Rory Summer Blog

Published on August 25, 2009

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, so I thought I would give you an update.

In early July we packed up our big bikes and flew out to Western Canada to sample two weeks of the holy grail of gravity riding – Whistler.

There is little left to say about the place that hasn’t already been covered by every biking publication in existence. Whistler gets a great deal of hype, and I can honestly say that it deserves it. It is the only place I have ever experienced that everybody can ride and enjoy. From Dirt Jumpers to XC riders to World Cup level DH racers, everyone we met had a huge grin on their face.

Where else in the world can you ride perfectly sculpted high-speed linked trails with jumps, drops, step-ups and berms for over 3400 vertical feet?

Everyone has heard of the stereotypical ‘Whistler trails’ like A-line and Dirt Merchant and freight train. I would challenge anybody not to have a good time flying down one of these. I spent most of my time throwing whips, tables and X ups off everything I could find while Tim made it his mission to superman and no-foot-can almost every jump on the mountain. It was great to witness the open mouths of many Whistler locals and they watched “that crazy British kid” get ridiculously extended off jumps that most people would be scared to do anything other than straight jump. The RAM freeride performed its job admirably, allowing Tim to hit the slopestyle features in the boneyard while still handling the super gnarly runs up at the top of the mountain. While the bumpy stuff doesn’t get as much attention as the jump trails it is every bit as good.

All I can say is that every rider should make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. For a small sample of our trip check out Tom Grundy’s Webisode. We got very little footage because we spent the majority of our time squeezing as many runs in as possible but Tom still managed to put this together.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/91181/

Since we got back from Canada I have been doing a lot of digging and some riding.

I finally got a huge weight of my shoulders by getting rid of my no-foot-can phobia. I’m looking forward to improving them further. A trip down to 4a a couple weeks ago also turned into a great session, a few of us worked on cork-flips with varying degrees of success!

I have been putting quite a few hours in at a local spot, trying to resurrect it. All the effort is starting to pay off now as we’ve started riding them again. Ryan “Trail Doctor” Nangle came down yesterday and we sorted out the lip of a step-up. This resulted in a sweet little session. It culminated in me trying to figure out some sort of upside down flatspin thing. It didn’t go so well but I think it is more than possible if I can figure out how to hold onto the bike! Here’s a little video to show you what I mean.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/94901/

Another spot I’ve digging and riding at is Kech’s trails. Here’s a very quick video made by my friend who was testing out his camera. Nothing special but its something.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/94079/

Anyway I will be filming a proper edit with Tom in the near future and I will get that to you as soon as possible.

Rory.