Thirty-four of us had signed up for the Dirt Series program, a women's weekend mountain bike camp in Bellingham. This roving instruction program holds camps throughout the Northwest, from its home base in Whistler, British Columbia, down to Santa Cruz, Calif., and as far east as Park City, Utah.
More than 5,000 participants have come through the program since it launched in 2001. The first season attracted 45 riders. Now, the typically sold-out camps draw 45 to 60 people each, and there are 17 programs on the books for this year.
Women's mountain bike programs continue to grow. The Boston LUNA Chix Cycling Team formed four years ago and offers dozens of events annually, from skills clinics to recreational rides, to encourage more women to get involved in the sport. Dirt Divas in northern Vermont runs one-week camps for girls 11 to 16 and plans to increase the number of one-day programs available to women. And Colorado offers weekend to weeklong programs in Winter Park, Snowmass, Boulder, and Breckenridge, and near Vail and Grand Junction.
The structure of the clinics remains similar, regardless of their length. Most offer skills sessions, nutrition and fitness talks, bike tech information such as how to change a flat tire or adjust your derailleur, and trail rides where you can put your new skills to the test. Some, like Jen Fisher's Over the Bars program in Snowmass, include a massage, a half-day rafting trip, yoga instruction, and a seminar in sports psychology. All emphasize experiential learning and focus on the basics, from how to sit on a bike to how to brake, shift, corner, climb, and descend, among other skills.
Many women start off mountain biking the wrong way: They buy or borrow a bike, hit the trails with little experience, and then often get hurt or left behind by their fellow riders -often well-intentioned boyfriends or husbands whose instructions might be, "Just do it!" The popularity of women's mountain bike camps has grown, in part, because women and men have vastly different learning styles.
