The car was packed and ready to go Friday evening. I met Neil at home and we headed off to Whistler for a weekend of crankin’ and tubbin’. We were staying on the 10th floor of The Westin Resort and Spa, slope-side. We unloaded the car, stored our bikes and grabbed our bathing suits for the hot tub. The hot tub drained all stress and tension along with our last bits of energy. After watching a bit of Olympic competition, we hit the sack early.
Saturday morning, we slept in until about 9am. One of the great things about the summer season over the winter, is the fact that the lifts stay open until 8pm, as opposed to 3pm, a result of the longer days. It lets us be a little more tardy in the morning, taking our time to wake-up and prepare. There is much less gear to put on and the elements aren’t as harsh in the summer, so it takes a mere 5 minutes of preparation as opposed to the 30 minute gear-up after the 30 minute warm-up. The conditions are typically the same in the morning as they are in the evening on the dirt trails, unlike the winter where the early bird catches the first tracks, so there’s no real advantage to getting up to the top first.
We prepared our bikes, with a few tightened screws here and a few brake adjustments there and loaded our bikes onto the lift to make our way to mid-station. They sky was grey and a little foreboding, but it was nice crisp weather, perfect for biking. Our first run of the season was “Crank It Up”. It was loaded with jump after jump, berm after berm, never a dull moment. A few of the jumps were scary high, but we made our way down the trail cautiously, trying to get a feel for it. We were passed by a few fast riders, but for the most part, we kept up with the flow of traffic. The run was a lot of fun and now that we had one pass over the trail, we could attack it with more speed and more confidence in its sloping and banking. We attacked the jumps and enjoyed a few seconds of air time, getting a feel for the weightlessness and speed. By our third run of the trail, we felt awesome and were passing pretty much everyone on the trail, hearing words of caution from those we passed. The third run was our fastest run and with the biggest air. I was getting so much air, my back wheel was twisting out of alignment, once landing with both wheels out of alignment. It was a little scary, but I managed to land it and made a more conscious effort to try to land the jumps straight to avoid any major wipe-outs. After the third run, we were feeling pretty shaky and ready for some refueling, so we grabbed some lunch at the bottom of the mountain.
After lunch, we decided to head right up to the top, to tackle the big stuff. The upper part of the mountain is for advanced riders only. There are caution signs immediately preceding the lift to thwart inexperienced riders from attempting the sketchy stuff. We unloaded the lift and instead of following the train of riders heading down one black run, we decided to attempt a different black run. It was a bad choice as we were riding down a super steep, rooty, wet run. Thankfully, it was short-lived, but I definitely felt like a bit of a newb walking my bike down the trail and meeting up with the rest of the riders that took the alternate route. We didn’t make that mistake twice.  We rode to the top of one of the two blue runs to discover it was closed for rework. Damnit! That meant we were riding the blacks until we could meet up with a blue later on. Ugh! We should have double-checked the trail board to make sure it was open, but we didn’t and there we were, at the top of the black. We took our time and made it through alive, but it wasn’t without a few dismounts to walk my bike down the rougher parts of the trail.
The blue runs at the top of the mountain were really boring. Basically, they followed a ski run down which meant it was crazy rocky, so the vibrations were rattling our brains loose from our spinal cord. The run was too wide and too loose to really enjoy anything about it. We couldn’t bomb it, so there was no thrill of speed nor was there anything technical about it. Basically, we endured it to get to the more interesting black runs. We met up with “Freight Train”, a fun run with drops, rock rolls and tight berms with huge sloping banks that lend themselves to serious lateral corners for the crazy fast riders. There were a few double diamond drops along the way, but I was able to ride around the crazy drops in favour for the steep slopes. We rode the Freight Train one last time having familiarized ourselves with it, so we could ride it with more speed and confidence before meeting up with Crank It Up. I was pretty exhausted by the time we hit Crank It Up, so I pretty much rolled most of the jumps, just tackling the odd jump when I could muster up the strength.
We made our way down the trail and called it a day. We ran three half runs and two full runs, which took us from about 11:30 am until about 5:00 pm, with a break for lunch. We were completely exhausted and couldn’t wait for some food and the hot tub. We spent a couple of hours chatting in the hot tub with a few other riders from San Diego, before heading back to our room to crash. I tried to stay awake to watch a few final Olympic moments and fought it for about an hour before succumbing to Mr. Sandman, completely spent.

The following video pretty much sums it up….

Far better than the very first day (and structure) on my bike three years ago…