Ultramontane

Ultramontane No. 06

Ultramontane — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:03:19 +0000

Before we get into anything with this release… Here’s the kicker. We’re done – For the time being. This release saw some great ends of the spectrum weather wise with a low elevation snowfall followed by a beach worthy weekend. Spring seems close enough for people to be out riding without the words of encouragement, and if you’re residing in the southern hemisphere hopefully this has you all geared up for what’s to come.

We’ve got everything wrapped up this time in one neat little package of one video, and one giant parcel of photographs. We worked alongside two ‘& Company’ friends: Dangerous Dan Cowan, and Ross Measures. Connor and myself have known both since we got into riding.

Dan and his Flow Show were always an inspiration for us when we first got into riding, see the wood structures he would put on his trails really helped push people’s concept of what North Shore meant. It also pushed us toward the construction of Overflow when Connor and I were in our youth. Since then riding styles have evolved and there’s far less of the high and skinny trails that Dan is well known for, but if you spend some time poking around the woods on Bowen Island I’m sure you can find plenty of evidence that he’s still riding just as hard, and if not harder than when he was at the top of his game in the media.

Ross Measures is a long time friend of both Connor and I. He’s grown up in Deep Cove as the self proclaimed “Myrtle Manager” and got his first shine in the spotlight back when Back In the Saddle was rolling hard with the ‘Young Guns’ section. He still maintains a strong presence within the industry both as a rider with Knolly Bikes and as a videographer turning out edits for this and that and other things. He also is exceptional at trail building, with a ton of short video lines under his belt with some very interesting features still to be shot – so stay on the look-out for that content.

Ross, Connor and I took the plunge for this release to spend some time over on Bowen Island with our childhood hero Dangerous Dan acting as mayor of the trails and ambassador to the island. We camped up on a bluff on Mt. Gardner, the view of Vancouver was amazing, and the proximity to all of the trails was even better.

We kicked off the trip to Bowen Island with hopes of an early morning start and landed ourselves on the 9am ferry, which was a bit later than expected after some delays and re-packing Ross’ truck. Long story short we met up with Dangerous Dan and ate probably the best breakfast wraps of all time at this place called Snug. Highly recommend it… Oh ya, we also got to the summit of Mt. Gardner at around noon.

Dan is definitely a character, and he lives up to his moniker of “Dangerous” it can be a bit romanticized when it comes to his identity; This burly guy living off on an island with a giant diesel 4×4 van, who builds these massive structures in the woods that demand a huge skill level to navigate. He also has this dog named Polly who would follow him down every line he rode, and chase his van up the service road to the top all while attacking the tires.

In reality though he’s one of the easiest guys I’ve ever had a conversation with, and is just open to having a really good time and refuses to let something he’s so passionate about die off.

After hiking for about an hour without seeing any footprints in the snow, we were floored to see a full work-crew on the summit of Mt. Gardner, who were working on fixing the towers and waiting around on a chopper to land with some fuel. That was some cool stuff to see it come in with the barrels hanging, the view at the top was also exceptional.

Great vantage point of the lower mainland. All that needs to be said.

So after some fairly epic descending we set up camp. The story here is honestly about the descents though. Dan’s been living on Bowen for a hot minute now, and he has the trail network to show for it. The best part of this situation that the number of people who ride there is so minimal it leaves all the trails in pristene condition… if they’re even recognizable at all.

There’s a huge amount of big boy lines that Dan has built ranging from jumps, drops, rock rolls to just technical loamy steeps. Dan had no problem on any of them even with a foot of fresh snow on the trails. To be completely honest though, the three of us walked a few sections with our packs.

We finished our descent after a few hours, and were still only half way down the mountain at Dan’s van ready to get a lift back up to where we were camping. Dan parted ways with us to head home to his family for the time being, but the dog didn’t clue into the situation and appeared out of the woods while we were hiking into where we planned to set up camp. It was clear that we would get to spend some more quality time with Dan before the day was through.

Once we set up camp and cooked up dinner the liquor began to flow while we waited for Dan to arrive again. Once he got to our camp he spent some quality time with us over some drinks. It was awesome to just have a sit down chat with the guy for a while. He definitely brought a good atmosphere to the camp fire.

The whole feeling of being around the fire with drinks in hand just sharing stories old and new about where riding had taken us in life was great, I haven’t really had camp fire with a vibe like that in ages and there were definitely some gems that were shared.

