Opinion: New Trails > Everything Else

Travelling to ride new trails, whether they're an hour away or on the other side of the world, is one of the most important things that you can do for yourself. Don't spend your two week paid vacation sitting on your ass on an all-inclusive visit to Mexico, and don't spend those hard earned extra dollars on new components that you don't really need. Instead, use that time and those resources to see places, trails, and people that could change your perspective on things.


For something like the first seven or eight years that I have spent on a mountain bike, my entire singletrack world consisted of just one or two local mountains, with only the odd trip out of my Fraser Valley stomping grounds to visit North Vancouver. It's fair to say that my palate had only the smallest sampling of what's out there, and the hour-long journey to the hallowed trails of the North Shore, where I'd fall off of skinny cedar bridges for a few hours, didn't do much beyond make it clear that I have terrible balance. Don't get me wrong, my little corner of the world in southwestern British Columbia is considered to be mountain biking's holy land by a lot of riders around the globe, so I'd say that I was rather lucky instead of sheltered, but the fire to travel to see new trails, new terrain, and new people was never really lit until a friend practically hogtied me and put me into a truck bound for Kamloops, just three hours away. That sounds ridiculous to me now, as I'm sure it does to you, but at the time I was more than happy to do lap upon lap of my local trails that, after having now travelled the world to mountain bike, I'd still argue are the best out there. I think most of us hold our hometown in the same regard though, much in the same way that we believe that our dog is the best dog, or our kid is the best kid, so take my opinion with a tablespoon of salt. As great as I think my local trails are, the reason to travel to new lands with your bike shouldn't be to ride better trails, but to ride different trails, something I believe is one of the most important things that a mountain biker can do. It's all about seeing a different perspective.



In 2001, a friend and I watched 'Ride To The Hills' for the first time and saw what Dave Watson and Andrew Shandro were doing on the alien landscape of Virgin, Utah. This was basically the location that would eventually host the first Red Bull Rampage, by the way. I distinctly remember us looking at each other after watching the movie and each asking when the other could ditch work and head south. Both of us answered with ''as soon as you can,'' and it wasn't long before my much abused Ford Ranger was loaded up with a questionably small amount of gear and we headed down the highway for twenty hours straight. Those were simpler times, of course, and we both went in a bit blind, me on a steel hardtail that would end up bent out of shape by the time we were done, along with a broken ankle for my efforts, but we came home with an entirely different take on how we wanted to ride our bikes, and I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that week in Utah changed our perspective on things.



The days of chucking myself off of things are now mostly behind me, and I'm now lucky enough to be in a position that allows me to ride a mountain bike in different locations all around the world. It's a long way from sleeping upright in the cab of my old Ranger in weather so cold that ice forms on the inside of the windows, that much is obvious, but the hotel rooms and being able to shower more than once every two weeks aren't the best part. Being clean-ish is nice, for sure, but I'm incredibly grateful for being able to see people's takes on mountain biking from all over the world. In Sedona, Arizona, where I'm writing this from, it's all about the red rock, punchy and insanely technical climbs that look like they might trouble that Danny MacAskill character (but not really), with some rough and rowdy descents thrown in for good measure. It's a lot like doing intervals, if intervals were fun and you could do big skids in between the shitty parts. In Italy, a lot of the trails are hundreds of years old and sunken into the ground slightly from generations of people using them to access the alpine and above. The history of some of the places that I've ridden in Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany is enough to give one goosebumps. That's if speeding down an alpine singletrack hasn't already got your juices flowing. North America's past might not be as deep, but it does have terrain so varied that driving for an hour or two in any direction is usually enough to deliver an entirely fresh experience.



It'd be foolish of me to say that everyone should drop what they're doing and travel the world with their bike - life simply doesn't work like that - and the last thing I want to do is seem up on my high horse. You don't have to travel the world, though, because only a few hours in any direction is enough to experience new everythings. Take a one-day trip to the next town over, even if the only beta you have is on a single, questionable trail. Disappear for a weekend with an air mattress in the back of your truck and some beer in a cooler. Use at least one week of your paid vacation to ride somewhere fresh rather than sitting on a goddamn beach in Mexico downing booze and food non-stop because you want to get your money's worth - the trails you ride are better for you than the seven hundred barbecued prawns that you'd eat there, anyways. Get out there and take in how others see mountain biking because that might change how you see mountain biking. You'll come back home with a fresh perspective and a different way of looking at your trails, your terrain, your bike, or even the people that you ride with.