Good god it was entertaining
A guy from work was going to be in town for the weekend for a meeting on Monday so suggested me and another guy from work head up to the downhill bike park in Whistler. We also picked up a couple of other people. The crew was Lance, Kenyon, Ciem, Gope (don't know if I spelled those last two correctly.
During the week we talked a bit about it and I grew more apprehensive as I found out there was going to be body armor involved. Kenyon also suggested we hire bikes up there because I will probably do $150 worth of damage to my bike easily. I also knew the guys I was going with were pretty quick so I started wondering what I was getting myself into.
Of course I was hungover on Saturday morning at 7:30am which was a bad start. I picked up Kenyon and his mates and we shot through to Squamish to meet with Lance. We got to Whistler about 10:15 and looking around at all the dudes in their full armor and giant bikes wasn't really helping. It was cool to finally be in Whistler but it was fairly overcast so couldn't see to much of the mountains. I went and hired my bike and signed all of the waivers to make sure if I killed myself it wasn't any body elses fault. I also got the damage insurance, body armor and a "top of the world" pass which all came to $238. What a ridiculous amount of money to spend for 6 hours, but look at the There was significant faffing involved before we got up to the top of the first run with getting into all our gear, people forgetting passes and peoples passes not working properly. Bike:
We probably hit the first trail at about 11:30 or something and it was pretty terrifying. The bike felt really weird and nothing like I have ever ridden before. The first run we did was super fast, wide, flowing and jumpy. Most of the jumps were table tops though so you just went over them as fast as you wanted to. It goes without saying that my brakes got a pretty good work out down that run.
From then on they day got progressively more awesome. I started settling into the bike and started to open up the throttle a bit. It was so weird to only be going down hill without any of the grind of mountain biking I am used to. Surprisingly still a lot of work though as maneuvering the "couch" was quite a job. We did some flowing stuff and some technical stuff. I went down a bunch of stuff I'm not sure if I could do on my trail bike. Huge drops and shit. The suspension just had so much travel that all you had to do is point it down the cliff, put your ass on the back wheel over the back of the seat and hang on as it nose dived into the ground.
For lunch we grabbed a burger as I complained about my sore index fingers from hanging on to the brakes. Then we decided to do top of the world. It was absolutely nuts. I think Whistler is at about 400m and we caught chair lifts and gondolas up to 2100m. Unfortunately it was pretty clagged in so we didn't have much of a view but we went over some pretty icy sections and steep rocks. When we got up and got our bikes off it was freezing and low visibility and all of us questioned what the hell we were doing up at 2100m with mountain bikes. We set off down the track and my fingers went numb. It was strange braking because I couldn't feel the brake lever so I had to go on instinct on how much to squeeze. Despite the cold and the pain in my index finger muscles it was a pretty awesome trail. We were probably descending for a good 40min or so!
When we got down to the main part of the park Kenyon and Ciem decided to boost it down to see if they could get one more run in. Unfortunately that was a bad move. Lance and I came around a corner and over a jump to find Ciem lying in the ditch. He couldn't move and was in quite a bit of pain so we called the rescue squad who came and bound him up real good with suspicions of fracture pelvis or back and took him away. Not good. We coasted to the bottom in a pretty sombre manner. It didn't help that braking was now pretty excruciating. Brakes on or off was fine but transitioning between the two made it feel like the tendons in my arm were raking past barbed wire.
Lance Gope and I went to the pub for dinner and a couple of beers to await news of Ciem. Turned out he had fractured two vertebrae but if they drugged him up he could come back to Vancouver that night. So we picked him up and got out of Whistler about 8:30pm. Poor bastard had a hell of a time getting to the car but at least he was up on his feet. After dropping everyone off I got home about 11pm and hit the hay hard. I am writing this the day after and my whole body feels pretty beaten up. Stiff shoulders, back fore arms and even legs (which is weird due to the lack of pedaling but I guess I was pretty much standing up on the pedals all day). All up I think it was around a $300 but it was worth it I reckon. Just a shit tonne of fun and I think I got about a million times better at mountain biking over the day. Probably won't get to do it again this season but I'm definitely keen to get back there next summer. Now I just have to learn to ski so I can see Whistler in the Winter.
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