The next day kicked off swiftly after the night was a bit on the cold side and some loud ravens on the bluff at dawn, we were all up early.

Dan took us on another round of great trails and focused the area on a different side of the mountain. The goal for the day was to find more open trails in hopes of beating out the sun spots and the locations delivered.

By the end of the day Ross, Connor and myself were left clueless as to what fuels Dan… We were wrapping up final shots near where we started the single shuttle lap and none of us could barely stand up our legs were so tired… Some how Dan was still getting dangerous, even after pedaling his downhill bike around all day he was still loaded with energy as we parted ways.

Sad to say Ross also had to part ways for that night due to prior commitments. This is where things get interesting. Given that we came over in Ross’ truck, there was a bit of a mentality by some that we were partaking in some sort of a ‘car camp’… With Ross hightailing it out of there that night Connor and I were left trying to consolidate camera and camping gear between my camping bag and Connors Camera bag.

- There are some clips in the video of us descending with these bags if you’re interested to see what that looked like.

After a weekend of sun and solid weather that Sunday Connor and I packed up what remained of our gear and began our descent on a new trail that Dan had told us about, but we didn’t have the chance to ride until that morning.

We wrapped our final shot list of the trip and by 14:00 (2pm for hour-hand folk) we were exhausted, but as fortune would have it on a small island the pedal to the ferry isn’t too long. We scarfed down another meal at our new favorite spot (Snug – if you’re actually reading all this) and it really hit home after living on the camp diet for the last two days.

Just a quick little bit of info in here… mainly because I’m attempting to break up the massive number of photos. The following shots are from a solid day on Cypress had by Ross and I. Connor couldn’t make it out on this one and it’s part of why the Bowen trip happened to get us all in one place focused on shooting.

In the shot below Ross had a solid biff on this tech section of trail and landed himself a great charlie horse. There’s a shot of his leg up in one of the collages way above. That’s all.

This next round of shots comes from an adventure Connor and I dove head first into on Tuesday.

We set out to find some epic descents in Howe Sound, our adventure delivered with ample moss on steep bluffs with somewhat great vista views. There were plenty of steeps and plenty of trail work needed. This is going to become a future project for sure breathing life back into this line.

For now take in the photos and speculate where this could be. There’s some sneaky hints…

That concludes Ultramontane No. 06 – Our next release will still be decided on, but expect something very interesting to come and with more of a spring and summer feel. We’re also lining up some more amazing new people to work along side with. Huge thanks to Peter at Rocky Mountain Bikes and Chaz at Cove Bikes for landing us on fresh bikes for the final episode and keeping the ball rolling.

We are going to be giving away a framed print. The frame is hand milled by Chris Fisher of Ultramontane & Co. - Chris Fisher Once we hit 1000 Likes on Trusty ‘Ol Facebook we will pick a winner at random, so be sure to like and share.

Thanks to these guys for all the support. this series wouldn’t have come together without them:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane No. 05

Ultramontane — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 23:19:57 +0000

Let’s be honest. I’ve gotten all nostalgic about the passing weeks almost every opener of every entry. I’ll save you the headache and cut to what I think so far is our most visual release to date.

We were blessed with some amazing sunny days and some icy weather to make 50 Tyson or Gucci Mane fairly envious. If you’re baffled by those two rap references, links are included. I’m baffled by how I can sit here listening to melodic banjo accompanied by the soft voice of Bon Iver (Congrats on that award by the way) and drop those references, but life is life, so take it as you will.

Last weekend we we’re subject to the biggest wind storm Vancouver has seen this winter… While we were camping… but that was with Nick Dent so you can read about that in his section. I’ll also have a fair bit more to talk about down there.

For now here’s Connor and myself getting up to our normal routine of shooting each other ride. — Oh one last thing to ad, since these releases are every two weeks, I just want to throw it out there that we are out shooting and editing for each release right after the last one came out. We don’t really have a stockpile of media we’re sitting on. We’re keeping things fresher than the expiry listed on your milk.

