Another week in beautiful Whistler and what a week it has been. We began by wrapping up the assessments for the Level 1 portion of the course, with everyone passing. Well done to the whole crew! They are all officially mountain bike instructors! So suitably a few drinks to celebrate were in order and everyone is stoked.

So as if that wasn’t enough of a highlight for the week, we took a trip up to the magical alpine trail called “Top Of The World”. There are few better words to describe this trail than “epic”. It begins up in the high-alpine, actually the highest alpine, from the top of Whistler’s Peak Chair and is exposed and rocky! The views from the top so spectacular and it can be tempting but not the wisest to take your eyes off the trail and just take in the view. Carrying on down it transforms from rock into dirt along with the occasional little creek crossing or rooty section also. It’s about 5000 feet of downhill single track from the top down to the valley! Quite the afternoon ride.

Later in the week was spent looking into the Skills of mountain biking and how to assess and isolate these skills to progress a student. We came up with some pretty sweet games and exercises to help this along also.

Line Choice was next on the agenda and we spent some time on some of Whistler Bike Parks finer lower mountain technical trails, stopping and discussing different sections. Here we learnt how to choose and instruct a variety of lines for students of different abilities and strengths/weaknesses and how to progress someone through these trails. Plenty of fun times rolling rocks and punching rooty burms along the way also.

Bikes, BBQs and bears. Everyone is feeling pretty stoked in Whistler.