With the gang taking a good night’s rest they were ready for action early. Hooking up with Jeremy Olson at the Whistler tennis club for some breakfast, we discussed the days riding. Over breakfast Chris, one of the winners, asked a question: “So I want to bring the family here, where’s the best to stay?”

This is the whole purpose of the Ultimate Road Trip. We have shown our winners you can come to a Bike Parks BC resort with the whole family.

We decided to ride a few warm up runs on ‘Crank It Up’ and at 11:30am we met up with our guide from Whistler Parks. We planned to go all the way to the Whistler Peak, a place we had been a few days earlier on ATVs.

With rain still falling from the sky we headed up on the chairlift. It’s amazing; we’ve been in the rain all week the rider’s spirits have stayed so high. In fact today they were keen to ride all day!

As we climbed through the clouds on board the Village Gondola and into almost clear skies, the winners got a sense of how long this run was going to be. Sadly the very top was still covered in cloud, and the only way up is on the open chair.

We didn’t see the point going all the way to the top, getting really wet and cold, for the sake of a little fire road descent. We decided to have our lunch early at the Round House Lodge, which is part of the gondola station. There’s a great restaurant called Steeps – gourmet casual dining at 6,030 feet! What a dizzy height for lunch.

Being full from breakfast we really didn’t want to eat again, but when Chris Jones saw they had yam fries he was at the table and ready to order. So we’re now sat down having a large lunch wondering – will the group ever get going after this feast?

But we did. Racing across the snow (yes, there’s still snow up here at the end of July) was a blast! We all crashed at some point. We got wet, really wet.

We arrived at the top of the Freight Train. What a trail – jump, berm, jump, berm! Will it ever end? No! From there you end up on Dirt Merchant and then on to Lower A-line.

Seeing that Frank wanted to jump, former DH racer Dave took it on board to have Frank follow him at the speed needed to jump all the jumps. Frank, hats off to you. You did it and you even jumped the creek gap jump on Dirt Merchant.

“I tried to go around, but Frank was shouting DO IT, show me. So I carved in and hit it. He followed and looked amazing over it,” said Dave. We told Frank that he should be racing downhill; he has such a natural talent to develop.

The winners couldn’t jump at the start of this epic run, half way down they where all getting air. It was cool to see it happen.

Now I could go into details about the runs we rode for the rest of the day, but I wont, as it was one of the longest days on a bike. From 12 noon until 7 pm we raced up and down the hill. Wet and dirty and loving it – “just three more runs and we’ll see how we feel,” the riders told us. Marie Helen made the best call – she knew she was tired and didn’t want to run the risk of crashing so she called it a day.

The boys however, just kept going. We do this every day and we can see the signs when a rider is getting tired. How do you take away the candy from a kid and not make them cry? Well, we pushed them down Angry Pirate, a tight and twisty trail that takes a lot of body strength and focus, then cutting on to Lower A-line. Mistakes were being made and the riders finally admitted that they might be just a little tired.

We soon heard, “How about a easy run down Crank It Up? OK, this was the run that showed them they where tired. Chris ‘Yam Fries addict’ Jones slid down one of the wall rides ending up in a heap of bike and body at the bottom. Thankfully he was wearing his new body armour (that’s cheaper than the health care deductible). They called it and we closed the chapter on riding for the first ever Ultimate Road Trip.

Jet washing and more jet washing were needed to get nearly eight hours of grit out of the kit. Ric’s Grill was the choice for dinner and we met with Gabe who is the Canadian country manager for Red Bull – he was fired up to hear URT stories.

A long night of drinking and dancing rolled by and with it being Frank’s birthday it fuelled the troops to really push the boat out. Shaums became Elasticman for the evening; he wasn’t too bad, but still quite bendy!

It’s been an emotional ride, we’re sad it came to an end and blown away that we pulled it off.

Thanks to all the sponsors of the Trip: Bike Parks BC, Marin Bikes, Dangerboy Components, Fox, Kenda, Clif Bar, Hayes Brakes, WTB, E-13, ODI, Crud Catcher. For all the information on Bike Parks BC go to www.bikeparksbc.com.