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Pt. 02 — Ultramontane & Company Presents: Nick Dent

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Nick Dent has been a long time friend of both Connor and I, we grew up riding and racing downhill together. His dad used to always trailer us around to all the BC Cups when we were U17 and Juniors. He’s a stand up guy and his own man, nobody rolls the way he does… I suppose that could be part of the reason he’s former national champ. For a bit of background behind his video part, he works in the film industry as a full time job, he’s done some major productions like Mission Impossible No. 04, Autumn Frost and Super Man.

For this reason we decided to get a bit more cinematic for his intro. He was fairly adjusted to the long hours for filming due to his career path so there were no complaints on his end about the perseverance it would take for us to get there so hopefully it delivers. If you really don’t get the reference from the intro it’s parodying Drive - Which stars Ryan Gosling. Girls love him, so single guys listen up — If you can talk to a babe about Ryan Gosling’s acting career, to her your the next best thing…possibly.

Onto what went down in real life producing this release. We set out to do a night shoot which fit with the intro somewhat well, and the song has a good vibe to accompany the night time so that’s a bonus to boot. We decided to put the icing on the cake we would end up camping to do some trail work and ride in the morning. That went over amazing, Vancouver saw the biggest wind storm of the year and we were kickin’ it in tents in some old growth forest. Not sketchy what so ever. On the upside to that, it was old growth so it was easy to assume those trees had been there long enough not to call it quits that night, and it was nice that the ones in our proximity did in fact stick it out.

Hearing trees come down in the distance however was one of the most surreal things I heard in a while, at first we all thought it was either a nearby shotgun going off, which would be incredibly odd for where we were, or to kick up the weird factor, somebody playing with homemade explosives. Through the night there were about five trees falling that woke me up, each fairly frightening to hear the shattering crack of the trunk followed by the earth shaking thump of the tree hitting the ground. Good thing we checked the weather forecast and noted everything except wind speeds before we set out.

That concludes Ultramontane No. 05 – Our next release will be on March 30, 2012.

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane No. 04

Ultramontane — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 03:25:49 +0000

There you have it. Everyone can rest easily, it finally snowed down in the city again… And it’s gone already. While we have been dealing with a somewhat low snow-line the past couple days there have been a select few riders on a select few trails having a choice time. With that being said, there also have been some amazing powder days going on up in the alpine regions, or so I have heard. – For real though neither of us have done any snow sports since the last snowfall.

Connor and I have been on a hunt for great low elevation riding for this exact situation. We slogged through the brush harder than the original crew of Captain George Vancouver’s ship when it first hit the shores of this fine city. Exploration, on a full time level with camera gear and bikes and the bounty came in the content for this release. The best part about this is nothing ended up even looking like we were too far into winter… well that and winter only really hit on Wednesday, which is basically when we called it wraps for shooting.

Regardless of the slogging and low elevation trails we will still we try to get out and have some snow into the next episode if it can manage to stick around long enough. We’re not trying to take the easy route out with this whole winter riding concept… there just really shouldn’t be a full on ‘off-season’ when there is still so much to ride.

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Pt. 02 — Ultramontane & Company Presents: Wade Simmons

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I hope everybody hit up their DVD and VHS collection to get caught up on this legendary man like I recommended in the last release. Wade Simmons. It was a pleasure to work with him on this release, he’s like a kid in a candy store, except it’s like Wade with a media crew. All he wants to do is just shoot and shoot. There’s honestly so much more footage sitting on our computers from the last couple of weeks with Wade, I mean he’s riding 3 different bikes in this video and they’re all in some sort of similar Wade style. He’s hitting bigger gaps on his XC than he was on his DH rig.

Riding and working with Wade really showed us what it was like to have riding so heavily focused into your life, he was never having a bad time no matter what he was riding or what bike he was on, from fluid descents to technical, scratchy, uphill climbs I’ve never witnessed somebody so enthusiastic and happy to be riding.

There’s a special cameo appearance by none other than Brett Tippie. Wade and him have been life long friends, which for sure shows through when they’re together and having another freeride legend on camera doesn’t hurt either.

That concludes Ultramontane No. 04 – Our next release will be on March 16, 2012.

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane No. 03

Ultramontane — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:16:46 +0000

Two weeks later and another release… In that time frame we had some sun (which can be a rare sight), some cloud, and some light rain. Nothing compared to the weather for Release No. 02… With the lack of snow we decided to do something about it in partnership with Margus Riga. But that’s for the future though. Release No. 06 to be specific.

