The Camp of Champions at Opening Day of The Whistler Bike Park

“Oh Pinning” Day By Cooper Saver

I am sitting at home writing after a long first day as “The Camp of Champions Blog Writer”. It was a day filled with tacky dirt, high fives, airtime, and good food. I’m pretty satisfied with my life at this point. It seems like only yesterday that I was waist deep in my driveway shoveling snow, thinking of summer and how far away it was. Well, even though it is only May, summer arrived early to fulfill the wishes of everyone that loves pinning it at the Whistler Bike Park.

Story, videos and pics inside,

The longest week ever had passed. I felt like I was in the movie “The Jerk”. The first day was like two days, the second day was like a day and a half, the third day was like four days… and so on. The hype to go ride on opening day was unreal! I like to compare opening day to Christmas as a child; just knowing what’s in store for you when you wake up really makes for a hard time sleeping. I had never been so ready to get out of bed, especially bright and early. To much surprise, the weather couldn’t have been more ideal. A week of sun and heat before the opening brought smiles to our faces when they found that the park was free of flowing rivers and insane amounts of mud. This was almost too good to be true.


The alarm was set for 9:00am, but I opened my eyes at 7:00. I can’t even tell you how hard it was to fall back asleep for a few more hours when it was clear blue sky and everything I’d been looking forward to was so close. At last, the time came and I met at the base of the hill with coaches/friends Gareth Dyer, Mason Mashon, Casey Groves, and photo/video dream team combo Mike Crane and Eric Peterson. After getting our passes in order, it was time to shred. The lines were record-breaking in length and the crowds showed no signs of giving up. Whistler Blackcomb pulled some strings and we got lift line priority for the day! Time to shred. We all eagerly hit A-Line to warm up and let Mike and Eric go down first to set up for some shots. It was cool to be a part of the shooting process for stuff like this because I never really knew how it all went down. To be honest, it really isn’t all that fancy! It’s just like a rad day with your friends, sending it and hiking some stuff… that’s all there is to it. After a few more laps of this process over on tech trail “Schleyer”, we hit lunch up at the Garibaldi Lift Co, or as it's better known - The GLC. It's the favorite local's spot - a bar and grill located at the base of Whistler right above the gondola station. It’s known for its mountain biker staff and awesome food. The crew definitely had a great time hanging out, catching up with all the servers that were back from last summer and eating great food in the sun, it felt like a typical mid-summer day at The Camp of Champions, but it’s not even summer yet! This is just the first day.



After riding the park all day, I headed to the public dirt jump park. The new jumps are quite something, and the design is really fun. There’s even have a water system now, so they stay in dialed condition. It was cool to see so many kids stoked on coming to Whistler for the day or the weekend, whether they were here to ride Air Dome and jumps or the mountain, it didn’t matter ‘cause this is just the place to be. While I was at the jumps and chilling, Casey hit up the Air Dome alongside fellow Pinkbike rider and good friend of mine, Reece Wallace. Even though I wasn’t present at the session, the pictures and video prove that they shredded as hard as usual. The Air Dome for 2010 is better than ever with brand new foam blocks.





The day ended with an outstanding re-premier of Follow Me at the GLC, which is now my fav film and got me even more amped for an entire summer ahead, when I'll be riding with Gareth, Casey, Greg Watts, Andrew Taylor or Ryan Berrecloth as my coach I know I’ll be pretending I’m in Follow Me. This was a kick ass opening day. Even if the lines were unusually huge, it didn’t matter ‘cause you were around all your friends and riding the best trails around. Make this summer count and experience Whistler, The Bike Park and The Camp of Champions – the best places ever.

Check out all of Mike Crane's photos from Oh Pinning Day

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