Orchard Scorcher – Course Overview
What’s the Orchard Scorcher course like?
This course has a little fast and a little slow, it’s got chunk but its got flow. There are surfaces of all types – gravel, rocks, wood chips, grass, rotten apples, pavement, soft dirt and fast hard dirt.
I see the course in four quadrants. The first is a r-i-p-p-i-n-g fast start, where a long, gradual curve funnels you into classic off camber turns. Next you face a major downhill swoop into a challenging uphill – rideable if there is room, but I predict some running in the crowded early laps. One gulp of air then back down where a delicate off camber turn back to the left waits as you approach the dirt wall crossing. I left it as hard pack today, but we’ll see how it devolves throughout the race.
Impossibly slow grass greets you on the other side, followed by a zig and a zag as you approach the series’ first and only corn maze in quadrant two. Once inside you’ll be greeted by firm, grippy, dirt and a winding path with tight rights and tighter lefts – time to showcase your handles.
The turns get more gradual towards the exit, but the roars from the crowd will pump you up when you pop out and enter the “third quadrant.” Loose gravel followed by grassy turns come next – eyes up or you’ll slide off into the pond! Pay attention to your line in the pre-ride as some lines are worlds slower than others. Text book CX turns through, but not in, the orchard lead you back to the cheers of your fan club and over the barriers. A hard right turn, over the road, past the team tents, the smells of the food trucks, and the kid’s course, before racing down the narrow shoot and say hello to the fourth quadrant…your first introduction to orchard riding.
What even is orchard riding? Is it the next cycling industry niche, replacing gravel, all-road, and e-bikes? Is it any different than just riding through a field? Is it easier? Harder? Its just smooth grass right? No.
Orchard riding is a beast unto its own. From afar it looks like your unkempt neighbor’s lawn, not no-mow-may, but maybe three weeks past due. What you can’t see, or even feel when walking on it, are the unpredictable undulations beneath the grass. Chatter, mounds, ruts, pits, bumps, lumps, twigs, roots, firm, soft, fast, slow. Finding a line is less about seeing and more about feeling, and the difference is as obvious as driving on the highway or veering off into the rumble strips.
If the ground weren’t enough to think about – get this – an orchard is more or less a word that describes a place where there are a lot of trees, and Bishops is just that. Lordy. So many trees. The fun and challenge of routing a race through an orchard is incorporating the trees, because trees, if you are unaware, are literally covered in branches – branches that want to stretch and grow and get in the way of your fun little Sunday CX race. Picking and choosing rows and columns and lines and lefts and rights and diagonals is up to the gaps between the trees. No gap, no go. If you are like me, you’ll love the oh so tight turns the orchard provides, passing lanes are there, but you’ll need to be tactful.
In this last quadrant, you’ll zip past your first entrance to the pit and up a lumpy, worn out climb. As surprising to me as it will be to you, the gateway to the last section of course starts with…a paved climb. Just a road. It’s uphill for sure, possibly the longest climb of the day, but it may as well be a downhill because that sweet, sweet, predictable surface feels like utter bliss after the grueling orchard chonk.
As luck would have it, the pavement is over in an instant, relieved by a ninety degree left and just like that you’re thrust into the orchard once more. This time, however, you are on top of the hill, and for the first time since the start you’ll “recover” as you wriggle and jiggle your way down, through the apple trees and down the off-camber rows. And because the course designers love you and want to support you on your journey, we route you back up a grassy hill for absolutely no reason other than to reward you with one last down before you cross over the road, pass registration, pass the second pit entrance, cross the street once more, and once more again, before flying back over the starting line and doing it all over again.
The course is just about a mile and a half, each lap gains around 100 feet of elevation. There are so many highlights, but I suspect you’ll enjoy the first crossy curvy wavy gravy section, the corn maze, tight turns in the trees, and the ample cheering sections most. Maybe you’ll also like the paved section for a rare moment of uphill relief. Or, maybe, you’ll fall in love with the grounds as I did over the past few weeks. The Orchard Scorcher has a little something for everyone and I think you’d be really sad if you missed it.
Best sign up today for the December 1st Orchard Scorcher. https://www.bikereg.com/orchard-scorcher