Kindaslow

My wife and I are up in Whistler, she rock climbs, we hike, I ride.

Last Saturday, I rode the XC trails on my Epic. They are very impressive and the quantity of trails is overwhelming. I had heard many people like the XC in Squamish better, so next summer I will try that XC. If you come up here, though, do not bring a true XC bike for the Whistler XC. My Epic is very short travel and very aggressive, and just beat the crap out of me.

Yesterday, I rode the bike park. If you love MTBs and have not come here for this park, you need to put it on your bucket list. I rented a Spesh Demo 8 for the park. There are more runs to try than you could ever ride in a day. It might take 3-5 days just to try each run out once. At my tender age, there are many runs I would not even try. The harder blue runs are like many black diamond runs I have ridden in other place, then they have black diamond, double black diamond, pro, and even a few out of bounds runs. I looked at a few of them, some look rollable with caution, some have drops or rock slabs that are vicious.

All in all, it was an amazing experience.

I did have a very weird event on the last run. A rider had taken a vicious crash and my guide and I were just seconds after the crash. Three of us jumped into action doing emergency wilderness first aid until the pros got their. I believe the guy will be fine, but he had moved around a lot before we got there, and probably should not have. His son had taken off his helmet, and it was basically a road bike helmet, it was crushed and broken in several spots, but luckily he was appearing to be coherent with both short and long term memory.

Now, I am looking at another MTB that might work for rough XC trails and blue DH....

Kindaslow

My IPad, since the update, will only load 1pic at a time. Here is a view at the top.

Kindaslow

A XC on rare smooth ground...

DMC707

I cant say enough good things about my Yeti 29'er for that kind of work --
I'd run some gravity/enduro type tires and a larger front rotor for downhill runs, -- but it is light enough to be equally at home riding cross country with some all-purpose tires also (I've also blasted it down some blue trails in Winter Park exactly as it sits here )

--- The most current versions are all carbon - mine is 2 years old and has a carbon swingarm to keep the weight down somewhat - 140mm travel



A Santa Cruz Nomad is also an excellent machine for that type of riding

Kindaslow

I love the Yeti bikes, and my guide in Whistler is a pro rider for them (so talked about how great they are). But, I do not love the local (where I live) Yeti dealer. My shop offered me an amazing deal on an Sworks Stumpy, so I have one on the way!

DMC707

It doesn't take you long to pull the trigger once you make up your mind to N+1 --

With Specialized's gravity history going back to guys like Shaun Palmer and now with Aaron Gwinn, and former Yeti honcho Jared Graves, ---- I think Big S probably knows a thing or two about bikes that mostly go downhill also -- plus you wont get the stinkeye from the mechanic when you bring the bike in to have the brakes bled -