highlights from whistler
5th August 2008
By Jonathan Collins,
Instructor, Snowdonia Cycle Hire & Training
Matt Parkinson in Whistler – Matt is one of the folks we’ve trained through the SMBLA scheme to be a Level 3 (Mountain Bike Leader) instructor. He’s now working for a season in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.
Matt says:
"I’ve got myself a job working on the mountain working as a lifty on the chair lifts for the bike park which is pretty cool, I work 4 days a week and I have the other 3 to get out riding, today is my first day off so I spent a solid 7 hours on the bike park. We worked out tonight an 
approximate of how many miles we've all done; I’m on around 550 already!!! I’ve done over 300 runs! Its unreal, you can easily average on over 10 runs a day, I did 19 today!! The bike’s taken a bit of a beating; it’s an expensive hobby!! They all have me and this Aussie guy marked as a nutter here though. We hit this crazy line the other day on an unmarked trail which basically rides off 3 drops on shale down a ridge of a 110ft vertical cliff edge, I rode down it for the first time only seeing it from the top and it looked fine and when I got to the bottom and looked back it actually scared me! I have never been scared on a bike before! It was nuts!
Anyway ... one of ticket2ride's guides has dislocated his ankle so they needed another guide for a heli drop last week and I got asked to do it. And it was incredible, I had an amazing time, never been in a helicopter before. I’ve attached a few photos from it to this email. I’m hoping to get asked to do a few more throughout the season.
I’ve done 2 races out here so far; the first one wasn’t the best. I took my break from work late at 6pm, did my race run, got changed and went straight back to work haha, so the race was my first run of the day, I came off on the last corner of all places!!! But yesterday’s was down the 4X track and I love that track, same thing with work though, but I finished and then went straight into the race. I raced it on my DH bike ‘cos I haven't got my hardtail out here. I smoked the guy on my first moto by about 10 bike lengths and on my 2nd I won again by about 6 bike lengths which set me up well but I finished up 19th overall, highest finisher on a DH bike which was cool. I won a t-shirt for it. It was pretty cool.
I’ve got one more race next Wednesday and then its Crankworx which I’m really looking forward to, it should be a good few races that week!"
