Summer 2013

After our very successful roadtrip through Russia in 2012, Kirill and I decided to join forces again for a freeride trip to some European destinations in summer 2013. The weather in Europe was pretty much perfect and after meeting up in Munich and a short visit to the Freeride Magazine office, we headed south towards Spain – the area we had planned to check out was close to the „Bardenas Reales“, a really unique landscape north of Saragossa. Unfortunately for photo motives but thankfully for the landscape itself, the Bardenas are a protected area, so no free riding is allowed inside the reserve. There were still a lot of interesting spots directly outside of the reserve borders though and we spent many, many hours checking it all out.
We ended up finding a handful of very nice spots and after a couple of days, we had some cool shots from those features. The highlight trick from there was definitely a „natural oververt 270 flatspin transfer“ which Kirill pulled in a really interesting looking small canyon. It’s really a shame that we didn’t have a filmer with us, because that trick would have been a real highlight for any bike movie!

The weather became a bit more unstable at that point, so we decided to continue on towards Italy and Germany again. After a couple of hours driving we passed an interesting looking quarry and spontaneously checked it out. We immediately saw an incredibly cool feature: a small hut, standing directly at the edge of a small cliff. In total, it was a drop of around 5 meters. Nothing too big, but definitely a bit tricky due to a very weird „inrun“ and a very trials style setup. Kirill got ready to drop and when he started to roll off, I fired off a sequence. I saw through the shutter that something had gone massively wrong when Kirill went over the bars and jumped forward off the bike. Thankfully he reacted super quickly and tucked in, so he didn’t crash into the ground headfirst but landed on his hip and back. I didn’t even have time to ask whether he was alright as he got up immediately afterwards and walked the shock off… definitely a scary moment!!!

After this experience Kirill took it a little easier and we drove straight to Val di Sole to watch the downhill world cup race. We did find a funny little lift cabin though and Kirill pulled a ninja drop off the roof which ended up in Freeride Magazine.
Back at home in Bayreuth we had a couple of days left until his flight home, so Kirill and I googled for some interesting looking spots in the Czech Republic. I knew that there were a couple of promising quarries and active mining areas, so we focussed on those. Once we had a few spots in mind, we made a travel plan and cruised over the border. It took us probably 5 or 6 failed spot checks to find an interesting location, but then we found a real jewel – it was a step down on a natural location, overlooking an active brown coal mine. Directly beneath the jump were train rails and every now and then, a train would pass through. We found a bent piece of rail that Kirill wanted to use as a takeoff and we buried it until it was firm enough to ride on. It was still really sketchy – maybe 10cm wide and quite slippery. When the sun set on the horizon and a train approached on the railway, we know we had a perfect opportunity. Kirill dropped in and sent a perfect fronty down the jump, stomping it perfectly. A great ending to a really creative and efficient trip…

Rampage 2013

After the adventurous trips to Russia and Europe and the pretty big impact of the publications in the freeride community, Kirill’s dream finally came true: he received an invitation to ride the qualifier for Rampage! Since I had never been to that event before and Kirill had never even been to the United States, we decided to get some help for the event and asked Antoine Bizet, the 2nd place rider from the previous year, if he wanted to join us in the days before building and practice began. He was happy to come along, so the three of us met up in Las Vegas, the nearest airport to the event venue…

From Sin City, it’s about a 3 hour drive to Virgin, the closest town to the event venue. After setting up home base in a run-down motel, we started checking out the area – the original Rampage site was open for practice, while the new venue was strictly off limits to everyone except the building crew. We met up with lots of other riders and media guys at the old site and everyone started to get comfortable with the dirt and the terrain. While checking out the surroundings, we also found one of Josh Bender’s old drops – a pretty gnarly cliff beside the main road that would require some real steel balls even with today’s equipment…! We took some fan photos and moved along again…

After a couple of days, the event venue was opened for inspection – no riding was allowed yet though, so Antoine, Kirill and I just walked around for a couple of hours and looked for some interesting opportunities to build creative and/or big stuff. Antoine had already set his sight upon the direct line through the heart, then the biggest drop and a double flip jump directly behind it. Kirill and I were looking for some smaller stuff that suited Kirill’s riding better. We even found a spot for an open loop as well as a possible fronty drop spot. Things were looking bright for the coming days for sure!

Once riding practice truly kicked off, the euphoria faded pretty quickly. Kirill had some serious equipment problems that allowed him only one days of real riding on the old site and no practice time whatsoever on the actual event venue. His rear shock broke on the very first day already and a spare was nowhere to be found until qualification day… not the best odds for a Rampage rookie. Nevertheless, Kirill managed to sneak in some runs here and there and once his shock could be replaced he had a pretty good session on the old site as well.

On the day of qualification however, he decided not to participate. In my eyes (especially with some time to digest it all) this was one of the really remarkable stories of Rampage… Kirill didn’t feel that he was up to the challenge, even though riding in the event had been more or less his childhood dream. His emotional state was clearly shaken up, but nevertheless he seemed to be soaking up the entire experience anyway. Once the final had run its course, Kirill and I visited the open loop spot we had spent a full day on building and Kirill gave it a go, just for fun. The thing even worked! With a little more building help and a bit more experience Kirill’s line could have been quite a remarkable one I’m sure. But there’s no sense in „what ifs“, so the trip to Utah ended on an interesting note for sure – not the typical action sports yeahmanallgoodsostokeditsepic story, but quite an emotional one and definitely kind of funny, too…

Summer 2014

Some months after the experience from Utah, Kirill messaged me and told me that he had gathered his thoughts and found his motivation again after spending the last couple of months not riding any bikes at all. He was down to come over to Europe for another short trip, to check out some spots we hadn’t had the chance to see the previous year. This time, we wanted to check out the Terres Noires in France, which is an incredible looking place in Southern France. Also on the list was the Lac du Salagou where we wanted to meet up with Antoine Bizet again, to check out some spots that Antoine knew. Unfortunately, we had a couple of technical and weather problems on the trip, so that we didn’t get any results in the black hills – we had made some new friends on the inofficial camping site though and it was a great time there anyway!
After relocating to Salagou and chatting to Antoine, we checked out some big, biiiig spots – they all required far too much work than what we were prepared for and so we had to save them, too, for a later date. Antoine and I found a pretty nice natural quarter spot though and the two shots from that one spot appeared in four print publications afterwards. Efficiency is key… 😉

After returning back to my place in Germany, Kirill and I used the remaining two days in Germany well and shot two spots that would both end up in print – and with those nice end results the Europe trip 2014 was also finished in a really cool way.