During peak season, it seems like every mountain bike news feed has something in it that takes
place at Whistler Bike Park.
But a recent poll showed only 22% of this audience has been to a resort style bike park,
let alone Whistler Specifically.
So today I’ll presume nothing about your knowledge of bike parks or Whistler, and provide
a crash course for the 78%.
A little refresher to make that stuff in your news feed a little more relevant and easy
to follow.
Let’s start with some disambiguation.
Whistler is a municipality about 80 miles (125km) North of Vancouver Canada.
It has schools, grocery stores, houses, coffee shops a hardware store, library, and even
a museum just like your town, but it’s all planned around a ski resort and bike park
called Whistler Blackcomb.
This video has not been made in affiliation with the town or resort.
Speaking of the bike park, it’s not even close to the only place to ride in Whistler,
and the town is also situated close to Squamish, Pemberton, and a long list of other great
riding destinations.
No doubt, many people come to Whistler just to be here, and there are many other things
to do besides mountain biking.
But as you can imagine, staying in Whistler is quite costly from the housing to the amenities,
but not everyone here is rich, or even close to it.
By taking day trips, camping outside of town, or just making sacrifices and saving up, many
ordinary mountain bikers make the pilgrimage to Whistler Bike Park, and if you’re coming
from the airport in Vancouver, that Pilgrimage ends up being a pretty stunning 90 minute
drive.
If it’s not obvious to you yet, resorts like Whistler Blackcomb are primarily for
Skiing with mountain biking only becoming a source of summer revenue over the last few
decades.
This is important because I’ve seen some resorts treat mountain biking like an off-season
activity, but not Whistler.
Here, there’s always something new going on, whether it be changes to existing trails,
or the development of brand new ones.
The sheer quantity and variety put Whistler in an elite category shared by only a few
destinations.
Because it’s been like this for so long, countless bike companies and professional
riders have planted roots in Whistler’s vicinity.
So even as other amazing destinations step up their game, it’ll be some time before
any have the clout enjoyed by this whole region.
But I don’t think it’s the clout that keeps the masses coming back, it’s the stuff
out on the mountain.
And most trips up it start with a short ride on the Fitzsimmons express, the first lift
that takes you to the Fitzsimmons zone.
This is where iconic trail like a line and dirt merchant are located and the majority
of laps at Whistler bike park will begin and end here.
From there back down to the base you lose about 1200 feet (365m) of elevation.
That’s a healthy number and it’s enough to wear most people out, but it’s not even
close to all the vertical Whistler has.
From the top of Fitzsimmons you can hop on the Garbanzo Express and gain another 2700
feet (822m) of elevation.
Up in the Garbanzo Zone or Garbo, you’ll find a whole lot of raw, steep, advanced features
from exposed rock rolls, to plain old harrowing tech.
From there, you can even descend to a completely different part of the mountain called Creekside,
which has a lot of tight singletrack, and sometimes even some loam.
Compared to the rest of the mountain, Creekside’s trails are somewhat new, and it’s opened
up a whole new canvas to Whistler to expand its trails.
But you can go even higher.
Once the snow melts you can take a Gondola to the peak of Whistler and gain another 1100ft
(335m) of rocky technical goodness.
From top to bottom, this bike park loses over 5000ft (1500m) of elevation, and contains
over 155 mi of trail (250km).
But the most impressive part is the variety.
In one run, you can ride loam, rock rolls, tech, wooden features, and high speed jump
trails, and most of it is shielded from the elements by trees which is something you might
take for granted if you’ve never tried to ride jumps in the wind.
And speaking of jumps, there are a lot of them at Whistler, but none as well known as
those found on A-line.
Although there are actually more impressive jump trails at Whistler, A-line is the one
that gets the most attention for a few reasons.
The corridor is very wide, there’s plenty of space between the jumps, the lips are predictable,
and as I mentioned almost the entire trail is shielded from the wind by trees.
The landings are also massive, which means casing these jumps usually won’t kill you.
It’s these safety factors that make A-line so popular.
Anyone with a good amount of jumping experience can work their way through it, and ride way
bigger jumps than they would normally feel comfortable with.
A-line is a great place to work on whips and other tricks best practiced on big straight
jumps with huge landings.
It’s also a great training ground for the bigger jump trails like Dirt Merchant and
Crabapple hits.
One notable jump is the moonbooter which comes about three quarters of the way down.
It starts with two mind blowingly huge berms and a plunge into a gulley.
You go full on, pump the roller, and literally fly.
At the very end of the run there’s a large step up that everyone on the lift line can
see, and this thing—you can hit as fast as you want.
You won’t be running out of landing.
For fun, I decided to record A Line from top to bottom and sync it with a stop watch to
find out just how much airtime one can expect in a typical run.
Now jumping is not my strong point and there are people who boost these way higher than
me, but I still clocked almost 40 seconds of time flying on my bicycle in just one run.
That means that in a trip to Whistler, you could easily spend 10 or 15 minutes flying.
These factors make A-line probably the most famous jump trail in the world and certainly
the most popular one at Whistler.
But if you need to work on your jumping, or just warm up there’s also a smaller run
at Whistler called Crank it up which starts out with really small jumps and gradually
works up to bigger ones.
You don’t need much speed at all to clear these, and like A-line they’re mostly forgiving.
Crank it up is also a great introduction to big berms and braking bumps.
Jumps certainly get the most media attention at Whistler, but the technical trails here
are plentiful to say the least.
Every year I ride tech trails here that I’ve never seen before, and every time they challenge
me.
But lest you think you can bring a GoPro and do justice to the gnarly stuff you were riding,
just forget it.
As great as Whistler is, it’s still subject to the GoPro effect.
In this video we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s in Whistler Bike Park,
and I’m certainly saving some of it for future videos as I’ll be spending a few
weeks here.
But hopefully this gives you a good idea of how big this bike park is, why people make
such a huge deal out of it, and why most people who visit here usually do so again.
Anyway I have a new bike to shake down, and a whole lot of trail to explore, so I’ll
catch you next week.
Until then, thanks for riding with me today and I’ll see you next time.