Close calls

Riding a dh trail that changed a ton in the year since I rode it. Top to bottom was a ton of near death moments but for whatever reason I just assumed it would return to normality at some point and it never did.

Also the first time I rode some steep lips on my spire. The hundred extra mm of wheelbase and wagon wheels had me bucking or manualing down the landing on every single jump.

that time I almost hit a black bear at Plattekill. triple lift was running, so me and a buddy hiked over to the double lift side for a run. came around a blind corner and there was a bear just standing on the right next to the trail eating something, only maybe a foot or so off the trail. it was facing away thankfully, because it was a pretty big one. wasn't much space on the trail, but i veered as far left as possible and just kept going, and yelled BEAR as loud as i could for my buddy behind me. the bear was just as surprised as we were, because it took off running into the woods. definitely startled the hell out of me, it was close enough to the trail i could have reached out and touched it.

was that when we were at blue back in June?

In 2020 at Panorama in BC, I was on a pretty rocky trail that ended up a small chute to a meet up spot leading into hells bells, the jump trail. It was super dry and dusty and I got a smidge off line, and hit a rock between the two lines down the quick chute. This pinballed me into a rock on the other side of the second line while trying to turn and it tossed me down onto the much lower b-line, head first with my 40lb Meta on top of me. I tossed my bike off me and sat up slowly, taking a moment to feel everything out. My hand hurt, and I was super shook but after a minute I removed my helmet and we did a concussion test. I walked it off for a bit, got back on the bike and rolled to the med center for another test and a better check. Nothing but a sore hand and what I'll later say was an extremely light concussion. I was only wearing a full face and knee pads.

What I was later told by friends was I pretty much got bucked and lawn darted head first into the lower trail about 7-8ft lower and landed like a loose sack of bricks on my neck. They thought from their point of view 6ft away that I wasn't going to walk again. My D3 was also cracked from visor to half way back with 3 big ridges. I have no idea how I got so lucky that day.

I was running a 2.10 tire with 60 psi in it on single track on the side of a mountain. Came in too hot and had to slam on my brakes, tire slide out right over the edge lol.