Silver Star Freeride Festival Wrap up

The dust has settled on an amazing weekend at Silver Star Bike Park. Mother Nature provided the weekend with some of the best weather and riding conditions possible and riders made the most of it. The weekend started off with the first Pump Track Challenge held on the new track under the lights after Extended Play riding. The competitors ranged in age from 3 year’s old and up! Owen Darby, our youngest competitor and also one of the most enthusiastic competitors, had been training all week for the challenge.
Saturday morning kicked off with Norco unpacking their shiny new bikes of the 2013 lineup and the Camp of Champions guys getting the airbag ready to go. The main event of the weekend was the Silver Style Jump Jam. Trail Crew along with Dustin Greenall expanded on the course from last year and added some features that had the competitors chomping at the bit to get out and ride the course. Training for the event ran from 10am until 12:30pm. At 2pm it was go time. Starting with the amateur category it did not take long for the riders to get down to business. Despite being the amateur category the crowd was wowed with backflips, tail whips and three sixties. The talent pool at Silver Style 2012 was amazing! After the amateurs it was time for the Open category to show their stuff and it was incredible to watch. With each lap of the course the tricks got even more impressive and jaw dropping. Being a rider judged event each trick that attracted high fives from competitors and friends translated into votes.

In the end it came down to Tom Van Steenbergen, Casey Groves and Corbin Selfe who entered into the finals and had two runs each to win the votes of their peers and competitors. Despite having very strong runs and Groves throwing big stylie three sixties with tons of added tweaks Tom Van Steenbergen stole the show with the top run of the day which had the whole crowd and competitors going nuts. Tom started with a front flip off the Fox log drop, into a backflip on the first ramp jump, then front flipped the second ramp jump, back flipped onto the whale tail and dropped a three sixty off the tail which created mayhem and shouts from all the competitors.
Top honours in the amateur category went to Ben Schleith, followed by Max Langille and Jesse Schleith. Ben is now the proud new owner of a Norco DJ frame thanks to our friends at Norco who provided a ton of great prizing for this weekend.
On Sunday, the Camp of Champions airbag was in constant use and the site of amazing tricks. The North Okanagan Cycling Society hosted the Chainless Toonie race on upper Shazam and had riders of all ages testing their chainless skill on the course. In the end top male racer was Bas Van Steenbergen and top female Jill Anderson who both received some swag from Fox, Norco, Kali, RockStar and GoPro.
Special thanks to Camp of Champions for bringing their airbag for the weekend, Fox for all the prizing and helping promote the event as well as our Norco, Kali Protective, RockStar, Dakine. Thanks to NOCS for hosting the Chainless Race and GoPro for hosting a weekend video contest that will give us a chance to crown the winner next weekend! Stay tuned.


Silver Star Bike Park is open until September 9, and then will reopen for the last weekend of the season September 15 &16, so come have some fun in the bike park this summer!