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KIMMY: I came to Mammoth in 2002, after I
graduated high school.
I moved here from Truckee, California.
And just wanted to get away from where I'd grown up and
try something new.
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It just happened to be the mecca of the snowboard
industry at that time too.
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There are so many things to do around here every season.
I can walk out my door during the winter and ride down with
the gondola, get on the mountain or I can go split
boarding out in the mountains.
During the summer, go hiking, biking, rock climbing, doing
yoga, you can just be outdoors.
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Chris, my husband, Benchetler, his sense of
adventure is so inspiring.
And I'm always so excited to be able to go out and do
things with him, because he's always helping me push my
limits and he's helped me just see that so much is possible,
especially for women's progression.
And I'm excited to be able to be part of that and have
somebody that can help me push through all of my challenges
to make sure that I'm doing the things
that I'm capable of.
And I have that with a lot of friends too, where we can go
out together and we know that we're going
to push each other.
And I have girlfriends and guy friends that are going to say,
hey, let's do this, we've got this.
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So in December of 2012 I had a pretty big accent
snowboarding.
And it was just a fluke.
I flew off a jump and into the trees, and blew apart my knee,
fractured my pelvis, and it was a big injury.
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It's been a really long recovery, and a lot of rehab
has been going into it, and biking has been a
huge part of that.
I'm eight months out now, so I've been cleared to be able
to really push myself.
And biking has been the one thing that my doctor has
really been adamant about.
He's like, anything you want to do, just go to biking,
because biking is going to be the safest and the best thing
for my knee for healing, anyways.
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So before I got the Rumor, I was a little intimidated.
I just wasn't confident on my bike, so I would stick to
trails that were a lot of cross-country routes, because
I knew that I was going to be in control of my pedal power
and I could slow down through the rhythm sections, but I
wasn't going to be charging downhills.
So I would stick to trails like paper route and a lot of
the blues and greens on the maps, just trying
to be really mellow.
And it was more for me just sticking to the basics and
doing it is a work out, but not pushing myself too hard
for something that I didn't quite understand.
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Having the Rumor has just given me a totally different
perspective, because the bike is so stable and handle so
well, and it's designed for women, so it just gives me a
sense of confidence that I can take my level of riding up,
and being able to handle the loose dirt that is here in
Mammoth is such a huge confidence builder.
And so I would love to be able to do trails where all the
terrain is really variable, and there's jumps, and there's
different kind of things that you can pop off and things.
And just handling it really well downhills too is bring me
to a whole new place with mountain biking.
I spend a lot of time just working on my brain and trying
to calm it down, and let go of things, detach from thoughts,
and just try to stay in the moment, because there's no
fear when you're in the moment.
The fear comes when you're looking in the future or
thinking about doubt and all these other things.
For me with mountain biking it's like I can get really
scared really easy if all of a sudden I see
these huge step downs.
But If I take a step back and just go, hey, you can just
flow through this, you'll be fine, it calms me down really
quick, and I'll take a couple deep breaths and
drop in, and be fine.
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I want to just tell all the women out there, go out and
experience the mountains.
Biking is such a sense of freedom, where you can be out
in the middle of nowhere and find so
much happiness, pedaling.
Not to say that going down isn't fun,
like, that's even better.
So if you get the joy of that happiness of just being out in
nature and then getting a really fun flowy course,
single track down, it can be even better for you.
Yeah, just being able to be healthy and active outdoors, I
think, that's something that we can all come together and
really appreciate, and I love that.
I want to be one of those women out there and I hope to
see more of us out there.
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