Tarren y Gesail looms over Dyfi Bike Park at the South-West frontier of the Snowdonia National Park. A grassy ridge runs down from the 666m trig point where barely 2m from the left of a natural trail the land falls away, dropping hundreds of metres. The views are stunning. It’s the kind of unique and frankly perilous situation that Gee Atherton finds irresistible.
| I’ve always wanted to film here, it’s so amazingly exposed and totally unique but it was just the germ of an idea, a bit of a daydream. Over summer we were up here on the trials bikes, it was a still, perfect day and I began to see it in a bit more detail with natural doubles, step downs and gaps and I thought how sick it would be to craft in a line.
From the first day up here the build was really hard. It’s so inaccessible and open to the elements. Some days we’d be hiking up here with the generator and a jackhammer on our backs in 30 degrees, others we’d be lashed by storms and soaked to the skin. It became a personal battle.trying to tame this beast, but without the dig crew I’d never have made it.
The Atherton bike was amazing. Going in at these speeds I needed to be 110% confident, it’s just so strong. On the last gap of the last day I overshot and had such a savage landing, it was like dropping off a house to flat...the bike was fine, I’m still riding it.”—Gee Atherton |
| This is probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen Gee do on a bike, absolutely on the very edge of what’s possible. With this type of big film project it’s often high risk but this was next level in terms of how badly it could have gone wrong. I had the medic bag, radios, stretcher all hidden in my truck. It was pretty full on to the point I dreaded every time he was going up to test.—Dan Atherton |
The Ridgeline was filmed and edited by Wearepeny in partnership with Continental Tyres.
| This new, breath-taking film takes mountain bike riding to the next level. Gee continues to inspire the world with his riding and the release of The Ridge line today will be no exception to this. We were excited to be able to partner with Gee and the team on its creation and that he chose to put our Kaiser Project Pro Ltd tyres to the test to tackle the Ridgeline.—Oliver Anhuth, Global Head of Marketing Bicycle Tyres, Continental |
Older brother builds new jumps
Sends younger brother to guinea pig them
... drives quad to top of ridge.
I remember Minnaar riding a Haro DHR at Rampage 2003. Just sayin.
youtu.be/fZDEU4iwYso?t=561
or this
youtu.be/ypLuYbN2-ZQ?t=123
Kade anyway.
The top 20+ WC guys are all great at gaps. Probably because they do mx too where these are standard size (I think).
Cmon his not even close to being one of the best riders in the world now.
Same time, young guns a blazing(progression). So once back to where pace was, new pace now further.
Answer: All of it, he needed all of the speed!
Like I said; apples and oranges, because they create from a blank canvas at those events, and the Athertons worked with a natural ridgeline here, but I'd still love to see some actual metrics comparing them.
For the geeks out there who follow Star Wars or Star Trek, I'm thinking like a diagram where they compare the scale of various ships to each other. It would be a scaled diagram comparing various famous jumps/features to each other.
Rider, racer & general bad ass. Can't say fairer than that. keep on sending dude.
That sound though - what hubs is he riding? First thought it’s the drones but doesn’t seem to be the case.
Breathtaking video.
Gee atherton : hold my beer
Ive got Dyfi booked up for next friday if wales doesn't close down before....i hope to meet them all there!
Love the soundtrack, fits the mood and the location perfectly.
You’ve got a rapid World Cup racer hitting a straight line down a hill. Put any of the rampage / fest boys down there and they’d just cruise it.
I take nothing away from Gee he’s a legend and the Rampage wall ride will always be cemented in rampage history but for the fuss and fanfare everyone’s making this is just a bit meh for me
A few years ago, there were some interviews around Hardline with riders all saying how Gee made everything look easy and the course was pretty scary - they needed Gee to show them speeds into everything. You could tell, they were a little bit awe-struck. Don't forget Gee has some all-time great Rampage runs behind him too.
But yeah, there have been some really good conversations going on about this sort of thing. The most recent HKT Podcast with Sam Bowell from Rogate talked about this a lot, specifically with regards to the UK and how the growth in MTB, especially during COVID, may be negatively affecting future land access for everyone in the sport. And they discussed how video shoots impact the perception of the sport and what's allowable with land use by the general public.