Fresh new photos!

The weather has been awesome, and the trails even better! But surprisingly enough, the mountain hasn't been the least bit busy. If your smart enough to ride during the week, you'll get spoiled with perfect conditions and non-existant lift lines.

In other news..... the boneyard is nearing completion and will soon be open for public. And I have plenty of excellent photos to prove it! Let me begin...

Gap-O-Tron construction (here, and here, and here, and here, and holy crap this stuff goes up quick!) I'm not sure if I'm supposed to leak this information, (and I may get in trouble for this later) but there's a chance that a down-sized version of the Gap-O-Tron, as seen here and here, will be open for public as a "PRO" Line. I try to keep some things secret from the public that we hold as a surprise. But some news, like the Gap-O-Tron possibly being open for public, will be announced shortly anyways, so what the hell.

Some photos of the boneyard nearing completion:

-Here we have the BIG Crankworx gap, the Biker Cross expert line, and the normal Biker Cross line. Another shot of the same right here.

-This is the launch pad for the BIG gap located smack dab in the middle of the boneyard. In photo is local ripper Adam from Whistler Diaries. Here is another shot of Adam and the 30-something foot gap.

-Here and here, are photos of the many Cowan-style dirt jumps found in the lower boneyard.

-John Cowan building the hitchin' post. Hitchin' post complete.

-Cowan and his sidekick Tom working on the landing for the good ol' roadgap

-And finally some overview photos of the upper half of the boneyard, and the lower half of the boneyard

I'm not much of a writer, but pictures are good at saying the words for me. hope you like!

Biker Cross Photos!

Here's a look at the stellar Biker Cross course Cowan and his crew have built for us...

here and here is the beginning of the course. rollers and doubles a plenty!
massive berms!
three steep rollers, or you can double, even triple them!
same section as the last photo, but from the opposite end
a double-able set of rollers before the first stepdown
two stepdowns then a bigger stepup
the stepup (note: it's bigger than it looks)
I call this the riser berm!
the finishing jump
view from the bottom
another view from the bottom

have an opinion on the course this year? leave your comment below

news and photos

I haven't posted much for recent photos or information these past couple of days because I've been working like a dog 7 days a week. I've been working as trail crew building the trails on the mountain 4 days a week, and on my 3 days off I've been working for John Cowan (as seen here showing Duncan how to properly "judo chop") in the boneyard building the bikercross and slopestyle. But great news, the bikercross will be open as of tomorrow! Not only that, but some of the boneyard will be open too. The bikercross this year is off the hook. Expect high speed whoops, huge berms, step-ups to step-downs, and other features, all in proper 4X fashion. :) Also, as I've been informed, crabapple hits has been overhauled and is super buff, along with angry pirate which has also had a lot of work done to it. Overall, the mountain is in excellent shape right now, so grab your bikes and head on up!

here (1 ,2) are photos of the staff housing box, which is back bigger and better than ever.

and here is a crankworx ad in the Pique Newsmagazine (you may have to download the full size image in order to read the article)

The best deal around

This has got to be the best accommodation/lift pass deal in existence! I wont say anything else because the advertisement says it all, check it out...

"Play and Stay"

file size is approx 2.5mb so it may take a while to load with a slower internet connection speed

today's stuff: less words, more photos

It was a statutory holiday today which translates as... no work for me. Which is great, because I wanted to ride today anyways! In the morning, I briefly looked for some accomodation for the summer then immediately hit up the bike park. Posted below are some photos of Duncan Mckenzie re-building sections of "old school", Tom Pro laying down crush gravel on the landings for the GLC drops, and some other random stuff.

Duncan re-building "old school"
another of Duncan re-building "old school"
Tom Pro laying down the "red" carpet
another of Tom Pro laying down the "red" carpet
final preparations for the opening weekend (note: this crush gravel works really well!)
John Cowan's version of how the Giro box should be
the beautiful view from atop the trails

P.S. Over the next month or so, Duncan Mckenzie (who more often works as bike park patrol) will be re-working sections of his trails "Old School", "Devil's Club", and "Smoke 'n' Mirrors", for your riding enjoyment.

