding the line normally meant I felt the most prepared I could’ve been into the run up to the jump. With the camera filiming, I tried a slightly harder gear and went for the jump, which I landed.
Would you do it again?
This gap is something that I’m pretty intent on not doing again as it was pretty high consequence. Despite this, I would like to go back to ride the line normally as I think it’s a really cool feature. I also think it would be interesting to see whether filming with a GoPro over it would do the line justice.
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