Whistler!!!

I'm not kidding when I say that Whistler, BC is my favorite place in the world. This is in no small part due to the phenomenal Whistler Bike Park that offers trails for every kind of mountain biker. Just outside the Whistler village are world-class cross-country trails, but the big fun is to be had on the lift runs. The difficulty level ranges all the way up to pro-only, and you can descend all 3,400 feet of the mountain on jumps, wooden stunts, drops, wallrides, roots, rocks, berms, skinnies...

I took a few runs down the heavy stuff, but I have to admit I was having a lot more fun on the intermediate runs like Crank It Up. Now, A-Line is often the most talked-about trail on the mountain, and it is indeed a blast with all of its fast berms and table-top jumps. It's got so many jumps you spend about half your time in the air. Crank It Up was where I really found myself laughing because the jumps are a little smaller and less technical. Rather than brake-checking and sometimes coming up short like on A-Line, I was floating over every jump and rarely touching the brakes. It's good to push yourself sometimes, but the most fun is when you're relaxed and flowing smoothly.

A short bike ride outside the village is Lost Lake, which has some good swimming and a designated dog beach. The floating dive platform even has a doggy ramp. 

Freeride?? In San Francisco??

Maybe I've had my head in the sand, but I just learned about a dirt jump and freeride park that's about to be built in San Francisco. It appears to have the green light, and according to SF UrbanRiders.org, the first build days will be held on 8/8 and 8/9.

Download a PDF of the plan here.

Portland

We stayed a few nights with a friend in Portland. While I've never been a big fan of big cities, Portland is one of the few I can handle. People here have a great appreciation for the outdoors, and there are an absurd number of ways to play nearby. Forest Park, which is immediately within the city limits, has miles of hiking and biking trails and offers some nice views of the surrounding area.

The real gem that I found about 90 minutes southwest of Portland is the Black Rock Freeride Area. The locals have somehow managed to create a fully-legit freeride park in the middle of some state-managed logging land. Pedaling up the fire road, the first thing you find is a play area of over an acre, with everything from progressive drops, to tabletop jumps, to skinnies. I could have spent the entire day in the "Basic Training" area, but I pedaled further up to run into a group of local riders. They turned out to be very friendly, and showed me their favorite trails. As we ascended we passed everything from fast, flowy singletracks to enormous wooden stunts seen in the New World Disorder videos.

We reached the top of the trail system after a gradual 3 mile climb. The trails have an incredible amount of work put into them, literally thousands of man-hours have been spent. All the berms are smooth and fast, the wooden stunts are worthy of any North Shore builder. In one descent we linked turns to drops to booters to ladder bridges and skinnies. If you are a freerider and you can get anywhere near this park, it is a must-do, and give some thanks to the builders for bringing some real freeriding south of the Canadian border.