PANORAMA 09
Before I start, let me make you a promise that I’ll do my very best to try and modulate the superlatives during my daily recount of our 6th annual 6 day trip to beautiful Panorama Mountain Resort. After all, who wants to read seven paragraphs a day laden with the overt and repetitive use of the words wow, amazing, killer, awesome, sweet, fantastic, sensational, jaw-dropping and incredible?
Day 1
After spending Saturday traveling from Winnipeg to Pano (nice big bus filled with bikes and bike buddies) Sunday saw us excitedly hit the hill for the first time in 2009 and although the majority of us (except for Mr. Steve Shaw, Jasman, Matt Jackson, Darci, JT, Rheal and Chris D) have been here before and while it felt like we were here just yesterday, the place has not lost one ounce of its magic. The vistas are still inspiring, the terrain is still to die for and the company is still stellar
(hehe, notice I stayed away from the usual “wow, amazing, killer, awesome, sweet, fantastic, sensational, jaw-dropping and incredible”? Screw you Mrs. Baker… Stupid English teacher who thought I should fail grade 7 Hengish.)
The first day is always a day filled with discovery, filled with reunions with old friends, re-acquainting with one year-ago ridden trails that we love so much. Things haven’t changed much since last year except for some nice train grooming and a few new tweaks to the old favorites. And then there’s our gorgeous condo (thank you Mr Stimming) and the always popular hot tub complex that would make even the non-mountain biker come for a trip… they are simply that good.
As I sit here typing this I’m smiling at the overt enthusiasm that “tech shop team” (led by Coppens and populated with RT, Jazzhands, Jerry Todd and Matt Jackson) and all the other sub-teams that have emerged like “Team Thompson” led by the soft-skinned Scott Watson and the Shaw brothers, Team common-sense led by yours truly and comprised of all the folks saddled with responsibilities like mortgages, and dependents… And then there was “Team Dave Lewis” that’s
conveniently made up of whoever Dave has selected to ride with at any particular moment… A motley bunch of folks all having the time of their lives on bikes.
The funny thing about day one this year is that it didn’t feel like a day one, many commented on how it felt like a day three or a day four, we simply picked up where we’d left off. The consensus seems to be that our collective skillset has increased over years past, in fact no-one got seriously hurt today! Maybe that had something to do with the gloom-and-doom “you’re on your own” speech I gave in the bus, who knows! But the happy thing is that all twentysomething riders
are all doing great and soaking in the hot-tubs right now. As they say in the movies: BOOYAH!
Day 2
Sorry to hear Winnipeg has been suffering through more crappy weather.
Our second day at Panorama saw us step it up a notch or three… “Team Tech Shop Boys with Special Guest Dave Lewis” as we now call them have definitely raised the bar, especially with the arrival of “FJ” our friendly Louis Garneau and Intense Bikes rep. The guy doesn’t only peddle bike gear, he also happened to race BC cup Downhill Mountain Biking. Great all around guy, even spend a run teaching Darci the finer points of gravity-assisted mountain biking.
The day began first with Bob (our infamous bus driver) Cat and Jenn Holmes doing close to 100k’s on their road bikes (if you only saw how insanely steep the mountain road is here, you’d understand the look on Jenn’s face when they got back at lunch. Some of us started the day a little more mellow with our annual paved golf-cart-path ride down to the valley floor where we admired the turquoise river and the admittedly gorgeous Grey-Wolf golf course (if I was ever forced to golf,
THIS is where I’d golf… simply gorgeous).
The weather today saw day one’s mix of sun and rain give way to just sun… and lots of it. Perfect blue skies and high 20’s are in the forecast for the rest of the week. Lucky us. If the weather holds it’ll be the first time in six years that we avoid our usual mid-week monsoon. Rain or no rain, we’re happy. This place makes everyone smile, regardless of weather.
After another delicious lunch at the Picnic Deli Darci and I we hooked-up with Cat and Jenn (Yes, these nutjobs followed up their crazy road-ride with an afternoon of extreme mountain-biking… Call it a Duathlon until the hot tub portion of the afternoon made it an official Triathlon) and the rest of team common-sense for a nice afternoon ride with a few sweet runs with FJ where we were given a few wise pointers like “when it gets hairy and rooty and steep and difficult, simply lay off
the brakes and giver!” uh, yeah… we’re on it.
