Yesterday was about kicking off winter with the Keystone Rail Jam but today was about finishing off the Bike Park closing day. I was pretty amped to get on the dirt, ride the trails and start to familarize myself with the Bike Park at Keystone. It felt great to finally be riding my new Norco Aurum that took me all summer to pay off but now it’s finally mine!
I started out on the easy trails, green and blues to get myself comfortable. Girl Scouts, Suz’s Cruise, Eye of the Tiger, Mosquito Coast, Boy Scouts, Bluegrass, River Run Trail, Easy Street were the warm-up laps.
After feeling a bit more confident and talking with a couple other riders about the harder trails, I decided that I just needed to do it. So I dropped into Cowboy Up, launched the first drop and kept riding through. I only got off to walk half of the rock garden before riding onto TNT and punk rock to Loggers Lane to Boy Scouts to River Run Trail.
The vibes today were great. I met a couple people riding, shared the trail map when I had to figure out the next trail and had some great conversations. I was riding alone so I appreciated the friendliness on the mountain a lot.
I don’t know anything about downhill bikes but I knew enough that demoing was the way to decide the bike for me. During a visit to Whistler, I heard about one of the shops selling off demo Norco bikes for the right price but with brand new parts so I ended up getting on the waiting list, putting the money down and making the payments. I picked up the bike just before moving to Colorado so this was the first time to really enjoy it on the trails. It’s pretty insane to be riding a Norco Aurum that is worth more than all my snowboard gear combined. But it makes a world of difference and it’s insanely fast and powerful. Now just to get my downhill riding up to par.
One of the best perks of this summer has been learning to ride different styles of Bike Parks. Each mountain is totally different in the layout, dirt conditions, trails, freestyle features and progression so it’s been fun to adapt to each one as I ride them. Plus you can’t beat the views from the summer chairlift rides.
It was a good day but also a tiring day. The 9k elevation hit me harder than expected and even though I drank lots of water, I was still feeling it on the ride down.
