VanAussie Daily

Whistler & Crankworx

Author: Jared

So last Saturday I was lucky enough to get out of the house and head up to Whistler to do some downhill mountain biking (mtb) and to watch one of the biggest events (Slopestyle) at the two week long mtb festival that is Crankworx.

Crankworx is for mountain biking what the Glastonbury Festival is to the music industry – a massive celebration of the sport which can get quite messy… And Whistler is mountain biking’s equivalent of Mecca anyway, with thousands of riders making pilgrimages there every summer.

Luckily I live just down the street (1.5 to 2 hours drive, depending on traffic) in Vancouver, but unluckily I think this will have been the only day I can get up there this year! Still, I made the most of it, for sure.

We spent the morning riding the hill, getting in three full runs from top to bottom plus a few extra bits and pieces. Man, I love Whistler. The variety is huge, with trails built for every skill set, and you can even get away from the crowds on the biggest weekend for MTB up there. If you hit anything with confidence, you’ll be fine, as all the trails are well built and to a standard sort of set of rules. It’s really confidence building.

Let me just state right now that I love the trail Freight Train. A series of large flowing tabletop jumps linked together by bermed corners, where could you go wrong?

Didn’t manage to get any pictures of actual riding apart from this wall ride, and the picture really doesn’t do the feature justice…

It came to about 4 or so when we went switched out our bikes for cameras, and I’d been riding with Aidan Ward, who’s a professional photographer, so it wasn’t a simple matter of grab the camera and go, no no bucko, it was a decision based on memory cards, matching lenses with bodies and who’d be carrying all the extra gear. But if it’s all in the name of getting sweet shots, who’s complaining?

I’ll leave the shots to do the talking in a moment, but I love Crankworx Slopestyle dearly. Where else do you get guys doing insane tricks off insane stunts with 10′s of thousands of spectators yelling them on, all in the right ventricle of world mountain biking’s heart?

The guys were all throwing down massif runs, but this year it was so damn dry that lots of folks were also hitting the ground hard. Still, those who held it together were totally impressive, with winner Cam Zink’s run being awesome! I was disappointed for Darren Berrecloth, as I think he had one of the best runs of the day, but bit it hard on the last jump… Maybe next year.

Anyhoo, here’s some choice shots:

Photo were shot by Aidan Ward, Tim H and myself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 8:04 am and is filed under In and around BC, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.