In early summer 2014, freeride mtb madman Cam Zink announced his plans to attempt the biggest backflip ever on a mtb. He wanted to jump

100 feet (30,48m) on a dirt to dirt jump built at the Californian ski resort Mammoth Mountain and have it broadcasted on the biggest US TV sports station, ESPN. Big plans! I was intrigued at once and the fact that Cam had just switched sponsors from Hyper to young and dynamic German brand YT Industries (who happen to be based about 40mins. from my home) only fueled my interest in the project. Quick calls to both Freeride Magazine and YT later, I booked a flight to the Sunshine State and started to get anxious for Cam to go huge.

The 350 mile trip from San Francisco to Mammoth was quite funny, since my rental Fiat 500 was pushed to its limits pretty good in the mountains surrounding Yosemite National Park 😉

I had never been to Mammoth before and I have to say I really enjoyed my time there. Beautiful surroundings, great landscape… it must be a blast to live there for sure!

Once jump day arrived, I had settled for two pretty similar angles. I planned to shoot my „main“ photo from an angle directly to the side of the jump, up a hillside, to be able to show the full length of the flip. For a second and more experimental angle, I had borrowed a cam plus tilt/shift lens from my friend Frithjof (thanks again! 🙂 ) and set it up a bit further up that hill. Since jump time was set for the late evening, the light was going to be quite boring. During the afternoon, the scenery was backlit quite nicely, but then the sun would dip behind the mountains and the entire venue was in the shade.
In the days leading up to the „Mammoth Flip“, I had quite a lot of practice opportunities, since Cam cleared the jump a couple of times to get a feeling for the size and the airtime. Wind played a pretty big role all the time, and even though he had roughly the same inrun speed all the time, the distance of his practice jumps varied quite much every time. On one occasion, he actually set a new record for a dirt to dirt straight jump, by going 119 feet…

The wind situation was a pretty big concern up until the final moments before Cam was going to drop in on live television – but just then, the wind ceased completely and Cam had the best conditions of the entire project. Thankfully, since the pressure of performing such a stunt live on TV in front of a gigantic audience is probably high enough already without external sketchiness…
When it was go time, Cam dropped in together with his buddy Kyle Strait, who filmed the inrun and takeoff for TV. The anticipation reached its climax when Cam hit the takeoff at about 45mph (72,4kmh) and leaned backward… the jump itself seemed effortless, since the sheer amount of airtime and the super slow rotation of the backflip made the whole thing look like a slow motion replay. Cam rotated perfectly, landed smooth as silk on both wheels and rode away to a huge celebration of the crowd. Perfect execution!

All of Cam’s friends and family were ecstatic when they could embrace him after the successful jump. MTB downhill legend Shaun Palmer was there as well and was one of the first to congratulate Cam.

FREERIDE Magazine ran the photos in a four page „Hot Move“ article and I was pretty stoked on how it turned out. Big Bike Magazine France also ran the sequence shot as a double page spread. It’s always such a cool feeling when a project is finished and you can hold the result in your hands. Digital content will NEVER have that same effect on me.