Mountain Bike Ops

Beautiful Sunshine Coast



"So your name is Allan Murphy?", Zac asks with a doubtful expression on his face. "That's not exactly a Swiss name." "Yeah, I get that a lot", I answer and explain that I'm half-American with a few Irish roots. We're sitting just outside of Summit Sports on the day of the Crankworx Slopestyle Final in Whistler. A couple of hours later, Zac, who was going to be my future roommate, and me are standing in a big crowd in the Boneyard, witnessing the most amazing mountain bike event we've ever seen.

But let's take a step back in time to understand what I was even doing in B.C. Three months earlier, I was still in my hometown of Zug, Switzerland, and studying for the finals in the "Gymnasium", which is kind of like highschool. At the time, I was still trying to get a job in Whistler over the summer but things weren't looking good. It proved to be very difficult to get a work permit. And finding a job without any connections wasn't exactly easy either. One day, my dad entered my room with some printed papers. Little did I know that these sheets would change my life (I'm not being dramatic, they really did!). They described a program at the Capilano University in North Vancouver called "Mountain Bike Ops". Of course, this instantly sparked my interest, after all I've been an avid biker for a couple of years now. But going to school for mountain biking? It sounded like a joke at first. After a few days of thinking about it, I realized that this could prove to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. Who of us European MTBers doesn't dream about visiting B.C. with their bike? So I signed up for the program and, with my dad, started preparing to move out. And here I am, three months later, standing in Whistler, where I always dreamed of being, during the highlight of the biggest bike festival in the world. It was unreal.

First Impressions
One of our classrooms

After experiencing the gnarliest competition we'd ever seen, we left Whistler and headed for Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast where the course was going to take place. First impressions of Sechelt? Beautiful and... quiet. Despite still being high season for tourism, there weren't a lot of people around, especially after dark. That's mainly because the Coast is relatively secluded as you have to travel by ferry to reach it. But whatever, we came here to ride our bikes! (and for school, of course). Maciek, one of the two locals in our class, gave a couple of us our first tour on the B&K logging road in Roberts Creek. We quickly got a feel for the trails on the Coast. They are nothing like the steep, rugged gnarliness that is the Shore. The Coast's trails are super flowy and fast, with berms and jumps for days. The best thing is, you can have fun on virtually any bike, even a dirt jumper.

Sunset on Mach Chicken

A couple of days later, the whole class got to see eachother for the first time during "trail orientation", where our head teacher gave us a tour on all the good trails from Sprockids to the local Kinnickinnick park. Being mountain bikers, we got along pretty quickly of course. With guys from all over Canada and the US and with personalities even more diverse than that, you could say that we were an especially random group of people. The only uniform thing about our class was that there wasn't a single girl. But we were a good bunch of people. There was no hate on each other and we quickly started giving out nicknames like "Big Daddy Tys'" and "Scooter".

Good times during trail building

Back To School
The thing with bike school is that it sounds so ridiculous. Some of my friends back at home straight up though I made it all up. Others questioned the term "school". "C'mon, all you do over there is riding bikes every day, isn't it?" Well, in fact, it wasn't. To be honest, the amount of school work we had to do, especially in the winter, surprised me as well as everybody else. Sure, it started out with "Guiding and Teaching", where we got to ride downhill in class with our teachers that were none other than Darren Butler and Kelly Sherbinin, heads of Endless Biking and some of the nicest people I've ever met. But with Trail Building, we were out every day, digging and grubbing, cutting and lifting. There was hardly any time to go riding. And the rest of the courses were academic style, in the classroom, with loads of assignments.

young talent during "Kinnickinnick Trail Opening"

But that wasn't really a bad thing. Most of the classes make a lot of sense if you're looking for a career in the mountain bike industry. Tourism, Marketing, Event Management, it's all part of how the industry changes and grows. Risk Management taught us to plan ahead and live with the dangers that are part of outdoor recreation.
And even though there was a lot of work at times, we still had enough spare time to hang out and go shred trails. And at the end of the course, we had all made some really good friendships.

Some of us raced the Suncoaster downhill just after the end of classes

So here I am now, back in rainy Switzerland, thinking about all the awesome times i had in Canada. You could say I'm quite melancholic, but who wouldn't be? I really can't wait to go back.