(upbeat music)
- [Darren] A lot of people's reactions when we told
them that we were going to go basically to the North Pole
to ride mountain bikes were,
are you bringing ice tires?
'Cause most people think, in the North Pole,
they're like, it's going to be cold and full of snow.
They don't really realize that
there's an arctic desert up there.
My name is Darren Berrecloth.
I'm from Banker Island, British Columbia,
and I'm a professional mountain bike free-rider.
Free-riding is all about picking your own line,
and being free to interpret the mountains
in any way that you see fit.
- Thinking about starting on the horizon right there;
it'll be like a drop up onto a rock slab.
- [Darren] The reason that we chose Axel Heiberg Island
was because the lines were massive.
It trumped anything that we ever ridden before,
in terms of height and just sheer scale.
- [Speaker 1] Alright, boys.
- [Speaker 2] Alright.
- Yeah, boys. Epic time.
- [Darren] One of the hardest parts about that whole trip,
was just it's remoteness and
how far it was from civilization.
If something goes wrong, we were about 12 hours away,
in best case scenario, from any hospital or serious help.
- [Darren] The landscape up in the high arctic,
it was just, it was breathtaking.
Standing at the top of the line just soaking it all in.
It's a pretty rad feeling.
One thing that's amazing about mountain biking
is the fact that you can take it anywhere.
You can climb mountains with it;
you can descend mountains with it;
you can travel long distances with it;
and you can stuff it in a box and fly it around the world.
To go up to the high arctic,
400 miles south of the North Pole and ride my bikes,
it's a pretty amazing thing to do.
Check that off the bucket list, for sure.