During peak season, it seems like every mountain
bike news feed has something in it that takes place at Whistler Bike Park. But a recent poll showed only 22% of this
audience has been to a resort style bike park, let alone Whistler Specifically. So today I’ll presume nothing about your
knowledge of bike parks or Whistler, and provide a crash course for the 78%. A little refresher to make that stuff in your
news feed a little more relevant and easy to follow. Let’s start with some disambiguation. Whistler is a municipality about 80 miles
(125km) North of Vancouver Canada. It has schools, grocery stores, houses, coffee
shops a hardware store, library, and even a museum just like your town, but it’s all
planned around a ski resort and bike park called Whistler Blackcomb. This video has not been made in affiliation
with the town or resort. Speaking of the bike park, it’s not even
close to the only place to ride in Whistler, and the town is also situated close to Squamish,
Pemberton, and a long list of other great riding destinations. No doubt, many people come to Whistler just
to be here, and there are many other things to do besides mountain biking. But as you can imagine, staying in Whistler
is quite costly from the housing to the amenities, but not everyone here is rich, or even close
to it. By taking day trips, camping outside of town,
or just making sacrifices and saving up, many ordinary mountain bikers make the pilgrimage
to Whistler Bike Park, and if you’re coming from the airport in Vancouver, that Pilgrimage
ends up being a pretty stunning 90 minute drive. If it’s not obvious to you yet, resorts
like Whistler Blackcomb are primarily for Skiing with mountain biking only becoming
a source of summer revenue over the last few decades. This is important because I’ve seen some
resorts treat mountain biking like an off-season activity, but not Whistler. Here, there’s always something new going
on, whether it be changes to existing trails, or the development of brand new ones. The sheer quantity and variety put Whistler
in an elite category shared by only a few destinations. Because it’s been like this for so long,
countless bike companies and professional riders have planted roots in Whistler’s
vicinity. So even as other amazing destinations step
up their game, it’ll be some time before any have the clout enjoyed by this whole region. But I don’t think it’s the clout that
keeps the masses coming back, it’s the stuff out on the mountain. And most trips up it start with a short ride
on the Fitzsimmons express, the first lift that takes you to the Fitzsimmons zone. This is where iconic trail like a line and
dirt merchant are located and the majority of laps at Whistler bike park will begin and
end here. From there back down to the base you lose
about 1200 feet (365m) of elevation. That’s a healthy number and it’s enough
to wear most people out, but it’s not even close to all the vertical Whistler has. From the top of Fitzsimmons you can hop on
the Garbanzo Express and gain another 2700 feet (822m) of elevation. Up in the Garbanzo Zone or Garbo, you’ll
find a whole lot of raw, steep, advanced features from exposed rock rolls, to plain old harrowing
tech. From there, you can even descend to a completely
different part of the mountain called Creekside, which has a lot of tight singletrack, and
sometimes even some loam. Compared to the rest of the mountain, Creekside’s
trails are somewhat new, and it’s opened up a whole new canvas to Whistler to expand
its trails. But you can go even higher. Once the snow melts you can take a Gondola
to the peak of Whistler and gain another 1100ft (335m) of rocky technical goodness. From top to bottom, this bike park loses over
5000ft (1500m) of elevation, and contains over 155 mi of trail (250km). But the most impressive part is the variety. In one run, you can ride loam, rock rolls,
tech, wooden features, and high speed jump trails, and most of it is shielded from the
elements by trees which is something you might take for granted if you’ve never tried to
ride jumps in the wind. And speaking of jumps, there are a lot of
them at Whistler, but none as well known as those found on A-line. Although there are actually more impressive
jump trails at Whistler, A-line is the one that gets the most attention for a few reasons. The corridor is very wide, there’s plenty
of space between the jumps, the lips are predictable, and as I mentioned almost the entire trail
is shielded from the wind by trees. The landings are also massive, which means
casing these jumps usually won’t kill you. It’s these safety factors that make A-line
so popular. Anyone with a good amount of jumping experience
can work their way through it, and ride way bigger jumps than they would normally feel
comfortable with. A-line is a great place to work on whips and
other tricks best practiced on big straight jumps with huge landings. It’s also a great training ground for the
bigger jump trails like Dirt Merchant and Crabapple hits. One notable jump is the moonbooter which comes
about three quarters of the way down. It starts with two mind blowingly huge berms
and a plunge into a gulley. You go full on, pump the roller, and literally
fly. At the very end of the run there’s a large
step up that everyone on the lift line can see, and this thing—you can hit as fast
as you want. You won’t be running out of landing. For fun, I decided to record A Line from top
to bottom and sync it with a stop watch to find out just how much airtime one can expect
in a typical run. Now jumping is not my strong point and there
are people who boost these way higher than me, but I still clocked almost 40 seconds
of time flying on my bicycle in just one run. That means that in a trip to Whistler, you
could easily spend 10 or 15 minutes flying. These factors make A-line probably the most
famous jump trail in the world and certainly the most popular one at Whistler. But if you need to work on your jumping, or
just warm up there’s also a smaller run at Whistler called Crank it up which starts
out with really small jumps and gradually works up to bigger ones. You don’t need much speed at all to clear
these, and like A-line they’re mostly forgiving. Crank it up is also a great introduction to
big berms and braking bumps. Jumps certainly get the most media attention
at Whistler, but the technical trails here are plentiful to say the least. Every year I ride tech trails here that I’ve
never seen before, and every time they challenge me. But lest you think you can bring a GoPro and
do justice to the gnarly stuff you were riding, just forget it. As great as Whistler is, it’s still subject
to the GoPro effect. In this video we haven’t even scratched
the surface of what’s in Whistler Bike Park, and I’m certainly saving some of it for
future videos as I’ll be spending a few weeks here. But hopefully this gives you a good idea of
how big this bike park is, why people make such a huge deal out of it, and why most people
who visit here usually do so again. Anyway I have a new bike to shake down, and
a whole lot of trail to explore, so I’ll catch you next week. Until then, thanks for riding with me today
and I’ll see you next time.
