Strawberries

Sun Peaks is all closed up for the winter now. I wanted to have some nice memories to keep me warm this winter so Karl and I spent the last two weekends at Sun Peaks getting this nugget all dialled in. Enjoy!

Untitled from karl heldt on Vimeo.

pictures!!

It's been a while since I've had anything to post on here but last weekend Brock Anderson and the ginger kid Wylie Easton came into town. Karl Heldt met up with us and we all went and got some video and pictures. I don't have any video to show off right now but I can assure you it will be amazing! I do however have a couple pictures that I liked.

The last dumped 3 you'll see for a while. promise.

sickass b-hump

random dusty corner

Wylie and I on rio!

Poor brock seems to get hurt every time he comes to kamloops. This time he faceplanted and stuck his tooth into his lip.

round 2?

rebuilt my confidence and tried 3 more double whips yesterday..i fell really hard on the first one and shoulder dove the landing, but apparently that sort of helped me overcome being so scared..i tried twice more after my fall and got to here- http://www.vimeo.com/7195388

The best is yet to come

I was pretty dissapointed that I had to miss out on the Dirt Diggler Race in Fernie last weekend.....and the Gummy Bear Race at Sunpeaks. I had agreed to do the Rona MS Bike tour a few months ago, and didn't realize how conflicting it was. I could've just ditched the tour, but I kinda felt obligated to stick it out with my work pals, so I got up super early and headed down there with my vintage cruiser bike and rode it out - 35 km in total, in my jeans, in about an hour. I was pretty tired from partying the night before, but our friend Jay Morrisey was in town and we wanted to show him some Kamloops riding, so we took him to Greenstone and we rode the new trail all the way to Beaton road. It's such a long, epic ride. I love greenstone! The trail just seems to go on forever. It's got some technical steeps and some skinnies that you don't normally see in Kamloops, and that's more of what I'm used to riding and loved so much about the Shore. That one run took us over 2 hrs, so needless to say I was beat! I was pretty stoked to see the photo I took (see below) of Warren (the main trail builder) doing the wall ride on "Martha". The step down before the wall is still unrideable, and he didn't think he could get high enough on the wall without it. He was wrong. We all had an awesome ride that ended with the most amazing sunset view from the top of the mountain.

Greenstone and Merritt have been my rides of choice lately - just super long, exhausting runs. Got 4 runs in on Merrit in one day a couple weeks ago! If you've ever ridden there, you know that is a feat in it's own! I am looking forward to the next few weeks though. I'll be heading to Whistler for a couple days, more Kelowna, and Williams Lake in the near future. This is the best time to ride, so enjoy it before the snow flies!

Rising Action

The temperature is getting cooler. The sunsets are getting more intense. My Riding is getting more and more dialled. My arms and back are sore while my shovel is getting flexier by the day. Stoke is on the up. Im not working as much. The next two months are going to be sick!

Stealing a little summer back and wildlife candy victory

So just got back from Vancouver doing a first aid course in preparation to head up north. Since Sun Peaks I have had to play it fairly chill due to end of season lack of fundage and a ton of commitments, still having an amazing time, but at a fairly reduced level of life. Then this last week hit, and life came back together for me in a big way. The last five days has been for me a combining all the best pieces, places and people in my life into one amazing celebration of life. Over this time I rode every day, started to see the fruits of my hard work, all my school friends came back to town, a couple of my closest friends had birthdays, Sun Peaks hosted a race, we had BBQs and dinner parties every night, I got to coach a bit and my best friend and I celebrated every bit of it before we both had to head away to work for a while. And a hundred other things. I don't like to push my body quite so hard, sleep so little or get hurt riding as a result, but it had to happen in this fashion. Life just encompasses that many amazing pieces, and we had to experience all of it and take a bit of summer back before it was time to move on and get serious for a while. I haven't ridden in town much over the last few months as I have been either away or at the hill, and being back riding in town has been SUPER FUN. My body has been doing decently, my bike has been feeling awesome, and I have been feeling super confident on it, so I have been enjoying pushing it especially on larger jumps. Saturday I sprained my wrist and pulled my back taking it down pretty hard on Rio, but I still managed another Beacon run that afternoon. Pretty intimidating challenging those lines while not being able to bend my wrist, but kept it in super in control and had a wicked time riding it with two of my buddies from high school. Had a pact to do it with the three of us there before we left so it had to happen. My one buddy had a pretty sketchy bail on it up top, missing one of the corners, clipping a rock wall and doing some steep flips for a ways but he was ok so it turned out alright. Sunday was the Gummy Bear DH at Sun Peaks which was super fun, but I was hurting pretty bad early on. I did a training run in the morning which did not go very well. On course I was extremely limited by my wrist, having to take it super easy and pretty much having no ability to recover, just a passenger on my bike. By half way down the mountain I was riding mostly with my good arm and by the bottom I could not hold on so I coasted sitting down with my one hand off the bar. I almost didn't run, but as it was the last race of the year I decided that I wanted to just have fun with it and race my own race. I decided to rest over the day, work on my bike, tape up my wrist super tight and pop a bunch of painkillers to make it happen. Pretty irresponsible really. For the course I decided on a strategy of being super smooth, braking super early, carrying speed out and hammering on straights, and generally not taking to many chances as I really had no ability to recover if things went sideways. I felt strong mentally in my new approach, my wrist felt fairly supported and not in too much pain, so I hit the race prep as ever. The run went ok, I was happy to be riding and I put down a consistent run given my limitations. I didn’t think there was really a possibility of winning, but I thought that maybe if I was really lucky I might pull a top 3. At the bottom of the course we waited around for a fair while on the hill for results, and it was cool to see the crowd the chill local race drew. There were a bunch of younger kids there that are now inspired on racing, so I was stoked. When awards came and the last category was called I had my fingers crossed. When 3rd and 2nd passed by I was sure that I had missed my chance, but then my name was called for the win and I was equally surprised and stoked. It was super rad to win at home surrounded by friends, and it definitely made the trip to Vancouver a lot easier injecting a little flow into the tiny budget.
Peace, love and respect.
J

