How I Survived Dirt Camp

I met my first serious mountain bike eight years ago in the Tetons. With just a few spins to a Chicago convenience store as my base of experience, I insisted on launching myself and a few friends into the back country. No trails. No guides. No, uh, reason. I got us lost in the Wyoming wilderness, infuriated my wife and friends, and found no grace in a sport where the bike is master and you're just along for a painfully bumpy ride.

I dropped the sport.

A few years later, I took it up again. First as a break from a regular running regimen, then as a replacement for it. In many ways, my evolving relationship with mountain biking -- from novelty to fitness staple -- mirrors the sport's maturing character. In 25 years, it has gone from a northern Californian yahoo pastime to the mainstream, with an estimated 3 million regular riders and a slot in Atlanta as the youngest sport in Olympic history to earn full-medal recognition. Last summer, Volkswagen even offered the first ever cross-promotional package -- a $14,500 Jetta Trek equipped with a 24-speed Trek mountain bike on the roof.

What's driving the sport's mass appeal? Is it the sexy, leading-edge technology incorporated into superbikes that routinely cost $1,500 or more? The nonimpact fitness benefits of cycling? Or the stress-busting relief of cruising through the woods with all the élan of a ten-year-old? The consensus: all of the above.

You don't need a week's worth of tutorials to get going. But at some point, staleness sets in. Advanced skills seem frustratingly out of reach. Expert counsel, rugged terrain, and a little jolt of competition usually solves the problem. In the following pages, we offer an inside look at the country's premier instructional camp, comprehensive guides on affordable gear and where to find the best riding this fall, plus a dirt dictionary so you can talk the talk when you get there. So mount up that dual squishy, you hammerhead, and get rockin'.

William Wright's guts are in turmoil. Nothing has prepared the 33-year-old financial planner with Trans America for this moment. He's standing at the start line of the 1996 Iron Horse Classic mountain bike race. Around him are 150 jacked-up riders, ready to mass assault a 2,000-foot-high mesa called Chapman Hill. Two-story concert speakers pound out Soundgarden's megadecibel snarl. Anodized-finished bike parts flash in the brilliant sun. It all suggests an imminent tribal war.

The Iron Horse, in Durango, Colorado's San Juan Mountains, is one brutal off-road race, much of it above 8,000 feet. Trying to calm himself, Wright draws a deep breath. Into his diaphragm flows a suffocating mixture of wheel-stirred trail grit and oxygen-depleted air. He turns to the rider next to him. "I don't know what I'm doing here," he blurts. Then the gun blasts.

Twenty minutes later, with Wright somewhere up on the course, the first casualty is hustled down on a stretcher. Crumpled up fetal-like, the 40-something rider lies motionless. One hand is folded across his body, trying to shield a shattered collar bone. The sight chills everyone -- especially the rest of us still waiting to race. "Did you see his face?" asks Beth Appleton, the race operations manager. "Whew, he looks bad."

If we haven't already, each of us reexamines our passion for off-road racing. What might we get out of this experience -- personally, professionally -- that could possibly be worth a trip to the emergency room?

In racing, you will fail. (That's how you learn.)

The Iron Horse culminates four days of off-road racing instruction at Dirt Camp : a roving school that stops at fat-tire Meccas from Crested Butte to St. Tropez. Three years ago Rod and Julie Kramer, who outfitted road-cycling vacations throughout the United States and Europe, launched Dirt Camp out of their garage in Boulder, Colorado. Their market: the growing legions of biking enthusiasts who want to spend their vacations riding legendary trails and getting expert instruction from the pros.

On this Memorial Day weekend, Dirt Camp sets up in Durango, the epicenter of off-road racing. It's 10 AM Friday. Our class of ten -- most in their 30s and 40s -- gathers in the parking lot at the Iron Horse Inn for our first "ride rap." Kramer begins by passing out a waiver release. "You can't hide anything on a mountain bike race course," he announces. "Yes, you're alone and yes, you suffer. So what's the upside? Quite frankly, you find out how you measure up."

Jordan Wand is ready to get on with it. He's the 29-year-old director of Polo Sport Design for Manhattan-based Ralph Lauren. Over the past two years, he's advanced from a timid neophyte to a skilled rider. He drinks up the sport, each week calling the Dirt Camp office to keep in touch with a world that isn't exactly the stuff of cocktail party chatter among the runway crowd. While colleagues throw money at getaways to the Hamptons, Jordan's discretionary cash goes to mountain bike trips and a local "wrench," whom he keeps on retainer to fine-tune his $2,000 Dean mountain bike.

"I'm an oddity," he admits. "I ride my brains out on these trips and come back to the office looking worse than when I left." Wand has reached the point in his riding where a big race seems like the inevitable next step. "But I've got mixed feelings about it," he says. "You hear the pros talk and the passion is obvious. When I think about it I get stressed. Given that I'm stressed 90 hours a week at work, I'm not so sure I really need more."