It’s been about 4 weeks now since the downhill lifts have opened here at Whistler and I have been loving every bit of it. It took a while to get used to the size of everything over here…the jumps are bigger, the drops are bigger, the berms are bigger; it’s as though everything here is just bigger than anything I have seen let alone ridden before.

Although it was a little daunting for the first week, not being able to ride some parts and just being all out scared of pretty much everything, that quickly changed. After getting used to what the park has to offer I started trying everything and whatever I thought was too big I just stopped thinking about the worst that could happen as I have always done and just tried it anyway. This was a new way of thinking for me, especially coming from the cross country scene where I did everything I could to avoid injury I had to step out on a branch and just stop thinking of all things. Although this sounds like utter stupidity I found it was the only way to overcome those fears that made me decide not to try it in the first place. I knew I could do it I just kept thinking myself out of it. Sure, with this way of thinking came consequences; side swiping trees, slipping on roots, grazing the knees, cutting your hands and what we all dread the most crashing out hard. My first decent crash was on A-Line, a track with jumps the whole way down, I was getting confident and just hit a jump with too much speed clearing the down ramp and landing front heavy to flat ground slamming my face into my handlebars. Thank goodness for my full face helmet I still have all my teeth.

This week I had the crash of my life after overshooting a drop, bottoming out my forks and finding myself flying a few meters through the air. I hit the ground shoulder first digging up a good chunk of dirt before bouncing again rolling down the hill a little more. With the adrenalin still pumping I jumped straight up in shock having a good idea of what just happened. Good ol Mike (house mate) got the whole thing on video which just made the crash all the more worth it

The second half of the hill should be opening soon, they are still waiting for some of the snow to clear before letting us up. Apparently there is still snow over 2 meters high in some areas which makes riding a little difficult. I’ll keep you all posted…