Dual Sport Motorcycle Skills - Turning Sideways on a Hill

Many riding skills can be learned well in a parking lot, before they are needed on the trail. Information on such skills is to be found in Skills documents like this one. These articles present more detailed breakdowns of specific skills mentioned in the Challenges document, along with thoughts on how to teach yourself those skills. For more information on why / when this skill is required, see the Challenges post.

Remember to check the "Links: Riding Technique" section in the sidebar for more thoughts on how to handle your motorcycle off pavement. As I find pertinent links or they are sent to me, I will add them there.

Keep in mind that however definitive the text may come across, this is just some blog and I am just some guy. Neither of us knows all there is to know about riding motorcycles, and some or all of what we know may be dangerously wrong.

Last Update: 01/07/07

If you are heading up a hill and decide you are not going to make it up, well, that means you are going back down. Going back down backward is – beyond the scope of this blog… Therefore, thought must be given to getting the front tire pointed downhill at the end of an aborted hill climb. One way to do this is to use up the last of your upward momentum to turn the bike sideways on the hill. This will make it a lot easier to get the front tire pointed downhill than if you stop dead in the midst of your climb.

The trick to this seemingly innocuous maneouver lies in figuring out how to lean the bike while turning. Well, you lean toward the inside of the turn - but you are counter-steering, but the ground is so sloped that a little lean is still leaning outside the turn, relative to the ground, and it all happens at the same time, and you are coming to a stop in the midst of the turn, and if you fall over you want your tires downhill, and if you are leaning into the turn your tires are uphill, but they are downhill because you are leaning uphill even when you are leaning into the turn…

Confusing as tax law. Look, try it on a shallow grade, and then move to progressively steeper ones. You want to end up with the bike pointed across the slope, rather than up or down. You want to lean into the hill (out of the turn, as it were...) enough that you can put your uphill foot down and stop, or at least (once you are on a steep hill) drop the bike with the tires downhill. That means that as it gets steeper and steeper, you lean less and less “downhill.” Which is to say that even in a right turn, the left (uphill) side of the bike is closer to the ground than the right (downhill) side… It will be far easier (and more fun) for you to try it on gradually steeper and steeper slopes, than for me to explain it.

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