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Winter time got you down? Matt Hunter doesn’t let it slow him down. He just sent me a little update on what’s been going on in BC. How do you say…..JEALOUS?

I love living in BC. The riding is amazing, the mountains are big and
there is always something to do outside. Unfortunately the winters
are really long and I start to really miss my bike after a while.
Skiing and snowmobiling can fill the void for a while but then
singletrack dreams start to wake me up when February rolls around. So
I came up with a plan. I knew of an area in BC’s interior that has
some really warm days and very little snow. The mighty Fraser river
flows nearby and warms the valley, and the mountain has a perfect
West face that gets a lot of sun. This mountain in particular also
has the largest scree slope I have ever seen. I rode it last year for
a shot filming for Seasons and it was an amazing descent.
Unfortunately the only way to the top is to hike it - and it takes
about three hours, but these are desperate times.
So I called a couple of friends who I knew were also itching to ride
their Demos, we packed up the truck and it was on.
We had to take our bikes apart and tie them to hiking packs, and the
climb took us about 3 hours. The following photos tell the story of
our trip. It was awesome.

on the road. It feels so good to have the bikes in the truck
going riding!

We have arrived. We were really happy to see there is no snow
on the west facing slope, in the background we can see the scree
slope we are there to ride.

Found a sweet antler on the hike up. A good excuse to stop for
a rest.

taking a break, about halfway up. We ascended in the trees to
the North of the scree.

Climbing up, getting pretty close now. I like the snowy
mountains in the background of this shot.

When we started to get onto the top of the slope we were
getting so stoked because we could see the lines we wanted to ride.

shredding the rocks! At times it was really challenging
because the size of the rocks on the slope would change, hitting the
bigger rocks going fast could be sketchy. SOooo fun though. It felt a
lot like skiing powder, because you could pretty much ride anywhere
on the hill.

My Rig. this is how it stayed when I got off!

After riding the slope. We were so stoked! You can kind of see
our tracks in the rocks behind us.

Thanks for reading.
Matty

April 23-26 is the 2009 Ranchstyle Festival here in Grand Junction. This is an awesome event hosted by one of our local shops, Grassroots Cycles. MRP is sponsoring the Slalom race, and I will be teaching a skills clinic on Friday to help get you ready for the race. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Check out the link below for more info.

Click me for more info!

If you have not yet been to Whistler, now is the time. Stop putting it off and just go. That place is amazing. The amount of riding is mind boggling, and the way of life up there is even more amazing….in the summer it revolves around mountain bikes. If you are a gravity racer or rider, imagine your ultimate riding paradise, and that is what Whistler is.

I spent a couple days up on the mountain testing the new G2 guide on a Knolly V-Tack, courtesy of Noel Buckley the owner of Knolly Bikes. The G2 and the V-Tack were both flawless, even in the muddy mess that some of the trails were. The extended skid of the G2 was especially useful in places that had big logs and rocks to slide over, because unlike a conventional chainguide, there is nothing to hang up on once you slide past the skid. Very

We gave Brian Lopes a prototype G2 to run on one of his new bikes and he’s really digging it. Nice.

I’ll be up at Snowmass in 2 weeks for the USA Cylcing National Finals. Updates to follow.

Cheers,
Ryan