With that said I suppose you could put it that we had great weather, except there’s no such thing as bad weather. Just soft people. So honestly I’ve got no clue where that leaves us except just in line to make our next release. No. 04; That one has a special guest… The God-Father of Freeride. If you can’t put together who that is after that helpful hint you should ask for some DVD’s (or VHS’s) all the way back to 1998 (or earlier), set aside a slow evening and give yourself a history lesson.

For this release our focus was on what we like to call “The Makers” which is why the focus is shifted a bit towards ‘making’ and what goes on around it. This is also the best reason to select a fine man such as Chris Fisher, but we will speak on that once you scroll down to his section.

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Pt. 02 — Ultramontane & Company Presents: Chris Fisher

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Chris Fisher, or as most call him “Fishman” or as he can be called if you’re into rap… “Fishmane“

In all seriousness though, he is a fine craftsman and maker. He has a passion for all things hand made, and that’s something we relate to and heavily believe in.

He works a 9-5 as a finishing carpenter focusing on cabinetry and furniture and in his off-hours he shreds on his custom hard tail, hand-built in a garage but none other than Brain Kelly who is the man responsible for many of the creations of Cove Bikes.

We felt the combination was unbeatable with such an all-encompassing love of craft between his bike, it’s builder, himself and us things fell into place and his & Company release solidified itself in a fluid process.

The whole idea of him riding a hand built hard tail can be fairly well romanticised. The whole ‘feel of the bike’ thing connecting with the ‘feel of materials’ in your hands. That’s heavy stuff. Real talk.

That concludes Ultramontane No. 03 – Our next release will be on March 02, 2012.

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane No. 02

Ultramontane — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:17:00 +0000

Since the last release it’s been two weeks. As the crow flies…14 days. That one is for a measure of distance not time.Think about it. There have been wet days, snowy days, and dry days none of which have been exceptionally cold. All of which we have been out riding and shooting.

Things are getting into full swing with a new trail in the works which we plan to have wrapped up by the “on-season”… When we will start working on something else that’s sitting under snow.

Days are starting to get longer and at times the weather has me second guessing if it’s spring. Granted this is something that comes with living in the territory of South Western BC. There has only been about three days that it wasn’t possible to get out and ride a good mountain trail around Vancouver.

Connor and I are grown men. Adults. Always ready to accept challenges that life can present to us. Right now this comes in the form of producing content for this project daily to meet the tight timeline we set… Additionally it means we need to remember it’s not the best to lug around a 60+ pound camera/tool pack every time we walk out the door.

These two issues still are better than the childhood nagging you get from mum reminding you to “wear your layers.” We do. All day, every day, and thanks to this we’ve been dodging cold season the way some 40-somethings try to dodge ‘growing-up’.

One thing that has been consistent weather wise, is how thick the fog has been. Connor and I were talking about how all summer people are postponing shoots in hopes of a cloudy day or fog set into the woods, but during the winter it’s something that happens on a fairly regular basis. Winter is the most mountainous season out there, which is great for a sport with the word mountain in its name. We’re on bike, on the mountain. I’ll let you mull that over a second time if need be.

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Pt. 02 — Ultramontane & Company presents Andreas Hestler

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Andrea Hestler aka “Dre” started his career in mountain biking in 1986, the same year the creators of Ultramontane were born. 25 years later after a long and successful world cup career Dre still has an unrivalled passion for cycling and adventure. It was only a matter of time before Ultramontane and Dre collaborated. Dre showed us the ropes with all-mountain riding and continues to smash us with his old man strength.

We have a lot of fun shooting with Dre, hes always has a story or plans for a wicked ride. He also has a keen interest in photo and video, which really helps when putting in the hours making a edit.

No one is more deserving of this legendary track than MTB’s own DRE!

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane No. 01

Ultramontane — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:01:48 +0000

Since we released the Ultramontane Preview on December 23, we have received an incredibly positive response. This pushed us through to today, with a drive to come out the gate strong with the series.

We’re releasing two parts in the No. 01 release, and it may become something worth pursuing in the future releases. The world is a visual place, and we planned to correspond to and parallel this by creating a visually heavy debut. The opening section below focuses on Connor Macleod and myself, Derek Dix, as we push to maximize our winter participation within the sport.

If you missed the preview a brief summary of the project is that as both media and riders we’re combating the lull created in a sport that doesn’t necessarily require an ‘off-season’ when faced with the climate of South West British Columbia.

