Video: Five Volcanoes in Five Days

 What do you mean, he is showing his age? How is he showing it? All of us would be pushing our bikes that slow at 15,000-20,000 feet. Hans is still in better shape than most people and totally rips!

 @Kanter

By that I mean you can see the passage of time on his face. The fact that he is older is undeniable. He's not the young guy he used to be when I first started idolizing him back in the the mid-90's.

I agree with you that he does still rip, in fact that was the point of my post. I think it shows the longevity of our sport, that at nearly 50 you can still get out there and kill it! And from that stand point alone Hans is still relevant, inspiring, and most importantly, innovative.

 Hans is 46. The only thing that stood out to me was that he didn't look very playful on the downhills, and there were a few times in the video where he almost looked unstable, like he was tired. It could have been the climbs took it out of him. I'll have to find recent videos of him doing other types of riding. Here's one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bBE3cAkwY I guess I jumped remember Hans like MacAskill is today...constantly showing off his trials skills. I guess Han's doesn't do that kinda stuff anymore.

 Ya probably something to do with the 5 volcanoes in 5 days part that made him tired haha. That and a heavy backpack. Heavy backpacks make you super awkward on a bike.

 I am one hell of a volcano

 Playful on the downhills? Maybe it's because they were up at 5000m hiking and climbing with some howling winds trying to hit five volcanoes in five days. Tough crowd here.

 Sorry fellas, but even you, me or anyone would be a lot less playful after hinking all the way up, at 20k feet high altitude, with winds that strong, and a bag that big on your back, thats just ridiculous....

 I have ridden down Chimborazo before, probably from not as high as what they did but it was such an awesome experience. The altitude also just kills you.

 if you are not used to the high altitude's thin air you got "soroche" (altitude sickness) and you feel your head and lungs are about to explode. spend a few days riding at a slow pace for acclimatization and you are ready to challenge the mountain

 Yea, i want his bike soooo bad

 Ha! Don't kid yourself. Ecuador is pretty much a Third World country. Expect feral dog packs and zero facilities (but the peopel are generally nice). In addition, many of the volcano slopes a re cut with fissures so deep that they'd never get you out if you fall in. This is not the sort of place to take lightly unless you want to be the next Christopher McCandless.

 Sorry, Ill provide a fully detailed trip guide and itinerary next time I show any remote interest in a beautiful part of the world that I see on pinkbike. That way you know Im not gonna just pick up, leave everything, and hitchhike down to Ecuador without any supplies, planning or notification of friends or family.

 You know, when folks watch stuff on Youtube and the like, they think - "Gee. That looks like fun" What they often forget is that there is a ton of logistics behind this stuff. Language, medical, transport, weather; hell, even the travel books and maps are generally OTL. And in a place "as remote as hell", it is a disaster in the making. I can tell you from personal experience that Ecudaor, while really fantastic, is not a place to take lightly. I've stayed in the refugio at the base of Cotopaxi for instance. It was a shithole, to be polite. And the cute little spitting llamas at the park entrance don't offset the packs of feral (and possibly rapid) dogs that roam the itinerant farmers' plots. Oh, and forget trying to ride your bike anywhere since like the rest of South America, not only are you a target for thieves and bad drivers, it is a local sport to see how much mayhem they can muster against "gringos" . Yes, Ecuador is amazing. You got that part right at least.

 Thankfully those people never go out and actually follow through with these kinds of journeys... they just talk about it. Then there are people like you who actually went out, made plans, hated the trip and are now spoiling any sort of conversation about a trip someone took. You need to lighten up guy.

 Actually, I LOVED the trip to Ecuador. It was really fantastic to climb volcanoes. An amazing trip that I'd do again. The people there are "muy traquilo", unlike those in say Venezuela or Columbia (been there too). And the scenery is truly fantastic. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, ya gotta be prepared. We met up with some Yanks who were not and it was scary/comical to watch the (not) cope. And these days with cheap airfares and Internet videos that gloss over the "hard stuff", Walter Mitty has morphed into Johnny Knoxville.

 And I gotta close with a great quote from Wikipedia that is on point: "In the 1997 text Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer — a personal account of the events of the 1996 Everest disaster — Krakauer states: "Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to bear in mind that when things go wrong up in the death zone (above 26,000 feet) — and sooner or later they always do — the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client's life; indeed as the events of 1996 demonstrated , the strongest guides in the world are sometimes powerless to save even their own lives." For anyone who has not read that book and is adventure-bound, I highly recommend that you do.

 I don't think Hans ever sat and thought: I got to get rich to be able to become one of the best riders ever, and ever richer to travel with someone making nice pictures of me... I only assume that he just thought that he wants to ride his bike so much that he is willing to sacrifice money

I tell you, you can earn all this money and buy that trip, but it won't be the same... it's like you can buy a carbon Demo, get Troy Lee to paint you a monster energy helmet and still you won't feel the same way Sam does in the start gate - and isn't it the experience we are all truly after? Money is something you can exchange for stuff. You can fill your house and garage with all this but not your heart and mind, which can be filled only with what you do and how it makes you feel about yourself and others.

I have no idea what it takes to be so brave to go and do that, but I would love to find out, quite a bit of life left, why spend it being miserable by thinking that if I only get this money then everythign will be fine - it's so hard when you are tought for almost 20 years of education to think this way and then all the people around tell you the same... you don't see or hear people who don't follow that pattern, they are on Volcanos

 check out Hans book here


kdanielspublishing.com/HansReyAdventureBook/#/0


www.pinkbike.com/photo/8719911

 Gt force carbon