When I got the chance to mountain bike at Whistler earlier this year, I was equal parts ecstatic and terrified. It’s known by many as one of North America’s biggest, baddest ski resorts, but when the snow melts, Whistler transforms into a mountain biking Mecca. Being the birthplace of the Crankworx festival, seemingly endless valley trails, a sprawling village and 5,000 vertical feet of descent from the top of the lift-accessed singletrack to the base will earn you that designation.
But Whistler’s got something else going for it, too: it’s the flagship location of the Trek Dirt Series, an ever-growing circuit of mountain bike camps covering some 11 states and provinces on the western half of the continent. Now offering nearly 30 individual camps, the Dirt Series started as a small seed in the brain of mountain bike rock star Candace Shadley, who simply wanted to encourage more women to share her trail-crushing passion.
Indeed, the majority of the camps are women-specific. The one I was invited to attend a couple months ago was one of seven co-ed programs, and I was torn. Though I’d been mountain biking maybe 10 times to that point, I’d never had much instruction, and I had a sneaking suspicion I was actually clueless. But I couldn’t say no to such an awesome opportunity, so I joined some 70 other campers for a rather rainy weekend in September.
Looking back, it’s hard to adequately express how fantastic a job Shadley and her fellow coaches do, except to say that a. I quickly learned that my sneaking suspicion was correct, and b. I almost as quickly learned a ton of fantastic tips to significantly reverse that reality. Some of them made tons of sense (look where you’re going!); some went against every instinct (the front brake is my friend?); all enabled me to rise from a mountain biking boy to, at the very least, a mountain biking man-child.
It’s a testament to the rapid progression that the very first descent we tackled on Day 2 (when we transitioned from trails to the park for full-on downhilling) was markedly gnarlier than the scariest thing we’d done on Day 1, and yet everyone in my formerly ragtag little riding group aced it without much hesitation. We moved on to even steeper features later in the day, and though my heart was often pounding out of my chest, my feet stayed securely on the pedals. And the excitement really carried back to the east coast, as I’ve now mountain biked in New Jersey and Queens (yes, Queens!) another half-dozen times, and I get more amped about the sport every time out.
So, I highly recommend checking out the Dirt Series. Even if you can’t make it to a camp, though, anyone can improve their riding skills and overall enjoyment by following a few simple tips… tips I procured from Shadley herself. She is simultaneously one of the sweetest and most badass people alive, as I learned as one of her pupils on Day 1. Scroll down for her top five mountain biking pointers, followed by seven products that’ll give you another kind of edge on the trails…
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