I gotta say it would be my first experience doing the actual North Shore.
After a several year absence from the sport (moving out to Sydney and my bike dying at the same time), my wife and I returned back earlier this year to Whistler to see old friends. My best buddy became a rep for Brodie
while I was in Oz, so when we got together, he hooked me up with my dream bike, the Holeshot (BURLY hardtail), and took me to some of the legendary North Shore trails. And blew my mind.
My last bike was a Rocky Mountain Blizzard with Mag 21's on it, so my Brodie Holeshot with Psylo SLs was another world!
And my buddy who I used to ride with all the time was replaced by some complete psycho who was riding things that just made my jaw drop (mind you, he was riding a bike with over 16" of travel :shock: ).
The first day I spent just getting my bearings with this new style of riding and getting to know my new bike. I opted to take the easy lines out most of the time.
The second day I started trying pushing the bike to see what it was capable of, started taking some bigger drops and air and more techical approaches.
On the third and last day, we went to Squamish, hooked up with some of his biking buddies (everybody owned these huge squish bikes), and did shuttle runs up the mountain.
This was the last day I would have riding with my oldest friend for years, and I knew I had to go for broke, so I followed them on every "skinny", tried every stunt we came to, attempted every drop that they hit (including some that weren't probably too good for a hardtail) and near the end of the day, tried to be the first to hit stuff that we hadn't ridden yet that day.
I crashed. A lot. Wrecked one of my hydraulic hoses. And amazingly, the very last hit of the last run of the day, taco'ed my front wheel.
One of the guys came up to me when we were changing out of our riding gear at the trucks, and asked me how long I had "ridden the Shore" for. I said this was my third day. He laughed and said I was a nutjob! :lol:
I hadn't felt that alive in years.