No, this name 100% is not a complete ripoff of Whistler Mountain’s mountain bike film-related contest. I swear. Besides, it’s not plagiarism if you cite your sources.
Aight. Down to business before Mr. Johnson brings the hammer down on me. Quarantine times are… interesting, to say the least. I’d be flat out wrong if I was to say this time is how I thought we’d be spending T3, and I do miss school, but there are some silver linings. For one, I don’t have to wake up at 6:30 AM every day to make the pilgrimage out to school every day, although some would argue that the trip from bed to one’s surface trying to catch a 10 AM class is equally arduous. I also can’t claim that international/west coast students haven’t been absolutely hammered by that as well, which is unfortunate. Maybe more of an aluminum lining. Or a lead one.
Along with the online classes, helped out by the lack of sports and time with friends, is a dumb amount of free time. Funny thing about free time, it’s good at first but it is definitely possible to have too much of it, especially when seeing people is frowned upon. I took to the dirt, taking my bike out to the Batchelor St. Trail network, on the backside of Bare Mtn./The Notch. It’s a beautiful location, with lots of trees, loam, nice flow-filled sections and beautiful singletrack. There’s even a river with fresh, crisp alpine water (And lemme tell ya, there’s nothing better than dunking your head in cold water 3/4 of the way through a ride)!
The way I see mountain biking, there’s three main types of challenges on the trail: physical, mental, and technical. Physical challenges are pretty self-explanatory, namely fighting gravity as you fight your way back up the hill. Technical challenges are the skill based sections, whether that be rock gardens, rock slab climbs, or bunny hopping logs. They’re the sections that send you tumbling down hills at low speed or make you smash the stem when you mess up, the ones that give you battle scars to flex to the hordes of nobody who asked.
And then there’s the mental challenges. Mountain biking is just as much a mental game as a physical one, building your nerves to hit an obstacle that you know you can clear, but looks intimidating (gap jumps, I’m looking at you! Also, the GoPro effect is 100% real), and it’s arguably the hardest area of skill to improve in.
Pictured: The Chicken Line 
Pictured: The A-Line
The above feature is a 3.5′ tall rollable rock drop with two line choices. The line on the left (also rider’s left) is the chicken line (or the hardtail line, if you want to keep to your friends), involving a much shallower angle to drop in on. The line on the right is the A-line, involving an additional 6″ and a much steeper angle (more in the realm of 75 degrees from horizontal). After many attempts, I finally cleared the A-line, giving me enough speed to send me over the top of the small berm and down into the brush, but it didn’t matter: the stoke was real!
Mountain biking is satisfying not just for the places that you go to, but the struggle in getting there. There is no summit at Batchelor St. Trails, but it’s a place where I can go on the daily, roughing up some loam and inching my way through rock gardens just for the sake of riding. It’s a visceral fun, as is most fun in the woods, whether you’re zooming through the trees (the better of the two zooms) or riding up what is basically a river bed after a rain storm. It’s a beautiful place, it’s freeing, nothing not to love about it!
“Hey, this post is too long!”
– Everyone, probably
Aye, fair enough. I guess the moral of the story is to get out in the woods if ya can, over this quarantine. See what nature has to offer, it’s 100% worth your while.
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