Photos: The Road To Rampage

A funny thing happened on the way to the Red Bull Rampage—arguably the world's biggest freeride comp: we went cross-country mountain biking. The "we" being Wade Simmons, Andreas Hestler, Josh Pearson from the Ride Guide, and Geoff Gulevich. Not the usual crew you see out tearing up the single track XC style, especially with something like the Rampage looming on the horizon. But then again, there's gonna be a whole lotta hucking going on soon, so why the hell not turn some wheels on some quality XC trails?

We started in Las Vegas. Interbike had just gone down and we had 5 days to kill before the Rampage got underway, so we took a Ride Guide TV inspired trip to the Blue Diamond area just Southwest of Las Vegas, NV. Back in the day—like 8 years ago or so—this was the zone for Interbike's Dirt Demo days. Since that shifted to Boulder City, NV, most bike show geeks have forgotten that the desert out by Blue Diamond is laced with trails—even more so now than they were back in the Demo Day era. You can thank Jared Fisher from Escape Adventures and his horde of trail junkies for that. They've been busy out in the Cottonwood Basin area, modifying existing burro trails and old miner's tracks into a trove of first-rate single track. We sessioned a few classics in the making, like Three Mile Smile, Satan's Escalator, Puke Hill, and the Cowboy Trails. Over the course of three days we rode miles of fast, flowy single track. At the same time, we barely scratched the surface of what's possible out here; Jared's managed to map out a hundred miles of legal trails in this zone, with another hundred or so miles of burro trails just waiting for a few work crews to whip ‘em into shape.

Three days in Vegas and it was time to move on to Virgin, UT and the Redbull Rampage zone. But first, we put in a quick two-day stop at Hurricane, Utah to sample the goods on Gooseberry Mesa and the Jem trail. We rolled into Hurricane, snagged some quality Mexican food at Alberto's, and then hit Over the Edge Sports to meet up with Noah Sears and Quentin Morissette, our guides for Gooseberry and Jem. Quentin's the owner of the Hurricane store, which offers first rate wrenching, great coffee, and a fine selection of rental rides. If you're in Hurricane, drop in to share a cup of joe and get the beta on the trails.

With Quentin and Noah on point, we headed out to Gooseberry and saddled up. The North Rim Trail overlooks the new Rampage venue, and it looks pretty insane. After staring at the new zone for way too long, we rolled along the rim for a bit, then looped back to hit the "God's Skateboard Park" on the South Rim Trail. The slick rock formations out there offer unlimited potential to play; Wade was pretty much putting on a bike handling clinic, finding lines where none seemed to exist. It was a fun, long day capped off with a few cold ones back at Over the Edge.

The next day we hit Jem Trail with Tom Rogers from Marzocchi and Gabe from Smith. We were short on time, so we ran a shuttle up to the top. Not a good sign when some guy's at the trail head sniping at targets with a big-ass rifle. As Dre put it, "only in America do you find a guy with a gun at a trailhead and consider it not terribly unusual."

Hmmm, Jem trail. Ride it. It's 9 miles of ridiculously fun flow that has absolutely no quit in it. At the bottom, you can link it to the Hurricane Ridge Trail and ride all the way back to Hurricane and Over the Edge for some more quality caffeine.

Next up, the Rampage. It's gonna be nuts.