Mountain bike events typically only attract a 15% participation rate for women. So we love it when we can turn those stats around and have a 100% female participation rate. On the 12th & 13th November WA Gravity Girls and Linga Longa Mountain Bike Club teamed up to hold a women’s gravity weekend. Whilst this was no Trail Bliss Women’s Mountain Bike festival this year the weekend was a success providing a welcoming environment for females in the WA community to come ride some techy challenging trails.
It was also the first opportunity for “official” shuttles at Tank 7 Nannup Mountain Bike Park. A huge thank you to the Shire of Nannup and WA Adventure Shuttles for letting us be the guinea pigs for the first shuttles at the park. We had 38 women at Nannup on the Saturday and the smiles on the faces couldn’t have been brighter. Thank you to Victoria from Nannup MTB club for showing us around the trails. With a short stop over lunch for a bite to eat at the Nannup Brewery the ladies finished the day up with some shuttles at Tank 7 on the jump lines and then a few last runs over at Tank 8. It’s a tough pedal up at Nannup so everyone was thankful to have the shuttles. Typically most would do maybe 2-3 runs when pedalling up, but with the shuttles most of the ladies smashed out 8-10 runs each!
The Linga Longa Café was buzzing Saturday evening with banter between the ladies, card games and good chats around the fire. The majority of the riders made a weekend of it braving the chilly night at Linga Longa.
A women’s shuttle day at Linga Longa Bike Park is a bit different to the usual…unlike the guys who know what trail they’ll be riding by the time they’ve hit the bottom of the shuttle road, the ladies banter away on the bus on the way up, often not deciding until their pedalling to the trail head. It’s a pretty chill atmosphere, there’s always the few that just want to hit as many runs as they can but the majority take their time to enjoy the social aspect of the day as well as the riding.
We had 64 women shredding the trails of Linga Longa on the Sunday with lots of progression seen. Some riders do their first road gap drop on son of skywalk and there were some first time hits of the drops lines in the skills park. Even Tanya’s little pup came for a piggyback run on the beginners / new to the park social ride! The weekend was a hit with comments of “this is so nice” and “when’s the next one!”
These shuttle days don’t happen without volunteers, so a huge thanks to the park patrol, medics, check-in volies, coaches, instructors, and the list goes on. Thanks for the Linga Longa Mountain Bike Club and Park and WA Adventure Shuttles for another fantastic weekend. WA Gravity Girls hopes to team up with clubs and businesses to run more women’s shuttle days in 2023.
By Emily Mountford from @Gravity Girls
DEC
2022