Dane Tudor - Training for Life

Over the past 5 years mountain biking has become my summer staple, the perfect complement to skiing in the winter. I enjoy the cross training and flowing down trails with good friends, hooting and hollering. It’s one heck of a good time!

Last summer Eric Gonzalez and I created our first video together, showcasing the round trip aspect of riding door to door on Rossland BC’s killer trail network.

This summer we were inspired to make another project, this time, following the same round trip vein, but a little differently.

The idea took us to one of Canada’s picturesque locations, Revelstoke, BC. The Revelstoke landscape is dominated by mountains that reach high into the alpine. The town is full of crazy fit people who call themselves "Alpine Addicts". Needless to say, it was the perfect location for this project, and a familiar area to me as I spend the winters skiing these same mountains.

A friend offered us his tent trailer for the trip so we loaded the truck and hit the road to Revy. We were packed to the brim with gear.

We arrived in Revy then headed north towards Mica Creek. We setup camp alongside what was once the flowing Columbia river, now a tranquil lake due to damming of the river. A spectacular location.

Over the next week we spent a solid 10 hours a day working on the project. We started our days driving an hour up a logging road that reached treeline. From there we rode our bikes into the alpine and begin our work. As we banked the majority of trail footage we needed I started to look to the alpine peaks, beyond the trail. The draw to the highest location was strong, so I threw my bike over my shoulder and we began hiking and shooting our way to the top of the ridge line, stumbling across some great features along the way. Upon topping out on the ridge, we were greeted with an amazing backdrop, maybe the grass is greener on the other side?

The descent from the top was awesome, there’s something to be said for freeriding, riding on rocks that don’t look rideable, skidding through scree slopes and rolling over beautiful alpine meadows. Bikes can go almost anywhere these days.

On rest days Eric and I would make the journey to town and spend our day in the coffee shop editing, figuring out the flow of the footage and seeing if there were shots missing that we wanted to include.

I’ve been creating edits since I was a kid, and as I’ve grown I’ve felt the need to change the flow of my projects. To move away from the classic (edit) concept and head towards what I like to think of as a video.

An edit is footage put to music with no story line, just a compilation or mashup so to speak. A video can have a broader audience because every shot connects to the last, inspiring thoughts in the viewer's mind and can potentially bring new meaning to one's life. A video takes you from beginning to end, across space and time.