Dusty Trail – Winter Prep with Dane Tudor

Summer is coming to its end and soon winter is knocking on our door. We met up with one of the world`s best freeriders, Dane Tudor in his home to hear his story about how he prepares for his winter adventures.

"When I started skiing professionally 7 years ago, all I did was ski, year round.

When the North American winter ended it was time to head to NZ.

After 3 awesome, park filled years down under, North America’s summer destination Mt Hood caught my attention.  I spent 3 summers skiing every day at Mt Hood, learning new tricks and having a blast.

After 6 years of summer skiing, it was time for a change and I was ready to enjoy summer without skis.  After all, there’s more to life than just skiing and I’m one of the lucky few who is able to explore other sports as a professional athlete and my main sponsor Scott Sports just so happens to make the best bikes in the business.

It had been a good 8 years since I hung up my motocross boots but the bike skills where still prevalent in my mind. I took quickly to Mountain Biking 

Biking has proven to be super fun cross training for skiing, long rides in the mountains are conducive to great cardio and total body strength, which goes hand in hand with backcountry skiing and big mountain riding.

Biking parallels skiing because you ride in the same attack position and it puts me in a place where decision-making becomes quick and on the fly, an easy way to hack into the flow state.  The flow state is a mind state that is elevated from our current reality.  A place where I broaden my focus to everything that surrounds me, seeing peripherally with my mind’s eye.  As if my brain is floating down the trail without my body.

One of my favorite places to mountain bike and ski is Rossland, BC.

Rossland is a mountain biking mecca, enabling you to ride from your doorstep to access over 200kms of trail surrounding the area.

During one of my daily pedals I came up with the idea of creating a video to showcase the aspects I love about riding in the Rossland area.  The constant uphill grind through town, slogging up the back of Red Mountain, the rowdy DH shred and wheeling through town past the cheering kids seemed like such a cool video.  Chance had it that my buddy Max happened to know a talented up and coming filmer named Eric Gonzalez, who became an instrumental part of the project with his great attitude and solid work ethic.

I’m stoked on how it turned out and am excited to work on more bike projects in the future."