I think the risks of something like that section on Pauley, or White Line, or that new and quite exposed line on the Colorado mesa, are quite different than the risks of trying a new (bigger) jump or drop, or just a super janky line that doesn't have an easy out anywhere but the bottom. I have zero desire to do White Line or such, yet I'll happily tie in to a secure rappel station and toss myself off a cliff and descend a what might externally seem like a scarily rapid pace, with quite reasonable safety, so it's not a heights thing necessarily. It's the ability to manage the risk on my own terms.
You can learn to absorb or at least manage most biking crashes. Shit, when we were teenagers we would find grassy areas near our regular trails, sprint into the grass, and just yank the front brake to get used to endoing (when dry) or losing the front in a rapid fashion (when the grass was wet), as an example. You can learn how to toss a bike and accept sliding down a dirt jump landing. You can learn how to jump over your bars and run out an endo. Yes, as speed and/or amplitude increases it becomes increasingly difficult to manage potential crashes, but that's something you have control of. You can't learn how to fall down a cliff with reasonable safety. That's "one and done, son". The speed and amplitude factor of falling off a cliff is pretty much always the same: you will fall at 9.8 m/s^2 (approx, depends on how many things you smash into or scrape against on the way down) until you get to the bottom.
May 12, 2022, 10:24 a.m. - Justin White
I think the risks of something like that section on Pauley, or White Line, or that new and quite exposed line on the Colorado mesa, are quite different than the risks of trying a new (bigger) jump or drop, or just a super janky line that doesn't have an easy out anywhere but the bottom. I have zero desire to do White Line or such, yet I'll happily tie in to a secure rappel station and toss myself off a cliff and descend a what might externally seem like a scarily rapid pace, with quite reasonable safety, so it's not a heights thing necessarily. It's the ability to manage the risk on my own terms. You can learn to absorb or at least manage most biking crashes. Shit, when we were teenagers we would find grassy areas near our regular trails, sprint into the grass, and just yank the front brake to get used to endoing (when dry) or losing the front in a rapid fashion (when the grass was wet), as an example. You can learn how to toss a bike and accept sliding down a dirt jump landing. You can learn how to jump over your bars and run out an endo. Yes, as speed and/or amplitude increases it becomes increasingly difficult to manage potential crashes, but that's something you have control of. You can't learn how to fall down a cliff with reasonable safety. That's "one and done, son". The speed and amplitude factor of falling off a cliff is pretty much always the same: you will fall at 9.8 m/s^2 (approx, depends on how many things you smash into or scrape against on the way down) until you get to the bottom.