This is where I usually wax poetic and go on and on about how great a group of people we have along. It’s like what’s-his-name, the guy with the boyish good looks and the surprisingly soft skin, Scott Watson said later on that evening, about how solid our gang is this year. All of our “newbies” are really doing well. Rheal is having so much fun, Jazzhands is taking to this like a fish to water, Darci is just riding so well, Chris is getting better by the run, Jackson is smiling
more that you’d think possible and Steve Shaw is just eating this place up. Nice to see him and his brother rip it up together. Veterans and fresh meat, outstanding folks, one and all.
Certainly my most memorable part of day two would have to be our last run down what we have affectionately called “skull crusher” an old run that we usually reserve for day 5 or 6. It was lots of fun to see the breakdown of the usual clans as the most adventurous (not necessarily the most skilled) tackle this gnarly, ungroomed and technically difficult section of the mountain. We didn’t just do it once, we climbed back up old school and did it again and again and again… One
particular section saw FJ, the before-mentioned Dave Lewis and myself struggle with a near impossible stupid-steep section until DFL (Dave *expletive* Lewis) proved it doable… Happy to report that I did it as well although even happier to report that FJ did not (woohoo!). Great way to end a day, great to see Cat, Gavin and our senior partner Jerry Legbacon give it a shot. Sweet crashes one and all. (nothing quite matches the dramatic effect of the sound of Gavin’s helmet impacting granite).
And that was our day. More fun ahead for the rest of the week.
Day 3 and 4
Hello once again from Panorama.
Time went by so fast, had no time to write anything on Tuesday night, t be honest, it’s a little bit of a blur after today (Wednesday)… The only thing that sticks in my mind from Tuesday’s shenanigans is that Darci is riding better and better every day and I can’t seem to catch Horbatiuk on “Rocking Horse” The girl has turned into a speed machine. Time to stop upgrading her bike.
Back in Winnipeg, before we left, Scott Watson (yes, THAT Scott Watson) concocted this idea that one day we’d poach the top of Panorama (FYI when riding Pano in the summer you only ride roughly 1/3 of the height of the mountain) and ride from the very top (2400 meters up) to the bottom.
I think he was perhaps just kidding when he suggested it but I latched onto the idea like a mousetrap on an index finger… And tonight, at 4:30pm with the company of JT we followed through on our ill-devised plan.
Said plan was simple, show up at 4:00 at the quad, ride it up before it shut down, ride/hike our bikes up until 7:00pm and ride back down while we still had daylight. And we did just that. At 6:40pm we had made it up to the top of the Champaign chair and could see the peak within our grasp… so we deleted the 7:00pm descent time limit and pushed onward. At roughly 7:15 we got to the summit. Yes, we pushed our bikes up 95% of the way, yes my feet still hurt from hiking up that far in bike shoes,
yes it was fun, yes we hung out up there for as long as we could and yes all three of us took a moment to update our Facebook profiles (so sad, what have we become?) but man was it a blast. The descent was simply insane, we went down the way we came up, using access roads Panorama uses to service the lifts and do summer trail maintenance… 30 minutes of non-stop smiling from top to bottom with just a few brief stops to let our brakes cool down and pick up Scott’s gloves he dropped on
the way up.
Our little raid to the summit simply capped another sensational day in MTB paradise. A day that saw Chris D take a monster step up in bike skill and accomplishments, a day that saw the girls (Cat, Darci, Jenn and Michelle) TKO Punisher in their own ways (Special mention goes to Ming and yours truly for conquering a particularly gnarly section of Punisher that always caused us grief). JT is riding better, Rheal is kicking butt and even team “Tech Shop Boys with Special Guest Dave Lewis” apparently
were dominating the mountain left and right (maybe one day we’ll see the elusive footage of their adventures).
