Your Mileage May Vary - The Witch's Trails at Fort William

World famous due to the world cup downhill and 4X races that have been held there for a good few years, the trails surrounding the Nevis Range gondola are only a few miles up the road from Fort William. The gondola provides easy access to the World Cup DH route and the Nevis Range Red XC route. The car park is the starting place for the World Champs XC and 10 Under the Ben red graded routes, as well as a smattering of green and blue options.

The massive car park accepts donations and the site includes a bike shop and bike hire service, as well as cafe at the bottom and top of the gondola. Signage to the start of the XC trails is more or less adequate and while it hasn't faded when you're out further in the hills, it can be confusing if it's your first time there; for example: arrow points straight ahead, trail forks exactly in two.

A break from the steep parts of the climb

From checking out the pdf map available online it's clear that the World Champs XC and 10 Under the Ben red routes share some sections of trail. After a walk nearby the previous day it was also clear that some of the sections of both reds were shared with walking trails, with bikes, rightly, being told to yield to other trail users. Not a great start in all honesty as you can ride walking paths anywhere, if you've travelled to a trail centre you want dedicated trails if possible.

The World Champs XC red route rises quickly out of the car park on a dedicated but well maintained forest trail. It's pretty much all climbing, some of which is steep, for what felt like the first 2-3km or so. At first this is in the forest, and later you are rewarded with some truly outstanding views across the countryside for your efforts. 

Scotland in June: it doesn't always rain

Upon reaching the highest point on the route I had excellent views of Carn Mor Dearg with Ben Nevis poking through in the background. Like Golspie and Cwm Carn, the trail follows a traditional uphill then downhill structure. However, unlike Golspie, the climb is not as interesting to ride due to the limited views at the beginning and the plain trail surface followed by amount of fire road. Good if you have a full-on XC bike and like busting your lungs, however perhaps less enjoyable if you're more of an AM/enduro rider. It felt very "old-school" compared to many trail centres that have more recently-built trails.

The first part of the descent is graded black and features a gravelly / rocky trail surface that includes a pretty much mandatory drop off. Part of the challenge on a sunny day is not being distracted by the views!

The bulk of the red descent on "Cat's Back" and "Witch's Brew" is pretty interesting with a reasonably technical trail surface taking in rocks, a few roots and some steeper sections. It's a close call, but I would say it just misses out on providing enough thrills to make up for the for the climb you have just endured - your mileage may vary.

Keep your eyes on the prize

Following the main singletrack descent, you'll be following a footpath across a field, some gently ascending fire road for some way, a further walking trail under a high ropes course, and a final section of bike-only trail which just serves to provide a small climb and singletrack descent around the car park.

The trail's short length, at a mere 5.2 miles, belies the challenge involved in the climb and the technicality of the descent. The downhill is good, the rest, although this is surely heresy, is only elevated above the ranks of average trails thanks to the outstanding view.


Next up was the "XC Nevis Red". Gondola tickets are £12 per run or £31 per day. The ride up is pretty fast but weirdly, and unlike Whistler or the lifts around Morzine and Les Gets, the bikes are suspended by their saddles. I can tell you that it's a lot easier for the rider to hang the bikes by their front wheel than to up-end them and wrestle the saddle into a loop! Despite the signage telling me to wait for the liftie to call me through and provide some help with my bike, the guy on post at the time couldn't have cared less and just let me get on with it myself. Fend for yourself newbies!

A couple of blurry pics of the World Cup DH from the gondola!

The Gondola uplift spends most of its time above the World Cup DH course and you can watch other riders coming down, it looked awesome! Without my full face, dianese and DH bike, I was not going to ride it this visit.

The red cuts a pretty imposing line across the mountain side, the first maybe 30% being wooden boardwalks, the next 50% being bedrock, the final 20% being sandy berms and fire road.

Scotland gets the views very right

The boardwalks are solidly built and raised about 12-24" above the hillside. Due to the way that the boardwalks traverse the hill, the distance to where you would land if you come off is very small on the uphill side, or a good few feet on the downhill side. This makes it feel much more risky than the couple of feet suggests! Not being too keen to experience the larger of these two drops I steered well clear of the edges and getting past that section was not the most fun I've had on a bike.

The wooden surface features many small drops and undulations, and is covered in chicken wire. This does provide grip, but is also in tatters where people would naturally brake hard, leaving me a bit preoccupied about getting punctures from the ripped up metal wiring.

Once you get past this, there is a very flat and reasonably long section where the surface is mostly technical bedrock: like McMoab or Balblair but with infinitely less flow. DH bikes must have a hard time getting through this? It's actually uphill in places.

Upper boardwalk switchbacks with World Cup DH in the background

This surface eventually becomes quite steep and rough and is now well suited to a proper DH bike. Some of your options include a sizeable drop or the chicken line, being a steep rock face into 90 degree corner with no banking onto boardwalk.

Towards the lower part you pass over a tedious but brief boardwalk made of rounded logs and covered in chicken wire ("log-shore") followed by the sandiest trail surface known to man for a handful of turns. I'm not saying there were kids making sand-castles in the berms, but there could have been. The very last stages take in some fire road (groan) and the last couple sections of the World Champs XC, I think. Signage was not great here so I may be mistaken. I've heard that in the past the red DH met up with the World Cup DH route and that the trail described in this paragraph may be only a year or so old? Either way, this section was a let down.

The view from the flatter part of the Red XC / downhill / whatever

This is the officially billed as the XC Nevis Red. Drawing on all my riding and racing experience there is no way that it should be categorised as an XC trail or be red graded. This is a black graded DH run that requires everything that the designation implies to get the most out of it: full face, pads, DH bike. Yes you can get down it on an XC hard tail, but I'd rather be on a 223. The flat bit in the middle may be a bit of a buzz-kill on your 8 inch beast though - I would love to know what they were thinking.

Regrettably I was left with the impression that this DH route was built and described as a red XC route mainly to entice more non-downhillers to part with their cash and go up the gondola. No wonder the mandatory liability waiver form is so comprehensive. In short, if you're on a DH bike, you're good to go but will likely enjoy the World Cup DH more, if you're on anything less, hire a DH bike, or go elsewhere.

I know popular opinion is that the Nevis Range riding is amazing, but based on my experience I can't agree.  In its favour, it has a gondola which is pretty rare in the UK and if you have a DH bike and the skills, the World Cup DH track would be challenging and fun. However, the Nevis Range doesn't fare well in comparison to the other lift-accessed trails I've ridden abroad and my recommendation would be that if you're more AM than either pure DH or XC you should skip the gondola accessed red and the Witches Trails (assuming 10 Under the Ben* is similar to the World Champs XC) and go elsewhere.


*I do intend to go back and ride the 10 UTB course, for completeness's sake but after the WC XC and Nevis Red, despite staying only about 20 minutes drive away, I had no inclination to go back that week for more.