Last week when my brother and I were taking pictures/videos in the Whistler Bike Park, I noticed a few things that were quite scary. While waiting for my brother to push up and ride by on the most famous trail in the world, A-Line, a lot of other riders were riding by. Of course, we weren’t taking pictures on the boring parts, we were on the exciting jumps/high speed sections. I watched closely at the other people riding and I was cringing at almost all of the people hitting the jumps. Most of the people either didn’t know how to jump and it seemed were coming very close to crashing, or were going so slow that they could barley make it up the lip of the jump without having to pedal/get off and push up the lip. This goes back to my post last year, (What Happened to The Whistler Bike Park)? where I talked about the black trails and features getting “easier” so everybody could ride them.
On our first trip to Whistler this year, I noticed the Warning Feature at the top of A-Line, a 3-4 foot drop or so, had a roll down option on it, allowing people to ride it slowly, rolling down the drop instead of having enough speed/skill to drop off of it. At the bottom I asked the guy at the chairlift what was going on. He said that last year, when it was a drop without the roll down option, somebody tried to roll off of it, thinking it was a roll down, and broke his neck. While it is completely understandable that the bike park managers don’t want people getting hurt, is making a Black Dimond rated trail available to ride for pretty much anybody really a good idea? Isn’t the whole point of that new built up drop to warn people that if they can’t do that feature properly, they won’t be able to ride the rest of the trail safely?
In the first two days of riding there, I noticed a lot more people riding A-Line who definitely shouldn’t have been riding A-Line. I’m not trying to be mean and think that anybody that’s slower than me shouldn’t be riding A-Line, but if you can barely make it up a lip of a jump without having to pedal, maybe you should build some confidence on an easier trail and progress your skill/speed.
I also saw a lot more people on the side of the trail who had crashed. On my warm up lap (A-Line) I came across someone who crashed on the second jump, right under the chairlift. I know we all have those moments and take a good spill, but this was another example of what happens when people bite off more than they can chew. Fortunately he was ok, but it’s still scary to see people crash on a jump trail. The speeds are much faster than on a technical trail, and you can’t really even feel that you’re going that fast until things go wrong.
The GLC Drop is gone this year. Not that it was really that impressive the past few years, but it was still an iconic feature. What the bike park replaced it with is a rather large blind jump that sends you pretty high. On the first day, I saw three people who crashed and were sitting/laying off to the side with their buddies around them making sure they were ok. I noticed that the jump was a bit more difficult to ride than most of the other jumps on A-Line. Unless you actually knew how to pop off the lip instead of just using speed to carry you to the landing, you would land nose heavy. I was guilty of this the first time I hit it, and it seemed like a few others were too.
I haven’t been happy the way the Whistler Bike Park has been changing the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, It’s awesome that they want to get newer or less experienced riders out on the trails and are building more green/blue trails, but there are some trails that beginner or intermediate riders shouldn’t be on. I think encouraging people or allowing them to be able to roll over or walk down the first “test” feature on an advanced trail is dangerous. Sometimes we need to let go of our egos and use progress our skills instead.