practise makes not so perfect!

well back in the day when it was summer, and i was still in whistler, i practised double tailwhips aloot at the foam pit, and ever since i got home ive wanted to try one real bad. I also have been rebuilding the best jumps in town a whole bunch and they are finally dialed, so i decided to give it a go tonight and it worked out not to bad, but not as well as it could have. i got it under me and rode out on my seat. heres the clip!

http://vimeo.com/6602631

Birth of a new trail....

My muscles are huge now. Massive. I’ve been hanging out with my good friend Macleod (the tool) for the last 6 weeks, building and maintaining when I felt it was too hot to ride. One more trail to ride now. It’s got some nice corners, some for drifting, some built up berms for speed. The “hump jump” is a super fast floater jump that you can hit as fast as you want with an endless long tranny. We tried to make the best use of the natural features this land has...which is lots of gullies and nice rolling terrain. I wish I got more pictures while we were still able to – but for now all I have are these few for a teaser. More to come in the future......

NSMB article

Went out a couple months ago with some guys from Van and showed them around some Iron Mtn here in town with one my riding buddies Carlos. They said they were doing some roadtripping for an article, but i wasnt fully understanding of what for and i kind of figured it just never happened until today, scrolling nsmb i noticed it on the front page.

http://www.nsmb.com/3270-riding-in-merritt-bc

Im stoked that Merritts getting a little more well known to the riding community

Sept. 10th, Killing Season Starts!

During the month of August I got out for a few exciting photo projects and went down to crankworx but other than that I didn't ride much. I was just plain bored. Jumps and trails were way to dusty and it was far too hot for me to enjoy riding. Not being a complete downer, I speant alot of time hiking, working out my weak shoulders, and relaxing. After not riding for a few weeks and the weather chilling off a bit I've found myself in better shape and more excited to kill it than ever. I've ridden the last seven days in a row getting back into shape and I'm feeling very confident. For the first time in over a year I can confidently crash without being terrified of hurting my shoulder. It was a big problem for me all year, I took a step back in alot of situations simply because I was too scared to fall. But lastnight Killick and I rode the KBR step up and I consistantly landed hard on my right shoulder while learning flat spins, and it was all good! I have tons of plans for this fall so I am out of control excited right meow. So many photo shoots to do, so many fun new hits to ride, so much good weather and so many bros to shred with! This morning I am actually waiting for my cover buddy Kelly Mcgarry to get into town, he is driving up from Van to shred for the day! I also have a fresh digi cam that I figured out how to load photos with so look out for sweet behind the scenes sneeks and lots of stories over the next couple months. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Cafe Day and Tippie Lines