Random photo post

here are some random photos I snapped the other day...

the stencil
the new staff housing box
staff housing side angle
revamped giro box Cowan style
deer in the park
deer in the park
makin progress on crank it up
trail crew bikes and truck

back in action

For the past couple weeks nothing significant has happened to me, so I haven't spent the time to post anything new. But now that I'm back in the bike park my life seems to have shifted into a higher gear.

I had my first run in the park yesterday, accompanied by my first patio beer; and I'm still not sure which was better. The ride was awesome, but biking and beer go together hand in hand. Tom Pro and I rode Upper Shleyer to Karate monkey to A-line, and let me tell you, it was gooooood! The majority of the trails have weathered the winter quite well and are ready to take you on from 9 until 6 on the weekends, and from 10 until 5 during the week.

On my first day back at work yesterday, Shem Parker and I started the day by clearing the trails of all the trees that had fallen down over the winter (as seen here). It was actually quite entertaining cruising around in the quads through deep patches of snow and mud as seen here on "easy does it". Just to be able to open the park as expected, Shem has been busting his balls clearing away fallen trees like these ones, that were 20 feet past the landing for the Dirt Merchant step-up. What a redneck! I can't go on without giving major props to the rest of the trail crew, the patrollers, and everyone else in prepping the trails and park for another big season.

Anyways, as our morning tapered into the afternoon Shem and I decided it would be a worthwhile project to amp up the A-line entry drop (as seen here and here and here and here). We jacked up the take off over a foot higher than it was before so it is no longer rollable, and more of a mandatory feature. The wooden landing is bordering on the skinny side but we'll do something about it later if there are any complaints.

Other than that, John Cowan and his crew have been making incredible progress in the boneyard (here and here) with hopes of an earlier than usual opening. I had some great photos of Cowan running an excavator building some stunts, but my memory card decided it didn't like the photos very much so I'll have to re-take them tomorrow. Also, for those of you who plan to ride in the boneyard this year, expect everything to be amped up in typical Whistler Bike Park fashion. For example, (and I'll try to snap a photo of it tomorrow) the staff housing box is built up on a platform which considerably increases the size of the stunt. So if your confidence is soaring and your skills are honed, be prepared for a fun time.


Random stuff:
Here is a crankworx ad taken from the pique newsmagazine. Here and here are some articles taken from the sports section of The Question newspaper in Whistler. Here is a video of Shem Parker and me cruising down easy-does-it on ATV's looking for fallen trees.

And just in case they decide to get angry with me, here are their internet addresses: www.piquenewsmagazine.com and www.whistlerquestion.com

For more information on the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, log on to www.whistlerbike.com or call 1-866-218-9690.

Gotta get outta Quesnel!

The second half of my final exam is this Monday, so I'll be moving back to Whistler shortly after that. Even if I'll be shoveling snow off the trails for days on end, just to get the mountain open for the 19th, it'll be sweet to be back. I'm still not sure how I'm gonna get back to Whistler though; I might have to ride my bike. ha! There was a guy who rode an Intense M1 from Ottawa to Whistler, so the 500 kilometers that separate my house from Whistler can't be that bad right? Right!? I thought so. Hopefully it doesn't come down to that, but we'll see.

Frontburner

I've recently posted a short movie of some of the locations I've ridden around Quesnel. While the quality of the movies is nothing amazing I've taken a lot of time to compile the segmented clips into something more viewable. The weather's been perfect for riding lately, hovering around 15 degrees Celsius and partly cloudy, so I've taken the liberty to fully check out the riding scene in Quesnel. How it's grown since I've been in Whistler! I've already spent many hours this spring building bigger - yet still safer and easier - jumps around town, while trying not to disgruntle the local municipality too much. Okay, well maybe a little just to keep them on their toes, but that's good for them right? It builds character. This is how I see it: more jumps equals more people riding bikes, equals less people driving vehicles, equals less road maintenance for the municipality. So ultimately it's a win-win situation. But yeah, check out the video clip posted below, it's just over 2 minutes in length, so not a long load. I plan on squeaking in a few more days of filming and riding before I move back to Whistler, so that I can add more content to "Frontburner" and finish it up. Also, I've been trying to capture footage of my buddy Pat the photographer, but he keeps injuring himself and getting stitches and all that, so he's pretty much a ghost in the movie so far. But the meteorologists say this weekend will be another hot sunny one, so once again my battery charger will have to stare down my energy-sucking camera so that nothing can get in the way of recording more bike riding memories.