The brakes squeal. Phew, lucky me. I just about manage to stop. The small, cosy forest path has suddenly turned into a wooden rollercoaster monster that ends abruptly in the air on a steep bend. The crookedly nailed, damp, mossy wooden planks grin at me like rotten teeth.
Bollocks! Stephen Matthews just made it look so easy: Brake up, angle the wheel slightly and dive elegantly into the landing a few metres below. "Welcome to the shore!", I hear from further down as I manoeuvre my bike around the gaping hole. So this is the legendary Northshore. The place where the freeride boom began. Made famous by countless photos and videos of mountain bikers who have become legends pushing their bikes to their physical limits. A playground for the pioneers of extreme biking - and in reality even more impressive than I could have imagined. Stephen grins. He is one of the most talented young bikers here and, unlike me, moves like a cat on the trail rollercoaster.
Geographically, the term "Northshore" refers to the coastal region of the Coast Mountains near Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. For bikers, the Northshore stands for the historic, endless trail systems in Cypress Mountain, Mount Fromme and Mount Seymour.
Where today legendary trails with such illustrious names as The Skull, Ladies Only or Expresso are well signposted and labelled with levels of difficulty and theoretically accessible to everyone, a quarter of a century ago a couple of guys started to try out what was possible off the beaten track on a bike. In the process, they invented something that combines everything that you normally avoid on a bike: slippery, narrow wooden chicken ladders that you balance on high over hill and dale and from which you have to jump down because they simply stop somewhere. These wooden elements, named after the Northshore, are now standard features in every bike park. In the dark forests of British Columbia, people were already dropping, jumping and milling over the trails so intensively in the early nineties that people and equipment were pushed to their limits.
So it's no wonder that more and more local bike forges sprouted up at the same time. The level of riding and number of bikers increased continuously. And the steep mountain slopes became home to ever more ingenious bike constructions made of clay, wood and stone. A new discipline of mountain biking was born with the approach of creating technical difficulties yourself and then mastering them as elegantly as possible: freeriding. And at the same time, a new form of landscaping was born: trail building for mountain bikers.
I actually had an appointment with Wade Simmons to see how the "Godfather of Freeride" actually lives. After a brief visit to his family home in a housing estate in Lynn Valley, we are on our way to a bike shop when we bump into Todd "Digger" Fiander, a veteran of Northshore trail building. Like Wade, Digger has been inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame for his biking achievements. However, he doesn't look like much of a celebrity. In tattered, clay-encrusted clothes, he rummages the tools from the back of his pick-up. He looks tired and torn. We learn that he has come straight from repairing the Ladies Only. He's been working on this trail for weeks and his torn knees are hurting like hell again. But apparently it was worth it: Ladies Only is completely restored! He grins mischievously. But the best thing is that today is the first time in more than 25 years that he has officially received money for his work from the NSMBA mountain bike association. Ladies Only is one of the most famous and oldest trails on the Northshore and something of a personal masterpiece. Wade can confirm this, even though he emphasises that you shouldn't be fooled by the name, as the trail is quite a beast and is not at all ladylike in many sections.
Unfortunately, Wade doesn't have time for the trails today. He still has to pack, because tomorrow he and his wife are travelling to the Chilcotins for a two-day bike camping trip. He's already a little excited because it's the first time his two kids are staying with their grandparents on their own. Andreas "Dre" Hestler, a mate of Wade's and also one of the pioneers of mountain biking, has time for this. Dre's roots are in racing, so it's no wonder that after a successful career he is now the mastermind of the world-famous BC Bike Race - a stage race on the best trails in British Columbia. Hestler has simply combined everything he enjoys about biking and the result is an event that sells out in no time year after year. That's why he's keen to show us the new climb trail on Mount Fromme, which has only been finished for a week and for him is the best example of what the bike spirit on the Northshore is all about.
On the way to the trailhead, the starting point, car park and meeting point for the bike community, we pass Rocky Mountain Bicycles. The company has been based on the Northshore for 33 years. Rocky is one of the brands that co-founded freeriding. With Wade Simmons, Richie Schley and Brett Tippie, it signed the most progressive bike gang of the time. As "Frorider", they caused a sensation with their wild stunts. They were also involved in the development of the bikes in order to adapt them to their growing requirements. Rider feedback is still important today, and so we have the pleasure of being provided with a couple of genuine Canadian trail bikes for our ride on the "Shore". A short time later, we roll into the vast coniferous forest.
