There's a specific moment on the climb up to Traildogs where you start negotiating with yourself. Not the start — the start is fine. You feel strong at the start. It's somewhere in the middle, when your legs are burning and your heart rate is somewhere it probably shouldn't be and the trail just keeps going up, that you begin a quiet internal conversation about every decision that led you to this exact point on this exact mountain. Then you get to the top. Then you point the bike down. And every single one of those decisions turns out to have been correct. The best distraction I know I'm not going to tell you that mountain biking solves your problems. It doesn't. Whatever is waiting for you at the bottom of the trail is still waiting for you at the bottom of the trail. What it does is quieter than that, and in some ways better. You cannot ruminate on a bike. You physically can't. When you're climbing, there's no spare capacity — your whole system is busy with the work of moving you uphill, and the part of your brain that likes to replay the hard conversation from Tuesday simply doesn't get a seat. And when you're descending a flow trail, your attention is entirely consumed by the next thirty feet of dirt. Where the line goes. Where the brake point is. What the lip of that roller is about to do to you. Thirty feet of dirt at a time is a very good place for a busy head to live for an hour. I've come to think of it less as escape and more as a reset. You go up carrying everything. You come down carrying noticeably less. Nothing about your situation changed, but something about you did, and that difference is not nothing — especially in a season where the days are getting shorter and it's easy to let things pile up. The bike doesn't fix it. The bike buys you an hour where it can't reach you, and you come back better equipped to deal with it. The best winter training there is Here's the part skiers and snowboarders should pay attention to: the single best thing you can do for your winter season is to ride your bike through the fall. T hink about what the climb actually builds. Sustained aerobic output. Quad and glute endurance. The exact ability to hold a demanding position for a long time without your legs giving out — which is, functionally, a ski run. And what the descent builds is even more specific. Balance. Core stability. Reading terrain ahead of you instead of directly beneath you. Making a decision at speed and committing to it. Absorbing hits through your legs rather than fighting them. Staying loose when something comes up unexpectedly. That's a list of mountain biking skills and it's a list of skiing skills, and the overlap is not a coincidence. The sports ask for the same body and nearly the same brain. Every October I watch people put the bike away and wait for the hill to open, and every November I watch those same people wreck their legs by day three while wondering why. The riders who keep going until the snow pushes them off the trail show up to opening day already in shape. Not "I did some squats in the garage" shape — actual shape, built by hours of real terrain. There's a mental carryover too. Dropping into a steep chute on skis asks for the same thing as dropping into a technical section on a bike: the willingness to commit before you can see exactly how it ends. The real reason I ride in October I stopped three times on the way down. Not because I needed a break. Because the light through the aspens was doing something I couldn't ride past. That gold you only get for about two weeks a year, the kind that makes the whole forest look lit from the inside, with the last of the green holding on in the conifers behind it. This is the thing about autumn riding that nobody puts in the edits. Summer is loud and busy and everyone's out. October is quiet. Trails are empty, the dirt is often the best it gets all year, and you're moving through a landscape that's actively putting on a show. You have to be willing to stop for it, though. That's a skill of its own, and I'd argue it's the harder one. Everything about riding a flow trail encourages you to keep going — the momentum, the rhythm, the fact that it feels incredible. Pulling over to just stand there and look at the trees feels almost like cheating. Do it anyway. Winter's coming, the colour disappears fast, and nobody ever regretted the pause. Go ride Traildogs is one of Fernie's blue flow trails, and it's a perfect example of why this valley has the reputation it does — a climb that asks real questions and a descent that answers all of them. If you've been having a rough few weeks, go ride. If you're counting down to opening day, go ride. If you just want to stand in a stretch of gold aspens for a minute with your heart rate coming down and nowhere to be, go ride. The climb will make you question your life decisions. The descent will make you very glad about all of them. Belina Hooper is a videographer and photographer based in Fernie, BC and Hinton, Alberta, shooting throughout the Canadian Rockies, the Elk Valley and the Kootenays.