Since our preview on December 23, we have been incredibly lucky with the weather we have faced.

Balmy winter days were the regular all through late December and early January, and we took full advantage with riding, building and maintaining what trails already exist.

Building in the winter through foul weather has a certain allure to it… there’s a dead still that carries it’s own sound when you pause from the high pitched clink of your mallet hitting a splitter head. There’s less people out in the forest during this time and that can leave it’s own impression on you as well when you consider the solitude you’re left with.

Rain quickly set in at the start of January, which gave us a prime opportunity to focus on drainage work for some of the trails that have been a staple for us since we began riding. Conveniently they are also close to home and make for quick work in a morning or afternoon.

We also have began construction and selecting a new line in an old area that has been long forgotten since logging was the last activity it has seen.

That same still carries into riding, if you pause to take in the vastness of an area it really can trigger you to consider the scale of your place in the world.

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Pt. 02: Katherine Short and Mitch Forbes

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My father always told me– and still does: “A man’s character can be judged by the company he keeps.” I feel that holds incredibly true, and its part of the reason we chose to create Ultramontane & Company.

Katherine Short and Mitch Forbes are hands down our favorite power couple in mountain biking. We had our introduction to them through racing on the BC and Canada Cup Circuit. They carry such strong spirits and every time we shoot with them the woods fill with laughter. We presented the idea of Ultramontane & Company to them and they were instantly instantly pushing us to pack our bags and go shoot. With Katherine and Mitch dog-sitting the handsome Foster we had our trail team.

Over the last few weeks we aimed to put together an edit incorporating all the elements that make a ride something worth telling about, from hard-tail climbs and descents, to trail dogs and foul weather night rides, their ambition to showcase what riding was to them gave us a great deal to work with.

That concludes ULTRAMØNTANE No. 01 – Our next release will be on February 03.

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo

Ultramontane Preview

Ultramontane — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:01:26 +0000

We have been involved in the mountain biking industry for over twelve years, and both of us have witnessed a massive evolution of the sport. The one constant that remains is the idea of “off-season”, and the subsequent lull created within the industry during this period. The idea of off season makes sense for snow sports which are heavily weather dependent, but for mountain biking there is the ability to ride in all weather conditions, and during all seasons.

To produce content during the off season, the majority of media and professional riders migrate to warmer climates to shoot their ad campaigns and document their editorial journeys. While the idea of road trips and travel can be romanticized, many riders cannot afford this luxury. Ultramontane seeks to respond to this situation and embrace off-season riding, at the core of where free-ride was created and where the industry always has a buzz.

We will be creating six bi-weekly releases starting January 20th, the peak of the winter season. All articles will be shot around Vancouver and Howe Sound, where we are subjected to long wet winters and deep alpine snow.

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Our first article has been posted on Pinkbike.com on the evening of December 23. Since it’s post, there have been over 12,000 views of the video, and re-posts from websites from Italy, Spain and Germany. The Preview article can be viewed here:

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/ULTRAMNTANE-Preview.html

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Seasons can change fast, and expecting different doesn’t work. Having one of the areas we spent building all fall tucked up in the Squamish Valley then left for three weeks had us hiking through snow from 200m below the location.

Other days can pan out incredibly well. Dry dirt and green moss is plentiful at low elevations and a decent pedal can put you into beautiful location right out your back door.

Once we arrive at the location up the Squamish Valley we were fortunate enough to have this one line somewhat sheltered from the snow and it was left ridable, although things were a bit sketchy and slippery climbing in the same route we ride out.

We also want to focus heavily on the lifestyle that accompanies. Expect to see camping and hiking with plenty of building and trail maintenance within the stories. Riding shouldn’t just happen on it’s own; you put in the legwork and can be rewarded with a great ride. Hard work pays off.

Ultramontane is still in it’s early stages so be on the lookout for a full website, which will host all of the produced content. We also will be starting a Twitter and Facebook page very soon to keep viewers updated on progress and behind the scenes happenings.

For now you can view our websites:
www.derekdix.com
www.connormacleod.me

Thanks to these guys for all the support:

Spicebox Whiskey | Mountain Equipment Co-op | Sombrio | Smith Optic

If you do the social media thing don’t be a stranger:

Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Vimeo