I Fell Off A Cliff In Utah! | Riding The Rampage Desert With Tom Isted

Where's my bike? Welcome back, you beautiful people, and welcome to Virgin, Utah, bucket list location for me to shred my rig. I can quite happily say big thanks to Abyss for making my dream come true. I cannot wait to go riding. I'm out here to watch one of the most iconic freeride events, Red Bull Rampage, which is actually happening right across the valley on that Messer over there in the next few days. It's the pinnacle of freeride in the world of mountain biking. More to the point, I'm actually stood at the top of one of the most gnarliest iconic trails that I've ever ridden in the world, King Kong, with a sprinkle of flying monkey. I'll explain why it's called flying monkey later on in the video. It's actually a little bit dark. This trail is not even graded, let alone sanctioned, because it's so dangerous, and for good reasons, because look at this. This is a trail. There is a trail, there's death. There are a lot of steep chutes, big drops, and gap jumps to clear. One wrong move here could mean an absolute disaster. A lot of people claim this is one of the hardest trails in the world. To be honest, they use this trail as one of their warm-up lines for all those competitors riding in Red Bull Rampage. This all sounds super daunting to me, but thanks to Abyss, I've actually asked my very good friend to come along for the ride, Tom Eistedt. Introducing Tom Eistedt, a pro athlete that started off as a pro on 20-inch wheels, which is a BMX. He lives in Cornwall, where it's flat and near the coast. Nothing like he is riding out here. He is sitting 13th overall in the FMB World Tour, and now he is out here competing in the Red Bull Rampage for the very first time. First, he's got to help me get down King Kong. While Tom's building his Rampage line, I'm going to sneak in a bit of practice on Flying Monkey to warm myself up. It's always wise to look before you leap because you don't want to come into this trail blind riding because it doesn't end well. Take a look at this. You've got some insane steep rolling to a sharp left. If you're going straight, you're going to end up it's been a long day. Mountain biking is great fun, but it can go wrong on the easiest of rides. Protection is important, but more so when it comes to riding bigger features and tackling gnarly trails like the one we're going to be doing today. I'm going to use Tom Eistedt as our protection model. First up is the most important piece of protection you can get, and that is the helmet. Today, we're wearing the Abbe's High Drop. It's a burly full-face helmet, but luckily for me, with how hot it is out here, it's also got plenty of ventilation. This is Abbe's toughest full-face helmet, which is why Tom is trusting it to ride Rampage this week. Let's take a closer look. It's ASTM F1952 certified. That sounds pretty complicated to me, but all you need to know is that it's passed the highest downhill helmet testing out there. It's got ABS shell with an EPS and EPP core to add strength. The double D-ring buckle system helps give it a nice secure fit too. This is my favorite. Breakaway visor bolts to allow the visor to detach. This reduces the twisting forces on your head and neck if you were to crash. It's got plenty of vents and breathable cheek pads to help keep it cool and comfortable when you're out shredding. It only takes a little bit of mud or dirt to flick up into your eye and get to ruin your whole ride fast. Goggles or glasses are key. We're using the Abbe's Buteo goggles today. They use a dual-layer anti-fog lens to give us the best vision possible, and a fleece liner. The best part of the goggle for me is the nose piece to make them super comfortable. Moving on from the helmet, we've got a long-sleeve jersey, we've got gloves, and we've got perfect race pants as well. Underneath his riding trousers, he's wearing impact pants, followed along with knee pads and ankle braces as well, just to protect those ankles on those heavy impact. Some riding shoes as well. Flying Monkey trail. I've got a little bit of fact for you, probably for you beautiful viewers more so than Tom because he probably knows it. Do you know why this trail is called Flying Monkey? I actually do know why it's called Flying Monkey. Damn it. For the viewers that don't know what it is all about, that mess over there, they used to fire rockets not off of it, but towards the cliff to test eject