#adventure #sports
There's a specific moment on the climb up to Traildogs where you start negotiating with yourself. Not the start — the start is fine. You feel strong at the start. It's somewhere in the middle, when your legs are burning and your heart rate is somewhere it probably shouldn't be and the trail just keeps going up, that you begin a quiet internal conversation about every decision that led you to this exact point on this exact mountain. Then you get to the top. Then you point the bike down. And every single one of those decisions turns out to have been correct. The best distraction I know I'm not going to tell you that mountain biking solves your problems. It doesn't. Whatever is waiting for you at the bottom of the trail is still waiting for you at the bottom of the trail. What it does is quieter than that, and in some ways better. You cannot ruminate on a bike. You physically can't. When you're climbing, there's no spare capacity — your whole system is busy with the work of moving you uphill, and the part of your brain that likes to replay the hard conversation from Tuesday simply doesn't get a seat. And when you're descending a flow trail, your attention is entirely consumed by the next thirty feet of dirt. Where the line goes. Where the brake point is. What the lip of that roller is about to do to you. Thirty feet of dirt at a time is a very good place for a busy head to live for an hour. I've come to think of it less as escape and more as a reset. You go up carrying everything. You come down carrying noticeably less. Nothing about your situation changed, but something about you did, and that difference is not nothing — especially in a season where the days are getting shorter and it's easy to let things pile up. The bike doesn't fix it. The bike buys you an hour where it can't reach you, and you come back better equipped to deal with it. The best winter training there is Here's the part skiers and snowboarders should pay attention to: the single best thing you can do for your winter season is to ride your bike through the fall. T hink about what the climb actually builds. Sustained aerobic output. Quad and glute endurance. The exact ability to hold a demanding position for a long time without your legs giving out — which is, functionally, a ski run. And what the descent builds is even more specific. Balance. Core stability. Reading terrain ahead of you instead of directly beneath you. Making a decision at speed and committing to it. Absorbing hits through your legs rather than fighting them. Staying loose when something comes up unexpectedly. That's a list of mountain biking skills and it's a list of skiing skills, and the overlap is not a coincidence. The sports ask for the same body and nearly the same brain. Every October I watch people put the bike away and wait for the hill to open, and every November I watch those same people wreck their legs by day three while wondering why. The riders who keep going until the snow pushes them off the trail show up to opening day already in shape. Not "I did some squats in the garage" shape — actual shape, built by hours of real terrain. There's a mental carryover too. Dropping into a steep chute on skis asks for the same thing as dropping into a technical section on a bike: the willingness to commit before you can see exactly how it ends. The real reason I ride in October I stopped three times on the way down. Not because I needed a break. Because the light through the aspens was doing something I couldn't ride past. That gold you only get for about two weeks a year, the kind that makes the whole forest look lit from the inside, with the last of the green holding on in the conifers behind it. This is the thing about autumn riding that nobody puts in the edits. Summer is loud and busy and everyone's out. October is quiet. Trails are empty, the dirt is often the best it gets all year, and you're moving through a landscape that's actively putting on a show. You have to be willing to stop for it, though. That's a skill of its own, and I'd argue it's the harder one. Everything about riding a flow trail encourages you to keep going — the momentum, the rhythm, the fact that it feels incredible. Pulling over to just stand there and look at the trees feels almost like cheating. Do it anyway. Winter's coming, the colour disappears fast, and nobody ever regretted the pause. Go ride Traildogs is one of Fernie's blue flow trails, and it's a perfect example of why this valley has the reputation it does — a climb that asks real questions and a descent that answers all of them. If you've been having a rough few weeks, go ride. If you're counting down to opening day, go ride. If you just want to stand in a stretch of gold aspens for a minute with your heart rate coming down and nowhere to be, go ride. The climb will make you question your life decisions. The descent will make you very glad about all of them. Belina Hooper is a videographer and photographer based in Fernie, BC and Hinton, Alberta, shooting throughout the Canadian Rockies, the Elk Valley and the Kootenays.
#adventure #sports