Last couple days have been super epic, just riding tons with family and friends. Today we had a Cafe team ride day at Sun Peaks with the whole crew and it was super fun. It has been raining a lot lately so the ground was borderline muddy delightful and I couldn't keep a smile off my face. It was also so cold up there that it actually snowed on us a lot of the day up top. We were there all day, did a ton of runs, made our presence felt and shredded the entire mountain which was awesome.
After Sun Peaks I came to town and rode this crazy old school Tippie-esque line with my buddy Steve. Out by my old high school there is this rocky mountain called the Beacon... it has a bunch of cliffs up top with chutes and a rock field below. Back in high school we would hike around under the cliffs with our bikes and then ride the chutes into the rock fields below. I would guess it would be 40 degrees or a little steeper, with a 500 meter + decent. We pioneered it back then and haven't done it in 5 years or so... lately we have been talking about it lots, so this weekend a few of us decided we were going to do it this week. Today Steve and I were the only ones to follow through, so when I got to town we met up, cleared a little runaway path of smaller rocks through the boulders at the bottom and spray painted it blue so we could see where to aim from the top (when we were kids we just rolled the dice and shot into the boulder field at speed hoping for the best. How did we survive that age anyways?). After we finished we hopped in the car, cranked the Led Zeppelin as loud as it would go and were giddy as school girls the whole ride up to the top. The hike in was gnarly as ever, and once we got to the top we scoped out the now very eroded chutes and the tiny blue dot at the bottom we had to aim for. The chutes had changed fairly dramatically over our time away, but you still had to start sideways to drop in straight down, make a hard right around a boulder to avoid a rock wall, make a hard left into the main chute, jump a boulder in the middle and then just survive and try to control your speed to the bottom. I went first as I suppose was customary in the old days, and Steve filmed. The hardest part after the hike in was just getting on the bike.

Blast from the past

Once I accomplished that the chute part went fairly well, like a memory or a dream returning to me. What I forgot was how fast you got going or how hard it was to control your direction once you were on the main rocky slope to try and aim for the blue dot. The slope was STEEP! Our line on the rock field had a strip of the smallest rocks down it so it was the ground was decently consistent under our tires, but you would hit random larger rocks on the slope while trying to brake as hard as possible and it made the bike squirrel around like crazy. As I approached the bottom I still had a ton of speed and could not slow down at all. As well, just before our little rocky run out, the ground turned from small rocks to grapefruit and watermelon sized rocks in front of me for the last 100 meters of the slope. Coming into it at speed I decided I would let off my front brake right before the ground turned mean and then just hope that the run out did its job and didn’t kill me (the run out was comprised of a flat group of watermelon sized rocks, about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long before a concrete culvert). Needless to say, the run out worked perfectly, and once I stopped I let out a scream of victory like I haven’t done in years. Steve came down in a fairly similar fashion and we shared a moment of youth, relishing what it feels like to be alive while buzzing from adrenaline. I haven’t really sought or wanted adrenaline rushes in a fair while as most of the time they happen from mistakes or close calls, but the feeling of commitment to something relatively unfamiliar culminating in victory resulted in a seriously good feeling. Since then I’ve had a perma-grin on my face and haven’t really thought about anything negative or stressful in any depth. The footage we took didn’t really turn out, but later in the week we are planning to do it again and this time get some better shots, so keep your eyes peeled. What a sweet end to an epic long weekend.
All the best!
J

Last Day of Summer Shred

Today most of the team headed up to sunpeaks to enjoy wet dirt in kamloops for a change and was it ever wet! Everyone put aside the super cold air, rain and snow and had a blast. The day had its share of mechanical problems which were all fixed fast. Once the clouds broke and the sun poked through it was the best conditions i've ever ridden the mountain on. Solid day to end the summer with and back to school in the morning :(

Summer coming to an end!

Well, sadly in three days we will be back to school for another 8+ months. This summer for me consisted of lazy shred days for the first 2 or 3 weeks, hitting goatstyle earlier in the summer and doing a bunch of trips over to vernon for silverstar and my friend brads house, but more recently i have just been working, trying to get some money saved up for next seasons bikes, and maybe a vehicle sometime in the next several months. One of my highlights of this summer was definently a road trip i went on in mid august with my causin and his good friend, both from edmonton. We shredded over to whistler for a week, and it was soo good. We werent sure what to expect after crankworx but it turned out that everything basically had been buffed right after crankworx, and the mountain was amasing. we also shredded alot of airdome which i had tons of fun at.

So that was my summer wrap up, probably alot less fun to read than it was to live, but oh well..i leave you with a shot from today at the bikepark..i love rain! : http://www.vimeo.com/6447649

What can YOUR mom do?

I taught my mom to do no footers with Aggy's tramp bike! She's pretty rad. Next, I have to take her down some trails so she can practice them -

Rain Rain Rain, makes for the best rides! :)

See you on the trails!