While there for business I managed to sneak in 2 days riding in North Vancouver's world class freeride trail system. Totally unreal! This was entirely thanks to the awesome Dave Henni-bomb, who put me up on his couch, lent me his downhill rig, and guided me around. (Check out his graphics skills btw).
We spent both days doing shuttle runs down Mt. Cypress. This place seemed to me to be pretty technical, even though we apparently focused on the easier lines. Big roots, wet rocks, some drops, and a bit of north-shore woodwork. This place had lots of fresh dirt and the whole thing felt pretty extreme to me having never been on a downhill bike before. A full 8 inches of front / rear travel took some getting used to.
Although I crashed a bunch I didn't get hurt too bad. We ended up finding a guy who did just bounce off a botched-landing from a jump. He figured his back was pretty hurt and he was still tangled up in his bike when we encountered him... by himself... in the late afternoon. After talking over options for a bit he elected to have me and another guy carry him out rather than call in official emergency services (which he was pretty much prepared to do when we found him). When he could almost stand under his own power we concluded that he'd just been winded and was probably going to pee some blood but otherwise had no spinal injuries. He was apparently too cocky in his approach and it came back to bite him.We learned that earlier in the day he'd bombed past some other girl who wiped and instead of helping he just yelled at her for being crashed in the middle of the tail. Who does that? In any case... he learned a lesson in humility the hard way as this girl later found us planning the carry-out and totally called him on it! We delivered the dude to his awaiting fiancee at the road and she drove him off to the hospital. Here's a shot of the whole ordeal:
Sunday was better. We woke up and heard rumors of 10cm of snow at the top of Cypress. We went out anyway picking up a few other guys along the way. The rumors were true:
We did a few very exciting and cold snow runs, we got lost a bit, and crashed a bit more. A friend of Dave's busted a rear derailleur... which are considered disposable parts in the west. Luckily, this was gravity riding and having no functional drive-train doesn't really slow you down much. Seems expensive for a disposable part though.
Super fun! You are looking at the real possibility of breaking bones (almost everyone there had at one point or another) but the risk is worth it.
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