Every year, the Andler-Schönberg Hill Climb in Belgium offers an incredible challenge, both for riders to attempt and for thousands of spectators to enjoy. It’s also called “the Impossible Hill Climb,” mainly because is almost completely impossible to get all the way to the top without falling back down.
The rules are deceptively simple. Fastest times don’t matter at all here. What matters is a rider’s ability to get their machine from the start up to the top of the hill. Failing that—which most riders do—the winner is determined by who can get their bike the highest up the hill before falling back down.
In this video from the 2022 event, you can see a number of riders and their modified dirt bikes all make the attempt. It’s steep, and it’s bumpy—and even with the benefit of a good amount of speed behind them, almost all who attempt to climb this hill end up sliding back down.
It’s definite proof that there are a million ways to fall, though. There are relatively simple falls, where the bike goes down and the rider slides down after it. There’s also one where the bike ends up completely sideways, almost seeming to hover in mid-air before it succumbs to gravity and begins its inevitable descent.
It’s mostly adults doing this thing, but there’s one tiny child who can’t even really get up the start ramp, even with the help of an adult (their dad? Uncle? Older cousin?). Maybe next year, kid.
While it’s incredibly difficult to scale this hill for these riders, it’s apparently not completely insurmountable. At the end, we do finally get to see one rider manage to successfully scale the hill. It’s honestly kind of a relief, after seeing all those bikes and riders fall back down, powerless against the laws of physics.
It’s clearly all good fun, though, as this particular hill climb event is regularly highly rated among attendees of European hill climb events. To close out the festivities, we get a big, smoky burnout at the end that you can probably almost smell through your computer screen. All’s well that ends well—until next year.
