Mega Train 2010

On October 3rd 2010, 135 riders attended the inaugural Mega Train at Whistler Bike Park.

Read on for photos and video.

This will start with a bit of history. I know a lot of people will probably be hating me for this but living in Whistler and working full-time in the Bike Park means that it can become just "the bike park" and get a little mundane. With that in mind, part way through the season, me and a couple of mates decided to try and liven things up a little bit. Back in mid-September three of us decided to try and ride every sign-posted trail on the mountain in one day.


Basic math dictated that it wasn't possible to include Garbo without extended play so we set ourselves the challenge of Fitz only. During those 43 trails (and 4 skill centers - which in total took 19 laps, for reference) we did a lap of A-Line when part way down our group managed to drop-in at exactly the same time as that of another friend, Maxime Bruneau. This led to around a 15-man train through middle and lower A-Line with some awesome overtaking, side-by-side jumping, and general maximum stokage.


Later that week, we were all sitting around at the GLC, of course, Max was discussing the train with James Tilbury and a few of the other Bear Back Biking lads and the idea of getting more people in a big train was being thrown around and the Mega Train was born.


Max got on the case and set up a facebook invite and before long we had over 100 people confirmed as attending. Two weeks later on October 3rd it seems everyone from the group plus more turned up and Mega Train was on. There were three crashes that I know of, but the mass of patrollers gathered at the rock-drop had a quiet afternoon spectating.


With so many people, a wide-range of riding abilities was inevitable and there were some holdups, but overall it all ran smoothly and feedback was good.


Fortunately a lot of people brought helmet and chest cameras to record the action, but it's taken the last couple weeks to track a lot of them down, accumulate the footage and then finally edit it all together. Big thanks to all those that have contributed.

NOTE: Before all you haters start mouthing off about the exchange on the shale-slide, they know each-other and it was all part of the riding banter, just like the humour on the chairlift at the end, there was at no point any malicious intent.



Footage brought to you with special thanks to Whistler Action Cams for providing chest-mount and on-track cameras.


Looking forward to Mega Train 2011!