seats for jets, which is pretty gnarly because of the G-forces. They were using dummies at the time, but they weren't performing as well as they wanted to. This is where it gets dark. This is where they swapped out the dummies for chimpanzees to see if they would survive the G-force of launching out the freaking eject seats with chimps. Obviously, this was a long time ago back when health and safety and animal rights were a bit lenient. All right, King Kong. Kong it. Kong it. You ready? Quite warm up, isn't it? Straight off the plane into that. How many times have you ridden this? Once. Yes, I did one. One fell off a cliff and I was like, I don't want to do that again. Oh my goodness me. Wow, it's actually quite nerve-wracking. Cliffs, just the sheer exposure of everything. Just to give people an idea, that's just how windy it is. It's quite strong side wind. That's got a bit of play to it. That's nice flow. I think this bit here is better than that up there. I reckon we've ridden the most gnarliest bit of this trail, right? Tell you what fills me with confidence riding this trail, right? I know we've ridden some horrible stuff, some of the stuff, the most exposed trail I've ever ridden, but I bet this is so easy compared to that stuff. You would say that, but because of how well-groomed the whole Rampage site is, I would say this is probably a little bit sketchier because it's so loose, so dry, and exposure is so high that I would say this is just as gnarly, if not sketchier, than what we'd be riding over there. You're saying I've ridden Rampage? No, I'm not saying that. Yes, you have. If you want an entry, I've got another plate. No, no, no. I'm going to take what you just said right there, that I've ridden Rampage. There we go. There's a really famous little drop just here. The infamous roll it. Oh, you can roll it. If you know, you know. You can't roll it. We went and checked and you actually can't roll it. You go over the bars. All right, I'll follow you. I'm actually scared. This is stuff you don't want to mess around on. Yes. Oh, my goodness me. Oh, you can't just plop off it. It's not that bad. Don't, don't, don't, don't. Yes, go, go, go, go, go. All right. Yes, go, go, go, go, and go, go, go, go. That step down there. No, it's another rolling, dropping thing. You good? Yes. Where's my bike? I swear I rolled off that last time. I literally came off there. Welcome to Utah. Welcome to Utah. Hi, everyone. This King Kong Trail with Tom Eyestead. Hope you enjoy this video. That was scary. That is not plop, plop, plop. That's like huck, huck, huck. I think I'm more scared because I threw myself off a cliff. Literally, I went off the top down there. This shake is- Is real. Is real. No lie, I threw myself off that one there, off here. That's a story and a half. Yes. To there, to my knees. Luckily, this is pure powder, so it moves quite nicely, so it's semi-forgiving. I thought I was going down there, dude. Yes, I'm not surprised you didn't, to be honest. My bike's down there. I'm so happy I didn't smash myself out. Wow. All right, let's reconvene. How scary. It just goes to show, man, wearing the correct kit is absolutely crucial. You can't not ride something gnarly like that without a full face, let alone knee pads and all that. Poor bike. I'm glad you're alive, mate. Mate, I'm glad I'm alive. I'm glad I didn't use the helmet, but I'll tell you what, I felt- It felt secure and safe. It definitely felt secure. For that, what he was saying, right? Before we end this video, he was saying, yes, you can roll, roll, then plop. That's the last one. I jumped too far on the first one. Oh, okay. I bottomed out and I couldn't slow because it went light. Then I just lost control and I went off down there. To be fair, I did the wrong thing as well because I went plop, plop, plop, plop, and I fell into the back of this landing. I definitely thought I had Blake hitting me in the back of the head with the front tire. That was quite scary. Then just to hear the sound of someone falling to their death is what he thought behind me was quite scary. The sound of a man dying. Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed this video, Flying Monkey into King Kong with Tom Eystead. Big thanks to Abbas for giving us the opportunity to do this. Good luck because you haven't done it. Good luck in Rampage 2. Nice one. Thank you very much. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. We'll see you next time. See you.