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rumors are there could be additional races dropped into the existing calendar (hypothetically a DH in the SLC area and XC in vancouver area, making the last two rounds doubles). let's hope so!

I think this somewhat fits the topic but also kind of doesn't: Alexander Ovechkin, the all time leading goal scorer in NHL history had a falling out with his long term equipment sponsor CCM a couple of years ago over the fact they discontinued the stick model he spent the majority of his career using. Because of the need to constantly "innovate" and give the masses something new (where have we heard this story before?), he tried using the newer CCM sticks and it got to the point where he was using other brands to no avail. At this point...

Blows my mind that people move to another country and hardly bother to learn the language. Don't be that person, dive in! I don't see myself ever moving to Italy, but I would love to stay for a month or two on the northern coast. Ride all day, and then just east pasta and seafood every night.

If you look outside of Bellingham, elsewhere in Whatcom Co, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by both the amount and proximity of riding that isn't Galbraith or Lookout. That's always been on my radar for low cost of living. Housing is likely your #1 expense so I wouldn't dismiss a place because the avocados at the local grocery store are $2.49.

Yes, I'm sorry if I was unclear. That was sarcasm, and everything about this news report is the worst. I was being sarcastic and grumpy about the apparent PR desire to frame this terrible news as a win for customers, sort of like "Man receiving double amputation finally sheds the freshman 15 and then some."

They could have at least had the basic respect to respond to him.....Sam was most pissed about the fact he was completely ignored. Maybe we won't know which brands exactly they were, but I fully believe five ten wouldn't have the mtb market they do without Sam Hill - I'm not sure people these days realise how massive his influence was in making huge numbers of people change to flat pedals 20 years ago....

5.10 was acquired by adidas in 2011. With plenty of the core MTB related staff staying on. So you are cooked on that point. Whether Sam is a good investment for brands is definitely debatable, even when racing at his peak, he didn't actually ride that much. There's always two sides or more to any story, but Sam is a true icon. And his DH to Enduro transition (with huge succes) is so, so underrated.

Yeah he's an icon, but he basically doesn't ride MTB anymore. All he wants to do is ride moto with his kids and maybe show up to 1 or 2 MTB events per year and not even participate then. Why would any athlete manager at a brand want to throw money at that in this economy? Five Ten in particular was gobbled up by Adidas who just wants to push Samba wannabes on everyone, without actually knowing what makes a good flat pedal shoe.

Spectating was pretty brutal, makes you really appreciate the hiking trail on 1199. Awesome location just really hard to see anything, hopefully next time you can access a bit more of the track, or more than a few people at a time.

He seems to have lost a lot of respect from the rider community when he went full influencer... and also when he went and filmed a video on Brendog's battleship feature the week after Rampage that one year.

As fit enduro bikers, trail bike lovers and parents with a shotgun seat the wife bought a Trek Rail and I bought a decked out Vala last year (because my wife "convinced" me, we needed that, all the cool influencer, former EWS racer moms have them). With the shotgun seat it was curious fun for a bit, until our son told us, he also wants a bike with a motor. After a couple of weeks with the emtbs we realised that something was missing. After the honeymoon-phase we rode eco-mode almost exclusively, the emtbs weren´t as fun (for us) as...

Not in squamish anyways. Not saying there isn't more e bikes than before. But building trails nearly every day, say meadow of a griz sees 90% e-bikes,while adjacent 19th or Grin'n'holler is 90% bikes. Similar at Alice lake. It's just one market, but there sure is a lot of new long travel bikes being ridden and I don't see that changing drastically too soon.

I have no idea what are you talking about? I don't see any "hardcore" riders getting on e-bikes around this part of the world. I do see many e-bikes, but most of them are sticking to blue trails and generally ridden by people I wouldn't have seen on trails before. The "hardcore" riders still ride mountain bikes just like before around here, with a few exceptions obviously. There's definitely no shortage of a market for long travel enduro bikes. There's also a plenty of reasons not to get a Turbo Levo or any other eMTB over an actual MTB.

In whistler, you see like five v10's for every one pivot phoenix. Talking to the shops there, they hardly ever see a broken v10 frame. If they do crack, it's because someone smacked the frame into something. Usually a chainstay hitting a tree or something like that. There are videos online of people breaking phoenix chainstays from normal landings, and breaking front triangles from heavy landings. These are single instances being published so it's tough to know if it's representative of a design issue, bad QC, or previous abuse, but the videos of catastrophic failures I have seen are concerning...

Shop guys pretty regularly see just about any frame on earth broken, and it really doesn't often turn any of us off a brand. The forces bikes see are both pretty dynamic and pretty crazy at times, especially considering how much we expect this premium stuff to weigh. Seeing a broken V-10 doesn't make me want to avoid them, it makes me curious how fuckin' hard the rider was going. The general public does not always understand that stuff does just break. We get people in daily who tell us we couldn't pay them to ride carbon, then we grab...

Congrats on getting married this week. I thought you should know that the AI art at the top made be barf and I couldn't read your article for fear of seeing more.

I love that 1199 has a legit sense of place, a few tough pedals means its true Sea to Sky riding. Watching it you're thinking "yeah, that's Whistler." Riding there is rarely a steep rip top to bottom. It's all about linking interesting sections and slabs, often with traverses or grunts between them. Everyone, when you're in Whistler go do at least one day on the valley trails. Climb the flank or the road up to the Blackcomb trails. It'll hurt, but it'll be amazing. Mountain biking.

Probably the first of your posts I’ve disagreed with: I cannot wait to see how the Asa/Jordan battle plays out.

Big shout out to Wyn for the pits video. Those little insights we learn about Jacob Jewetts shoulder, Gwin being the last one to leave the pits and Mad Maxs brake levers captures these athletes in a way that the morons from WBD will never be able to when they shove a mike in front of them. Hope he has a long future in downhill when he stops racing.