Reply To: 3rd Annual High Roller Bike Ride

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I?Ç‚Äôm finally sitting down, decompressing, enjoying a dark red glass of wine, home after the High Roller BBQ. I must say, this year was great, I had unbelievable help in volunteers, the weatherman cooperated this year, and no body got hurt.

So let?Ç‚Äôs do the numbers, 40.95kms, 1893 M of climbing, 1860 M of descending, an unreal 64 paticipants, 90 people at the bbq, 175 kabobs, 10 rockin?Ç‚Äô volunteers, 1 golden polaski award, 1 sweet sun, and lots of sun for late September.

We had a nice mix of participants from the Kootenays, from the likes of Golden, Rossland, Nelson, and of course Calgary, a lot of happy smiling mountain bikers! I was aware that the route was bigger than last year, I took a lot of slack for that. You know I didn?Ç‚Äôt care, I knew that Fernie has great world class mountain bikers, that know how to ride bikes and not whine.

There were still some big bikes on the scene, a few VP Frees, a V-10, and a few other beasts, kudos to those folks with the skills to make the big ride happen with big bikes. The bikes of choice were clearly the Nomad and the Reign, with some XC bikes in the mix.

The High Roller is definitely the favorite day for the better part of the mountain biking community. All the local celebrities rode again this year, world 24 hours Solo championship riders, Marty and Jesse, Fernie?Ç‚Äôs fastest chiropractor, and a few Trans Rockies racers. I loved that all the Nelson family turned up, Laura ripped the route and kicked all her boy?Ç‚Äôs asses. Most of the riders were simply Fernie?Ç‚Äôs local rippers, that?Ç‚Äôs why this event is so good, grassroots riding.

The route took people from 3h40m to 9h to ride, with smiles the whole time. This year, Fernie?Ç‚Äôs trail building, volunteering, and participating machine Mitchy received the coveted ?Ç‚ÄúGolden Polaski Award?Ç‚Äù for being the driving force behind our current explosion in sweet singletrack we?Ç‚Äôve seen in the last few years. Mitch had a hand in all three of the High Roller trails this year. The day before riding the High Roller, he spent 9 hours buffing up one of the trails for the event. When you see that man on the street tell him thanks, thanks for all the relentless work he has put into our trail network in Fernie, because the chances that you mountain bike are good and the chances are even better that you do not do any trail work.(Mitchy for Mayor)

I want to say thanks to Hustler, Al, Anna, Tyler, Bird, Amanda, Dangerous, Martin, Julia, Lindsay, Guylaine, Deb, Luke, Henners, Bernie, Ian, Kieran, Tiger, Lucie, Souvlaki, Fred, JF and especially Small, who all really helped pull it off?ǂĶThank you .

If you didn?Ç‚Äôt ride the 2008 High Roller Mountain Bike Ride, you simply missed out on a great day!

Long Live, Long Rides.
Kurt