Richie Schley Bike Camp Review - 2007 Whistler Mountain Bike Park
Jul 29th 2007BriceBike Stuff & Sports & Travel
The weather has been pretty good for the last month or so and thus I have been outside every chance I can get!! ….how can you tell? ………. Well this is my first blog post in a long long time! Hey it is Summer finally. I’ll admit to slacking a bit!
Anyhow, last weekend my girlfriend and I headed up to Whistler British Columbia to check out the world’s best mountain bike park and to each take a bike camp.
Whistler is one of those places that is an outdoor enthusiasts dream come true. In the winter Whistler/Blackcomb is pretty much the #1 ski resort in all of North America and in the Summer time, the bottom half of the mountain gets transformed into the most adrenaline, speed induced, super fun mountain bike park in the world.
The Bike Park Trail Status Sign Board
There is always something happening up here and this particular weekend it looked like NSMB (North Shore Mountain Biking E-Zine) was holding their AIRprentice contest at the Whistler Bike Park this weekend. These AIRprentice riders are nuts. They throw down some large tricks and mega large air. I am sure you can find some more info on this on NSMB.
The AIRprentice crazies…
They ride stuff like this and make it look soooo easy!
Anyhow, for all the Whistler propaganda, click here for the Whistler/Blackcomb home page and click here for the mountain bike park website. Make sure you check out the crazy new Peak to Peak gondola they are planning to open December 2008.
I was signed up for the Richie Schley Freeride bike camp and my girlfriend was registered for the Spokeswoman bike camp. We had both heard the Spokeswoman bike camp was awesome from a number of other female friends that we knew had taken the course, so I was pretty confident that my girlfriend was going to learn lots, meet lots of new people and most importantly have lots of fun. As for the Richie Schley bike camp, I wasn’t too sure what to expect as I haven’t known anyone that had taken one.
I was doing this camp with one of my friends (who is female and a technically sound mountain biker) and all we knew was about Richie Schley, was that he was one of the pioneers of the entire freeride mountain bike movement, one of the best freeride mountain bikers in the world, a great ambassador for the sport of freeride mountain biking and we would get to spend two days picking his brain and other celebrity professional freeride riders’ brain’s on how to improve our own freeriding technical skills.
The only female in the group.
Our camp had a range of participants aged 12 to 46, all males except for 1 female. The camp ran 2 full days starting at about 10am on Saturday and Sunday morning. One of the things that I really about being a participant of the camp was we had lift line priority to load the chairlift! On the weekends, the chairlift at the base of Whistler is usually a nut house, so not having to wait in line was an added bonus!
Lift Line Priority how sweet it is. Waiting in this line sucks!
There was about 20 participants with varying levels of skills and everyone was very friendly. We had 3 groups running with about 5-7 people per group and one instructor.
The three instructors were awesome. For a bunch of professional athletes, these guys were so humble, modest, super super nice , and would answer any question and help you with anything you wanted to work on. This camp was all about the participants, and whatever we wanted to learn or wanted to know, we would drill and practice.
Richie Schley was one of the instructors along with Gareth Dyler, and a gentleman named Mason (I didn’t get his last name). All 3 of them were solid riders with their own riding strengths.
Richie Schley - The legend himself.
Richie Schley’s bike. Manufactured in Germany by Rotwild Bikes.
Gareth Dyler - A guy that knows how to throw down the big big air..
Mason - A technical genius and ultra smooth rider.
One of my goals in this camp was to learn how to properly do dirt jumps, safely do drops and figure out more efficient steep technical cornering techniques. Did I accomplish some of my goals doing this camp? The answer is Yes.
By the end of the 2nd day, I can confidently say that I was feeling way more comfortable than I ever had in the past on runs that had lots of dirt jumps. I use to hate doing dirt jumps and I was always fighting my bike and not feeling the flow, but 2 days with these 3 guys, I really figured out the theory and concept behind riding these dirt jumps correctly and safely, and now I want to ride these types of runs to practice these new skills over and over and over.
I learned some proper techniques on how to execute on drops more effectively and safely. Until someone breaks these things down for you, it is all trial and error and with drops and sometimes that spells some bad news if you crash. I would have never thought of trying some of the things these guys mentioned to me. I understand now that I don’t have to do drops with lots of speed to successfully do the drop. You can go slow off these things and survive! now I just have to gets some more guts and get more confidence flying through the air!!
The techniques I learned for proper cornering were priceless as I figured out I have been doing it wrong my entire riding career. It will be hard to unlearn these wrong and bad habits, but the techniques I learned for cornering on both steep and non steep terrain along with foot and pedal positioning will enable me to be a better more effective and efficient rider.
The Richie Schley camp was great and I would highly recommend it to any intermediate to pro level rider wanting to fine tune their riding. I have been riding for a long time and I learned and discovered many things over the course of these two days that I can work on to be an even better rider. All the particants even won some draw prizes at the end of the camp! I ended up winning a pair of Fox Gloves! I can always use a pair of riding gloves!
Fox Gloves - A great draw prize!
As for the price, I found great value in this camp. The cost of the camp was $239 CDN for the Camp and a 2 day lift ticket, plus lunch both days. With tax, the camp came to $254CDN. A 2 day lift pass at Whistler costs $94 plus tax if you buy the tickets at the ticket window and at lunch we got $10 food vouchers each day. So the instructional portion of the camp really cost about $135CDN or $67.50 per day for 6-7 hrs of instruction per day by professional freeriders.
As for the SpokesWoman Camp my girlfriend participated in, she said it was outstanding and well worth the money. Her camp cost with 2 day lift ticket was $289 CDN or $307 CDN including tax. They also had lunch included. My girlfriend kept mentioning how nice, friendly and encouraging the SpokesWoman instructors were. She mentioned the SpokesWoman camps broke the paritcpants up into 6 different groups with maximum 6 participants to 1 instructor. There were girls of all abilities there, from total beginners to seasoned riders wanted to tweak some skills.
A SpokesWoman group out having a good time!
At the end of the 2 days, my girlfriend had loads of fun, learned lots and it has increased her interest and participation in the sport of mountain biking more than ever. For me, that is exactly what I wanted her to get out of this camp: Lots of fun while riding her bike, , more skills to make her a better rider, Ride with other girls that are her own ability, and the desire like the sport of mountain biking more and more. She even won a good draw prize as well. She won a brand new set of Roach Rally FR Arm Pads.
Another good prize!
All in all a great weekend of bike camping for both myself and my girlfriend. We both recommend each camp to anyone wanting to be a better rider.
Ride on, ride safe and if you are in Whistler watch out for those bears.
Keep away from the Bears…like the sign says!
This guy might be friendly though…
Hope to see you on the trails one day!
Cheers!