It’s been a weird one this year, very few injuries and nothing serious to report (other than broken bike parts)… Usually we get a day of rain in the middle of our visit just to temper things down a bit and this year the weather has been perfect and the gang is riding like their pants are on fire, even Ming has been getting up before noon… something is amiss… But let’s not dwell on that, let’s just thank the bike gods and head to Kicking Horse tomorrow!
Like the guy said: Booyah!
PS
We’re still missing Batenchuk, Rideout, Degelman, Karl and Aquaman.
Day 5 Kicking Horse
Fresh from our return from Kicking Horse (we always pop by the big KH for at least one day of riding during this trip) and I’m still smiling. Today I learned to accept air under my tires and have almost mastered the art of jumping my bike. Quite the momentous occasion for me.
To understand how kicking horse is different than Panorama is to grasp the idea that when we’re at Pano we only ride roughly one third of the height of the mountain (I think I mentioned this yesterday) … Kicking Horse (a ski and bike resort outside of Golden about 2 hours north of Panorama) features a full top-to-bottom experience that is tough to match in sheer vertical. When you ride KH you RIDE a long way down from the top of the lift (3800ft). The scenery is pretty awesome… awesome
as in “holy crap I could fall off the side of this mountain and die” awesome.
While the general vibe at Kicking Horse is that they don’t need your business, don’t worry - they are going to take all the money that they can from you. Here’s a great customer service story: As we approached the customer service desk this morning, we asked for a 20 person group rate only to be told “well if you had called earlier we would have given it to you but since you’re here, geared up and ready to go… sorry, no group deal” oh and let’s not
forget the rental bikes (for Rheal and Joe) with worn tires and the specific instructions to do NOTHING to the bike, “do not adjust the seat, the fork or anything” oh and let me mention the slight wobble in my tire that took a full day to true. Good thing Rheal wasn’t using his bike, I simply borrowed his front wheel for the entire day and popped by after every single run and asked if it was ready. They finally got to it (initially, at 11:00am the guy had told me 15 minutes) at
5:10pm (the lifts close at 5:30pm). If you go to Kicking Horse, don’t expect warm and fuzzies, (the staff are abrupt, do the minimum and seem to enjoy saying “no” and “cheers” more than anyone should) go to Kicking Horse to ride the rubber off your bike.
What about the riding? It’s amazing. And yes, the trails are much longer and they feature berms.. here a berm, there a berm, everywhere a berm… The place is so steep, berms are a must and they do berms well. The folks who built these trails are masters at their craft. Every structure is exceedingly well built and most of them can easily be “rolled”, every berm is nicely manicured, bridges are solid, jumps are well positioned and while the trail selection may appear lacking,
what it lacks in width it certainly makes up in length. The bummer is that Kicking Horse can be intimidating to the non-adrenalin-junky. It’s scary if you’re a newbie and it’s really not for wussies. Darci and Jenn did great (once again) but did admit to being scared more than once. Simple: bring extra cojones… Dave used the words “I almost died” (while commenting on his experience) about a dozen times in the bus on the way back to our condos. It’s not that
bad, in fact most everything can be rolled. the guys and girls who built the trails there… Well they’re for real. If it wasn’t for the crappy hospitality, marginal customer service and the “f__ck you” attitude from everyone including the lifties, we’d go there more often.
Conclusion: Kicking Horse, (even with its bigger & better stunts and its mind boggling vertical) makes Panorama feel like an absolute love-fest… and for us, it’s not JUST about the riding, it’s about the entire experience… For now, for this guy, KH will remain nothing more than an absolutely blow-your-MTB-mind day trip.
Injury report: Thankfully no one is seriously hurt (other than perhaps a serious scare when Steve Shaw plowed into me mid-air after I’d stopped to help Cat after she crashed ahead of me).
Tomorrow we're back to riding our favorite trails one last time at Panorama. The last day on bikes until we hit the road back to Winnipeg Saturday noon… Mixed feelings all around.
Day Six:
So after today it's over for 2009. The last day came and went. Quite a few of us woke up a wee bit beat up from the marathon day that was Kicking Horse yesterday. Perhaps as a result of that, a few of us (like yours truly) managed to find a way to sleep in a wee bit later than usual today. JF AKA "FJ" , (our lovely Louis Garneau and Intense rep) dropped by for yet another day of riding with the crew. Great guy, Great rider.
