8-27-07 // Online Exclusive: Bike Mag Goes To Disneyland

Disneyland is EPIC! Sterling Lorence

Every once and a while the bike staff gets a real special treat. Our bosses like to throw a bone to the pack every once and a while, and damn rights they should. We work hard. Riding our bikes all over the place, stuck in airports, hands bleeding on the keys, brains imploding upon overuse.

This year we all got to go to Disneyland. Wow. Except this Disneyland isn’t the oversized rodent infested Crayola fairyland that immediately comes to mind. The contrary in fact. This Disneyland is, instead of a day of roller coasters and merry go rounds, a burl fest for the ages.

It’s two days after Whistler’s Crankworx Festival and we all find ourselves pleasantly numbified from a week of Whistler Bike Park action and après ride activities that dove deep into the night. Swarmed by the masses, with big lift lines, crowded bars (even the driving range was packed) and mountain bikers everywhere, we felt the need to get away from it all.

Watch your step on that little icey patch right there... Sterling Lorence

6,000 feet above the town of Squamish, just 45 minutes down Hwy 99 from Whistler, a network of nasty singletrack drops in from the high alpine, winding its way through ultra steep forest and wild granite formations all the way down to Howe Sound. Nine of us, including Wade Simmons, Sterling Lorence, Matt Hunter and Thomas Vanderham, loaded the first ride of the day—a Jet Ranger helicopter—quickly finding ourselves high in the Coast Mountain Range, staring down at an improbable landscape, one that would take us nearly eight hours to navigate through.

For all of us Bike Mag dudes, this was a first. We’d never been to Disneyland before. Dropping in on steep snow patches, we weave and wind our way out of the alpine and into the thick trucks of coastal rainforest. That’s when things get spicy. Steep, rocky, rooty, relentless singletrack dives straight down the fall line. We’re having to embrace the third brake for hours, playing on wild granite slabs as supersized as the colossal Douglas-fir and cedar trees that surround us—an amusement park in its own right.

Built by local trials motor bikers, Disneyland is a weave of faint, super technical trail. It takes a savvy guide, and even Wade and Sterl, Disneyland veterans, are making the odd confirmation cell phone call to buddies down in the city. This is British Columbia mountain biking all wrapped into one beautiful epic. Even though it’s a heli drop, there’s still over 1,200 feet of climbing, including one granite wall goat path that just doesn’t seem real. Throw in a perfect sunny, calm day—a rarity in these parts—no significant blood letting, views of ocean inlets and distant islands and you’ve got a vacation none of us are soon to forget.

Sure, a mouse hat with my name embroidered on the back would have been a nice piece of memorabilia, but hey, I’m not complaining.

Go HERE for a gallery of Sterl's images from this trip.

What a ride, what a view... Sterling Lorence