We spent a ton of time riding the bike park this year but had major intentions of hitting some loam up in the hills surrounding the park. You cant go to the whistler area and not do that right? I think we spent the first day riding in pouring down rain which was greatly needed to put out the fires that were burning all over BC. If you have been to whistler you know it takes a few runs to get flowing, the riding there is pretty different from what we have on the east coast but once you got it, it’s all grins.
O-Sin > In Deep > Fatcrobat > To Tight > Joyride > Heart Of Darkness makes me feel funny in the pants.
After 3 days of getting beat to death on the mountain we headed over to talk with guys at Cromag who were headquartered about 1 block from where we were staying in function junction. Thanks to Ian & Julian at Cromag we got the inside line, Little did we know some of the better whistler valley trails were sitting right in front of our faces. Literally across the street was a drop in on a single-track that lead us up the mountain that overlooks function. The guys there gave us a little tour of where they make it all happen which was great to see, any company that is rider owned is good by me. They make some solid stuff, it’s no wonder you see their bars and other components on almost every local’s bike in the lift line.
The climb was pretty brutal in rain jackets, about an hour and a half hike on the big bikes but great views along the way up. We started in on a killer trail named ‘cheap thrills’ that put us on classic steep rock faces, with moss and loam for days. It was extremely refreshing to be hitting some soft dirt that got along well with my maxis minion sticky tires. I don’t think I have ever had as much fun on a bike as I did up on that hill. We even ran into a couple moto trials guys that were riding the same lines as us. It’s awesome how dark the forest get’s up there just completely wet, slimy, and treacherous but fun as hell at the same time. I forget our exact line off the hill but I think it was cheap thrills > 99’er > danimal > industrial disease and finally finished on Moose Knuckle (why not right?).
So the last night was pretty amazing and by amazing I mean horrible…so we stuck around up in Whistler to watch some slopestyle and by the time we began heading back down to Vancouver it was around 4 pm. We stopped in Vancouver to check out some totem poles (don’t ask but they were cool)…which put us at about 6 ish…Well we had a flight out of Seattle around 6 am.
Here is what we ended up doing, cleaning the van, putting the seats back in (it’s now around 12 am) so why get a hotel, stupid right? We ended up at some gnarly rock n roll bar called ‘The 9 lb Hammer’, guys with tattoos on their faces were staring us down, we were drunk and tired. Then we end up at some diner next to Boeing’s headquarters drunk, tired, angry and god else knows what. After the food we decided we needed sleep at about 3 am, so 5 guys, 5 bikes, and 5 guys worth of gear settled down in the van for some shut eye…hilarious.
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