First on gravel, but soon the new trail branches off - into the steep slope. Intended as a one-way road and only for riding uphill, this path was dug into the terrain according to all the rules of the art and over an altitude difference of almost 600 metres. Dre points out the perfect surface structure time and again, and claims that this is an expression of the highest trail-building skills. It may be dry at the moment, but you have to remember that we are travelling in one of the rainiest regions in the world and trails like this have to withstand torrents of water. The trick is to dig out the gravel layer, which is actually a little deeper, and use it as a surface layer. A lot of work, but absolutely necessary here. Meanwhile, I enjoy the course of the trail, which provides a real uphill flow after just a few metres. In contrast to normal hiking trails, the path does not aim to gain metres in altitude immediately, but tries to keep the biker rolling by skilfully alternating between short steep sections and gentle flat sections. The hairpin bends are built with large radii and, where necessary, shaped as steep wall curves, so that you get the feeling that you are actually accelerating in the bends. You never get the impression that the track designer wants to get the biker up as quickly as possible to save himself work: Wherever possible, boulders, rocks and roots have been skilfully incorporated into the route to make the ride even more fun.
The next morning: we are in Deep Cove, an idyllic seaside resort in North Vancouver. Another legend lives here. Brett Tippie is a real phenomenon, both in sound and vision. Old and new jokes gush out of his permanently grinning giant mouth in a seemingly endless stream. Tippie does the laughing too. His business card reads "Director of Good Times" and he lives this title down to the smallest fibre of his body - twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As one of the mountain bike originals par excellence, he still manages to transfer this energy and elemental force to his motivation. There are certainly few people who are as reliable when it comes to a ride on the trail. This was also the case today when I rang his doorbell. It's true that Tippie had only returned from a strenuous photo shoot a few hours earlier and had spent half the night in the car. Nevertheless, the first thing I do is go for a little walk round the back of the house. He really wants to show me the Rock Slab, a large rock with a steep drop, which is something like his "signature stunt" and with which he has probably been photographed in almost every magazine in the world. Of course I know the picture too, but I wouldn't have guessed that the rock is not in the deepest wilderness, but really only a few hundred metres from his house in a small wooded area. Tippie is absolutely delighted. He tells me that he didn't build this stunt himself, but a kid from the neighbourhood who never drove it himself. No wonder, because what towers up in front of me is a real test of courage, even by Canadian standards. For Tippie, however, this descent is now routine and he could actually try it out today on his 29er trail bike, he shouts. Before I can say anything back, Tippie comes shooting down the rock face and whizzes past me with a big grin on his face.
A little further on, in Coquitlam, lives Ryan Berrecloth. He is also a great fan of hair-raising stunts. The Shore has turned him into a true master builder of tests of courage. It took him a year and a half to complete his new descent in the forest. It is so spectacular that a segment was dedicated to it in the MTB film "Builder". A trail section only a few hundred metres long, but peppered with radical jumps and drops - the final jump a good ten metres high. Even among the pros here, only very few could ride this line. And yet it epitomises exactly what the spirit of mountain biking on Vancouver's North Shore is all about: the fun of biking and the joy of having created something new, challenging and unprecedented. Biking has become a cultural asset here over the years.
You notice this when you come together in the car park after the ride. Here, active pros, after-work riders and tourists like me stand together with a can of beer in their hands, and it's easy to get along. One person may be more famous, another may ride faster or jump further - but the spirit is exactly the same for everyone: the fun of mountain biking. And there's been plenty of that here for a long time.
INFO NORTHSHORE
The precinct
The term Northshore refers to the region around Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. In the context of biking, it refers to the mountain trio of Cypress Mountain, Mount Fromme and Mount Seymour, which is covered in fine trails. There are no lifts. You have to crank it yourself. Some bike shops also offer shuttles to the trails.
Journey
Vancouver is served by all major airlines. The costs for bike transport vary. However, we definitely recommend taking your own bike with you instead of hiring one locally.
Trails
Most of the trails on the Northshore are signposted. There are overview maps in the bike shops. A good web address: www.nsmb.com