After 6 years of "the last day" at Panorama I can safely say that the best thing about "the last day" is most everyone's ability to just let it ride, to allow ourselves to take a few more chances, to not worry so much about things like consequences. It's so funny that on the sixth day those of us who still have the energy to do so all end up all pushing the envelope a bit. It's interesting to notice that what prevents many of us from pushing the envelope
isn't as much the possibility of getting hurt as much as the possibility of missing a day or two of riding or worse yet the possibility of pulling a Chris Endo and suffering a vacation-ending injury. All of that goes away on day 6. Balls to the wall, dig a little deeper, give it one last shot.
I wasn't the only one making stuff I had been fearing all week. Darci and Jenn (who later proclaimed Day Six as her best day of the trip) Both cleaned Insanity and Darci even rolled that stupid rock of hers on Crazy Train. Chris D was pretty much doing every stunt he could get his wheels on. For me, the memorable moment was that big scary rock on Alcatraz and the first feature/structure on my favorite run at Panorama: Crazy Train (thanks for the coaching on that one, TJ,
Chris and Jerry Todd). Made me happy but also scared the crap out of me. I'm just happy Gavin and Jerry Todd were there to catch it on film.
My final thoughts are similar this year as they are at the end of every single Panorama mountain bike adventure ... Except for the following:
1. This year some folks were clearly under equipped for their level of riding. No doubt about it, as our collective skillset improves, so does the need for bigger, better bikes. Coppens was voted most fearless (more on our first annual trip awards later) partly because he was finally riding the right bike (Rocky Mountain Flatline) in relation to his skillset. Cat made a big jump forward in her abilities in no small part because of her new Fox 36 fork and I would venture a
guess that my killer Scott Gambler (earning me the award for 'most over biked') certainly helped keep me safe and uninjured while I tried stuff well above my pay grade.
As we get better and as we keep on pushing ourselves, the right gear can be the difference between enjoying the experience, changing a flat every third run or laying on the couch with your leg iced and elevated. Skill is a key ingredient - absolutely - but put a guy like Rodney on a DH bike and watch out Coppens.
Note to self: stock more two-ply DH tires and make DH tubes mandatory next year. The gang suffered Waaaay too many flats this year.
2. Pre-Pano training is a must
No doubt about it, coming in cold with no gravity training is a crapshoot. Could part of the reason we had so few injuries and perhaps why some on our team were riding so much better be attributed to some folks attending our Thursday Night Pano clinics? I don't think it would be such a stretch to think yes.
3. Armor, armor, armor. As I stopped to see if Cat was OK after a crash landing off of a jump, my new friend Steve Shaw landed squarely into my hydration pack and back protector with his bike ... And other than the handlebar hit to the ribs (the one unprotected area under my armpit) I eventually got up, got on my bike and rode away. Without armor, many of us would not have walked away from many of our otherwise uneventful crashes.
4. We're coming back next year... Maybe we'll schedule our trip one week earlier but there's no circumnavigating the fact that Pano is our second home. It has all the key ingredients to make this trip the best it can be... and where we'll continue to come back, year after year after year.
Stay tuned for the post trip thoughts and awards.
See you all on the next ride.
> Make sure to check back soon for more including pics and video!
Read about Panorma 2008
Read about Panorma 2007
Read about Panorma 2006
Read about Panorma 2005
|
Listen, if you ride any trail, flat as it may be or steep as you can find... If you're over 19 years old and you want to keep on riding into your sixties and beyond... if you're still riding that hardtail WAKE UP! Give your head a shake. Do yourself, your body and your ass a favor, get with the times. INJECT SOME FUN in your moribund life, get a full suspension bike and join the ranks of those who do more than just ride, join the ranks of those who are having the time of their lives on their bikes, join the ranks of the living. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO RIDE A HARDTAIL. (We should make a T-shirt!) Check out our full-suspension page 
Attention all bike lovers! Gord's is very proud to announce that we'll be offering 
