Photo Story: Shredding Classic Whistler Bike Park Trails on a Single-Speed RAAW Madonna
How to start a good day? Coffee, right?
Then there’s nothing better than meeting at the Whistler Lift Coffee Company, which is just a couple of meters away from the chairlift and ordering a large cappuccino to wake up.
It was a cloudy day, but still, summer had finally arrived two weeks ago and we had temperatures above 25°C instead of rain. After a late start to the bike park season, Whistler is slowly becoming busier and busier. The bike park kept a couple of double black and pro jump trails closed, but we still had a wide range of trails to explore.
We started our day off with a few A-Line laps to warm up and get the blood going. There’s nothing better than watching your friends throwing big whips in front of you whilst you’ve already taken off the jump.
The lift line down in the village started to grow so we decided to head up into the Garbanzo Zone to hit some rock rolls and single trails. We chose Original Sin, which up top is a fast and rough trail with lots of opportunities to get some air under your tyres.
The middle part gifts you some beautiful views on the Whistler Mountain and the Creekside Village.
The lower part of the trail gets steeper and we fast approached some bigger rock rolls and even found a cheeky drop on the side of the trail.
We decided to give our hands a rest for a minute or two, and I found a chance to take some pictures of my companion. My Madonna V2 is equipped with a single-speed kit, flat pedals and brings 190mm travel up front and 160mm out back combined with 29” wheels.
The next trail is one of my favorites in the park, Fatcrobat. It starts with an old wooden double and leads into steep rocks lower down in the trail.
We passed a feature which opens up a lot of additional lines to the main trail. One of my friends hit this drop on his DH bike a couple of days ago and he showed me the line for the first time. I knew that it would be a pretty flat landing in-between two trees, but I was feeling comfortable enough on my bike to try it. The deep, full travel sound of the fork dominated the landing, but I rolled away without a problem, happy that it had worked out.
After that, we ended up rounding out the damn good day with another classic A-Line lap, obviously!
Story and photos by Rob Perry and Peter Walker
raawmtb.com
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Thanks again Ruben, Peter, and the Raaw team. I love what you guys are doing. Building a killer bike and brand.
The world has gone DC/Enduro these days.
I love de-saturated images rather than the mobile phone over saturated, HDR images that are everywhere just now.
For 2020 Orange/Teal grading is the new B/W
Original Sin and Fatcrobat är two of My favourites. The latter soo understated, would have been a favourite trail anywhere else.