Ultimate Sad News.. Wade Schmidt passed away this week.

A solid friend, great rider and outstanding IT pro Wade will be sorely missed by all who knew, worked, rode or partied with him.
I first met Wade through the original pinkbike crew in about 1998 - being both riders and IT/software freaks, we hit it off immediately: despite the fact that I attempted to jump through his phantom screen door :-P

While I had been into the mountain bike XC riding scene for years, the whole freeride thing was just getting fired up, and hooking up with Wade the pinkbike crew was a real eye opener for me. I had no idea what was possible on a bike until that point.


Manuals, hucks, super smooth trail flow - all these things were new, and Wade was always a fantastic resource for coaching riding skills. While I still have never yet mastered the manual (he was just razzing me about it last week) - He helped me improve my cornering, how to pump through a rough section, carrying momentum...


As anyone who is in the freeride community knows - its not just about the riding - its about the hanging out, the road trips, and having the occasional bash. I can't even remember how many good times we had after ripping up trails all over Alberta and BC.


I remember doing the pre-ride for Psychosis last year: I was on a fully suspended bullet with 8 inches of travel front and rear, and I couldn't get anywhere near keeping up to him on his hard tail. He would just pop the front wheel up, and manual the thing through whatever bumps were there. He beat my time down the 14km long crazy psychosis course on a hard tail by some 4 minutes...

He put the same kind of skill and energy into his work as well - managing the IT infrastructure for major online stock photo company Veer. Because of his experience with large networks and high datavolume networking for mission critical business applications, he was an invaluable friend for me there as well.


He would help me out from time to time as well when I had questions about network configuration, firewall setup - got me turned on to the Gnatbox: and most recently was helping me out with our Q9 migration by giving me pointers on the cabinet setup, network config, equipment etc...etc...

Wade was also a very skilled carpenter: and had done a lot of the work on his and Danielle's new pad. When I was talking to him last week at Q9, I was supposed to head over for a visit to check it out...


All of us will miss Wade immensely - but Danielle: well I can't even imagine...

The funeral is this Saturday at 2:30 pm McInnis and Halloway Crowfoot Chapel, 82 Crowfoot Circle NW

Donations in memory to Stars Air Ambulance.



-Wade passed on as a result of a motorcycling accident-