Video: Brett Rheeder in Kamloops

Things do not always go as planned, and sometimes that is for the better. About 10 weeks ago I received a call from Brett letting me know he and Kamloops local Ace Hayden were planning to drive from Ontario to B.C. (it took them 47 hours and 41 minutes). It just so happened that this lined up with my Spring Break. Soon enough we decided to shoot an edit; not in Kamloops, but Vancouver Island. The first weekend we stayed in Kelowna and rode, planning to leave on the Monday and head for the Island. The night before Brett got a text, from who we were going to stay with, letting us know it was calling for storms all week.


After some long thinking, Brett called up Ace. "Hey... what are you doing this week?" We would go to Kamloops and shoot at the Bike Ranch. After three days of digging at the Ranch it was time to start filming. The alarms were set for 6:00am, the perfect time for capturing the golden light. We got down to the features to shoot and it was a complete windstorm. No luck for us that day. It seemed as if the wind didn't stop with the warming of the temperatures each day. The next morning we tried again. No luck.


We were sitting in a breakfast cafe when Rupert Walker gave me a call saying his ski trip was cancelled, asking if we needed help. This is when our luck started to change for the better. Rupert joined us and we shot some DH that afternoon at the infamous Rio. The next morning we woke up again to wind. Mother Nature was not cooperating with us that week. Snow, rain, hail, wind, we had seen it all. Brett had flights booked back to Toronto for another video shoot and it did not look like we would finish the video in time, but we had solid footage of dirt jumping and downhill; it was not time to give up. That said, we needed slopestyle footage.



Two weeks later, Easter Weekend, Brett flew back to Kelowna. I picked him up and straight to Kamloops we went. We set up a cable cam that evening, preparing ourselves for the days to come. The next day was flawless and we had almost finished the video. A couple key features were still left to shoot though. So we woke up early the next morning and shot sunrise and sunset. The video was complete. It was nothing like the final product on Vancouver Island we envisioned, our changed plans had turned out for the better.

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Video: Harrison Mendel and Rupert Walker
Photos: Rupert Walker and Jeff Connor

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Presented by: Bontrager

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