Just home from my trip to Canada and Whistler. Got to go visit some amazing trails on Vancouver Island and ride some Mountain Bikes out at Whistler during the Crankworx festival. 

This is about the only riding photo I took out at the trails. Heath Pinter jumping the big hip at the bottom a little bit blind. The trails were so fun looking with lots of berms and crisscrossing lines. My favorite type of stuff to ride for sure. Unfortunately we showed up right at dusk after I had traveled for like 18 hours or something. I only took a couple runs and bike racked some jump so hard I thought my nose was going to bleed! I was pretty embarrassed and just too tired and dizzy to ride. Oh well… the trails were really good and I dreamed about riding them all night!

Above: a few shot of the trails on Vancouver Island.

After getting some sleep and doing some driving we got up to Whistler mountain and were ready to try some mountain biking. I’ve never really spent any time on a mountain before and my first trip on the chair lift had me shaking from the heights. 

THere’s nothing like being in the mountains! So beautiful. 

Darcy Turenne, a pro MTBer who shares a sponsor with me through Etnies, volunteered to be my guide. She took me down all kinds of crazy runs. I really couldn’t believe the stuff the bike could ride over, or how many lines there were down the mountain. There was so many different trails splitting off and hitting all types of different terrain. Giant built me one of their Glory Freeride bikes that had like 8 inches of suspension travel. Coming from BMX it was really hard to get used to what you could go over. We would be ripping down some trail and there would be a rough section with rocks and holes all over the ground. My initial reaction was always, “Oh SHIT, I’m Dead!!” but the bike would cruise right over it with out ever flinching. 

After a run you that might take 30 minutes from the top of the mountain down you just hop on the chairlift or gondola and cruise up to the top again. I loved coasting down hills all day, and I can for sure see how you could get hooked on it. There was one line that had like 60 jumps in a row. Other’s had wall rides, loads of berms, bridges,  rollers and big rock roll ins that felt like a vert ramp. I found I really liked a lot of the slower paced technical trails too with drops and trees all over the place. Some of them seemed impossible to ride through to me, but again, if I trusted the bike it would just ride over anything in my way. 

I’m not sure what to make of this photo… in my mind it seemed like the most insane thing to ride a bike. Dropping off this ledge into a pile of rocks and stumps and trees. The photo doesn’t look too nuts at all though and when I would get to the bottom with my heart pounding some tourist would bomb down it on a rental bike!

Darcy my guide for the week. She’s been doing some riding with Ruben Alcantara and it showed. Ruben-esque style through the jump sections for sure. 

I did push the bike a little bit though. One section gave me a double flat tire, but luckily between Kevin Dana from Giant and some of the editors of Bike magazine there was tubes and tools to fix me up (or else a 2 hour hike down the mountain). 

From the bottom of the hill looking up on to a little bit of the Slope Style contest. Slope Style is mountain biking’s version of a dirt contest I guess. Or actually, it was very similar to the Empire of Dirt since they had some ramps and stuff like that mixed in. It was pretty gnarly with a couple big drop offs that were serious. 

This is completely common up in Whistler. You’ll stop to take a break in one of the clearings and there will be a bear just chilling not far away at all. This one was a little cub, but you can be sure there was a big mean mama nearby just waiting for me to  try and pet it. 

It was a fun experience trying to adapt my BMX skills to a big suspension bike. Motocrosser Carey Hart came out with Heath Pinter and following him helped me a lot. Even though it was his first time riding big mountains too he handled the suspension with ease and I started to understand the concept of pre-loading the bike before jumps and compressing it around turns. By forcing the bike down (sort of an exaggerated pre-pump like you might do before a bunny hop) the suspension won’t eat up the lip of a jump and around turns it will force the tires to keep grip around corners. 

The trip was great. I rode a ton and got to spend some time hanging out on a mountain and riding down hills. All the suspension made the whole thing a breeze too and for one of the first times in my life I’ve come home from a riding trip without even so much as a bruise (though I would hate to see how bad a fall could be on all those rocks). I can’t really compare that type of riding to BMX, but if you have BMX skills you will surely have fun doing it. Seemed like maybe the way a surfer or skateboarder might adapt to snowboarding. Totally different feeling, but still similar enough that you will have a big head start on most people out there, and its super amazingly fun. 

Thanks to Marzochi for helping me with my fork, Giant for the bike and trip, and Troy Lee for the helmet. 

People always ask me what i do with Roscoe while I’m traveling, but not to worry, he’s having a great time! Here he is smiling and snuggling up to a friend while I’m out of town.