· Today I decided to get up early and head to trails before they got busy. This turned out to be a very good idea as hundreds of riders turned up on an exceptionally hot and sunny day. You'd think that going downhill isn't tiring or hard work but believe me, it's more mentally challenging than any other type of riding I've done and the result is that you are TIRED after a full day of it.
Saturday turned out to be the first day where the top part of Crank It Up was open, a trail I'd been itching to try since I got here. Woohoo! The top part only opened late in the day but I got a chance to do 1 run down it before I had to call it a day. I managed to get it on video though, despite the fact that I was riding behind a tour-led women's class. The instructor sounded like she had some really good tips though so I'm thinking a DH class would be good for people that want to do it properly.
Here's a video of the run down from the top of Crank It Up to the good ole reliable Heart of Darkness (if you've been following this trip that name will be very familiar to you by now). Speaking of trail names I had a bash at Ninja Cougar and Karate Monkey (cool names) today too but didn't manage to get any decent footage unfortunately.
I can't get enough of this place! DH riding is pretty tough on the body though and it feels a lot like you've been punched repeatedly after 3 days of hammering these trails. It's all part of the experience though.
Here are a couple more photos. First up is a photo of the area that is being turned into a freestyle/slopestyle park for some of the upcoming summer events. By the looks of it the riders will be doing backflips etc ONTO the top of some of the obstacles ... awesome.
The freestyle park under construction - some of the features are unbelievably massive.
Next is a photo of GLC Drop, the drop at the bottom of the park before getting back to the gondola. It's awesome when people drop right off the edge. It doesn't look that big and probably isn't for downhill riders but it looks pretty big to me. :P
This is GLC Drop, one of the favourite drops at Whistler Bike Park.
I don't have any footage of GLC Drop myself but here's a pretty good POV video I found on YouTube that shows it pretty well.
Oh yeah and before I go I forgot to mention that today was when crash #1 reared its ugly head too. In yesterday's post I talked about a cool high speed semi-drop that is near the top of the Heart of Darkness run. I was feeling pretty good about things so I decided to go towards it as fast as possible and hit the edge of it ... yeah well that didn't work out so well and I ended up getting thrown off the bike and landing on my wrist. Ouch. I don't care though and the plan for the next riding session on Monday is to do the same thing again and this time do it properly. I'll try and get the camera again so I can get it on video. I've heard people say "Try everything at least 3x" and "If you don't crash you're not going fast enough" ... well ... amen to that and bring on Monday! :)
