Chasing the Freeride Dream - Talus Turk's Two Weeks in Virgin, UT 1

Words: Talus Turk

Video/Photos: Caleb Ely

Riding the red dirt of Virgin, Utah is a rite of passage for all freeriders. I’ve grown up in Bellingham, Washington, where I have no shortage of trail access and terrain to allow me to develop my fundamental skills. But I’ve always dreamt of pushing myself to new limits, and Virgin is the best place in the world to do just that.

After a month of planning all the details, Caleb Ely (film maker) and myself packed up and drove 18 hours to the land of freeride. When we pulled into our campsite it was dark, and we could just make out the lines of the mesas that we had been seeing in our sleep for longer than we can remember. We couldn’t wait, we just had to go for a quick night time pedal around the 2008 rampage site, and got our first, albeit dark, glimpse of what gnarly really is.

For the next few days, our giddy selves were hampered by the worst enemy of a desert freerider: Wind. We took that as an opportunity to get a feel for the unique dirt, and revamp some of the deteriorating jumps. The Virgin dirt is unlike anything in the PNW, where we are used to seeing nothing but roots, wet dirt, and loam. We were happily surprised to learn that with the right amount of water, the dirt can be moved, shaped, and packed to a rideable level in a matter of minutes.

After a windy couple days, we were able to grab our bikes and quickly learned how out of our depth we really were. At first, it felt like I had never ridden a bike. The exposure and blindness of many of the features is something that is impossible to wrap your head around when you grow up riding heavily forested areas. After a day or two of getting familiarized with some mellower ridge lines and jumps, my confidence had grown enough to start pushing it.

The first hits on the larger features were nerve racking to say the least, but felt so good. It finally felt like we could accomplish what we had come to do. One of my goals was to 360 a drop, which I had never attempted, but is one of the staple moves in a freerider’s bag of tricks. Bringing a trail bike, which I initially thought wasn’t the greatest idea, ended up being a blessing for this because of how much more nimble it is than a full DH bike, but it is still capable of bigger hits with the right set up. A fun fact about my Transition Patrol is that it’s actually the very first SBG carbon Patrol that was made, and was ridden by Kyle Young (co-owner of Transition Bikes) during the testing process. Even after many years of riding, it’s still going strong!

After two weeks of riding, and pushing myself we headed back, and it was on the trip back where disaster struck. We had made a quick pit stop in Salt Lake City, and while driving back towards the freeway we heard a bump, which we assumed was just a shovel clanging in the back, but about 3 hours down the road we realized it was the bag that had all the footage from the trip on it… It was a quiet ride back to Bellingham, thinking we had lost every clip and photo. Three days later the mood changed when my filmer, Caleb, got a call from SLC police saying they had found his bag and everything in it!

It was not the ending we were expecting, but we are beyond thankful for how it all played out. We can’t thank Transition enough for all their support and helping us create this project. Caleb and I are already planning our next trip to the desert.