Rocky Mountain/Raceface All Mountain Web Video

Strahan came up with the concept for the video several months ago. I loved the idea and wanted to do a good job of it so we put it on the backburner until the timing was right. We shot part of it early October and planned to shoot the rest the following week as we had a break in the weather. We had delays getting the bike so it took a backseat to another project in the Kootenays. During the shoot I got swine flu and was unable to travel home. I was stuck in the Kootenays for a week more than planned and felt my chances of getting good fall colors slipping away.
So after a few weeks of luck not going our way, Halloween was the earliest possible date to shoot. We got up early on the 31st, banged out the driving shots, collected most of the riding shots, things were moving at a nice pace when a giant wrench was thrown into the mix in the form of a 25 foot wide, thigh deep, gushing river which cut off our only route to the lake. We stopped and deliberated for about 15 minutes, weighing our options. A couple times we decided to call it and turn around but the clouds burning off above us made us stay the course and carry the bikes through the near-freezing river. This wouldn't have been a big concern except for the hugely fast moving water that could have swept either a bike, one of us or the thousands of dollars of electronics in my not-so-waterproof backpack downstream. We made it accross without incident. This was only the beginning. Altogether we probably did about 100 meters of bitter cold hiking through ankle-to-knee deep water. Needless to say, late-October mountain rivers aren't warm and still being on the mend from swine flu made me nervous about chilling myself to the core. This was our biggest challenge. 
Strahan must have pulled out a survivorman DVD boxset the night before because somehow he managed to split wood with a pocket knife and light a fire using rain soaked materials and modest amounts of kindling he tucked into his bag. This fire was a serious blessing as it gave us just enough warmth to thaw out our toes for the ride down and ultimately added a nice element to the video.

The filming itself wasn't too much of a hassle as Strahan is always great to shoot with, always has great input, is way too patient with me and is an extremely hard worker. Perfect for the grueling shoots we seem to find ourselves on. The ride itself was a bit of a challenge for me as I haven't had a working bike in months and have been spending far too much time behind the computer and just having had swine flu, my lung capacity was less than stellar. Luckily with the gushing rivers the full trail was not passable so I was off the hook for the other 2 hours of rugged terrain beyond the lake. We were forced to rethink our original plan for the end of the video though as we couldn't shoot the final section anymore so we opted to rearrange a few shots and finish with the mellow pedalling corridor shot at the end. This turned out to be a blessing as I think it was the perfect end to the video and means we get to keep the last bit of singletrack for another project!

In the end the video turned out like I'd hoped. I was nervous about it as I'd built up so much hype in my mind about the concept. My original vision for it was much different than this final product but I'm 100% happy with it. I think a solid all-mtn web video was long overdue and there needs to be lots more. There's definitely more where this came from! 

The response has been amazing and it's perfect inspiration to keep pumping out content like this!