Glen Helen: America's Burliest Motocross Track

 

© Garth Milan/Red Bull Content Pool

Just east of the Los Angeles hills lies Southern California’s Inland Empire, motocross’s mecca. There are more professional and amateur racers per square mile there than anywhere on the planet. Venture into one of the area’s billion housing developments, tee up a golf ball, and smash that masochistic white orb in any direction, and the odds are strong that you will hear the shout of a professional motocross rider as the ball careens through his kitchen window. Then as you speed away in mischievous delight, you might see Ken Roczen and Jessy Nelson at the stoplight. Really, though, that could happen. Of course, smack dab in the middle of the I.E. is Glen Helen Raceway.

There is no motocross track that captures the essence of the American dream like Glen Helen. A racetrack built into jagged Southern California peaks, a fortified hotbed of excess, at least as far as a motorcycle racer is concerned. The arms race to creating the biggest and baddest motocross track in the country during the sport’s rise in the '80s produced several greats, but nothing like Glen Helen. The hills are gigantic and steep, the absurd constructions of a small child’s imagination — the start, the first turn, the massive hills and the booter jumps. It’s a motocross racer’s Pipeline, his Matterhorn.

Take a moto 1 lap with Jessy Nelson!

Racing at Glen Helen might as well be a combination of motocross, Supercross, Hard Enduro and Rampage rolled into one (and freestyle motocross, if you are Marvin Musquin with the heel-clicker game). The track is one of the fastest of the year, and the roughest, with tremendously technical sections thrown into the mix for good measure. The crown jewel of Glen Helen is Mount Saint Helens, a 200-foot climb into the SoCal stratosphere, followed immediately by a descent all the way down. The GoPro videos you see here do not do it justice. The hill up and down are nearly impossible to walk: An overweight patron of the races might find himself losing his footing here and transforming into a human bowling ball. Now imagine racing a motorcycle on that incline with 39 other professionals, all of whom would love for you go away — quickly. The track builders might just be practicing sadists.

Neither Ken Roczen nor Jessy Nelson won at Glen Helen, but each finished in the top five, with Nelson actually landing on the podium by way of 4-4 motos in the 250 class. Nelson has always been great at starts, a talent that can be viewed in all its glory in the first few seconds of his POV from moto one, where he ripped a decisive and uncontested holeshot. It was a heartbreaker for Nelson to lose two positions in the last two laps, but consistency prevails in a sport of attrition like motocross, and he still stood on the podium at the end of the day.

Roczen was clearly feeling chipper compared to his day at Hangtown, where a recent back injury slowed him down considerably. He went down in turn one of the first 450 moto and came all the way through the pack to eighth by moto's end. In moto two, he managed a decent start in the top five and made his way to third on the first lap, where he would stay for the duration of the 36-minute moto. The next step for Roczen is the top step, so watch him closely at Thunder Valley this weekend.