Life In The Loops - Taylor Gang Tuesday's

It seems as though we’ve developed an insatiable thirst for something shiny and something new. We prowl the internet expecting fresh edits each day and tear through magazines for photos without ever reading the words. Riders are judged on their kits before their skills and we’re more concerned with where we ride than why we are actually riding. We ride the most amazing trails on earth every day and spend the climbs discussing all the other locations we’d rather be huffing and puffing instead.


Mountain biking is in constant search of the next new place and it's beginning to feel like we're missing the point. Wanderlust is no longer a romantic ideology; it’s been accepted as a way of life. But does it always have to be that way?


I’m as guilty as anyone for being a constant daydreamer of travels. The list of places I hope to visit grows longer each day, but I often ask myself, are any of those travels really that important to me? As I grow jealous of my friends who make a living by gallivanting about the globe, I try to remind myself how fortunate I am to have a friend like Taylor Hollstedt who never forgets how much fun can be had in his own back yard.

Making Mountains from Molehills

Before Taylor began sculpting his backyard track a glorious view of the sunset was all his property really had going for it. The yard is too steep for any typical landscaping efforts and there is a lot more rock than dirt. Taylor often jokes, “If you ever get bored of digging in Kamloops and not hitting rocks, just come over and help me for a bit.”


When he first started working on the yard it appeared as a waste of time to try forcing anything to flow through such a steep and narrow lot. Even if he made something work I doubted it would be any fun. Now after years of plucking rocks, shaping and reshaping rollers, and pushing lips inch by inch, Taylor has made a mountain from a molehill and impressed anyone who expected otherwise.


Due to such tight space restraints, everything in Taylor’s yard ended up being tiny. It’s the complete opposite of every other line in Kamloops and that’s why I love it. The yard is incredibly technical, tricky to ride and perhaps even trickier to classify. It’s small and safe, yet still posses some major challenges. It isn’t really a pump track and it’s not just a set of dirt jumps. I’m sure I could find an appropriate name, but the yard is too fun and doesn’t deserve to be subject to such labelling games.

Going Tiny With Taylor

I’ve grown fond of Taylor’s yard because it strips me down to my raw bike handling abilities. Technicality takes control and I’m forced to elevate my popping and pumping to a whole new level. Every feature has a quirk to it and I always find a struggle in linking everything together. Squeaking in tricks on any of the sniper lines is a rare occurrence - simply getting to the end of the line without casing or ducking out is a trick in itself.


To help navigate the waves of dirt between Taylor’s creaky fences I’ve been learning to shred on a BMX bike. Very similar to the yard, my miniature bicycle with twenty-inch wheels is tiny, technical, and very tricky to ride. It’s a match made in heaven and while I am still searching for confidence aboard that tiny bike it has opened up yet another new way for me to have fun on two wheels.


Carefully watching Taylor slay his yard certainly helps anyone find their confidence. He is a master of the tech and to him the line is but a breeze. He drops in with a smile and an extra pedal, boosts the first hip further than everyone else can, and continues with the same theme as he scrubs over jumps and rails from turn to turn.



I really enjoy watching anyone ride the track. As riders grow more comfortable they become more creative and begin finding their own unique transfer lines that highlight their own skills. It’s normal to see riders hitting stuff backwards, stepping up and down from berm to berm and pulling up for mini-hucks across any small transitions they see fitting. Hilarity often ensues and Taylor never looks more excited than when somebody shows him a new line he had never thought about.


Eventually everyone burns out and retreats to the deck to spend the evening sitting back, talking trash, and day dreaming about their next session with a wide eyed excitement as if they’ve found a new kind of riding. I can only imagine how silly we must appear to the neighbours, like a pack of young boys dreaming about tricking small doubles or pumping enough speed to clear an awkward transfer we spotted.

Backyard Traveling

Sitting in the evening glow Taylor’s eyes light up bright as the sun still firing down the valley. We discuss the continuity of the track and the connections between varying lines and his imagination really begins to start running. His hands dance slowly before him, drawing strange shapes in the air as he points to the dirt and rambles on about future features to be created.

Fresh berms, Rollers, Boobs, Hips, Sharkfins, Ooompah-loompahs, Lachy’s fat lip and Scooby doo’s. His vision resides with him clearly, but I can barely follow. After a Taylor gang session I am always a little distracted with feelings of appreciation.


I appreciate that Taylor puts so much effort into his yard, that he lets me try to help shape new lines, and that he lets me ride there whenever I want. Above all else, I appreciate that during the short few hours I spent ripping laps around the compound, I couldn’t imagine a better place to be in the world. Riding in Taylor's yard feels like a vacation where everything is new and exciting. The feeling of needing to travel far away to find something new and fun has vanished from my imagination and I didn’t hear a single mention of traveling anywhere else from my friends either.


And so I guess Taylor has helped me answer my own question. It doesn’t always need to be about traveling far and wide to rediscover mountain biking in some majestic new promise land. Sometimes we’re better off to look out our backdoors, start dreaming, and see where our imaginations might take us.

If you love riding your bike as much as Taylor and posses even half his imagination, you might not find yourself too far from home.


Photography by Riff Stills.
Banner photos by Blake Jorgenson.
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