A big congratulations goes out from RaceFace to Rocky Mountain Team rider Chris Sheppard. Chris recently took the elite men Canadian Cyclo-Cross (CX) title, his first national title since the Canadian junior mountain bike championships in 1991. The two-plus kilometre circuit barely gave riders a moment to rest, with multiple short steep climbs, and constant twists and turns on the flat sections. While the weather conditions were excellent, with sun for much of the day – rain earlier in the week made many of the corners slippery, and a number of riders crashed as they tried to push the pace. The Rocky Mountain CX team handles their bikes through the tough conditions with their RaceFace Next and Cadence handlebars, stems and seatposts. A big shout out to fellow Rocky Mountain team rider  Evan Guthie as well, with his 5th place finish in the CX National Under-23 race. Evan has had a tough year with injuries and its great to see him bounce back with this strong showing.

 Well it’s been a supremely busy summer at Casa Chaos (otherwise known as the Tippie/Fenton household). Brett was busy announcing a bunch of MTB events, such as some BC Cup races, the Redbull 5000 down, doing daily webisodes for Crankworx, doing over 50 (!) interviews at the World Championships at Mt. St. Anne. Not to mention other events such as Rocky Mountain days at Mt. Washington etc etc. The best on a professional and personal level was his induction into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame during Interbike this year, along with his fellow Fro-riders, Wade Simmons and Richie Schley. It was a funny, emotional, and very proud moment for us.

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2011 Rocky Mountain Slayer from Rocky Mountain Bicycles on Vimeo.

I received a GoPro camera from my old buddy Kris Jaymo Jamieson, who I used to race snowboards with back in the day on the pro circuit. I fired ‘er up and went for a quick sandpit boogie in Kamloops. I had my trusty black Rocky Mountain Flatline pimped out with green Atlas bling and went for an old school rip down memory lane. I couldn’t believe how fun it was to arc some big turns! Fun stuff! My girlfriend Sarah, took the footie and tried her first edit apon checking out the program. Feeling like hi-tech rednecks here!!! Yahooooo!

Here’s an angle from another day.

I mentioned earlier this summer that I did a bit of filming with the Rocky Mountain Sherpas for a little promotional video for Health Match BC.  Well, the final product just “hit the stands”!  It’s not really a biking video by any stretch of the imagination, but still… I’m in there and I’m riding my bike, so I’m excited about it!   Very cool that my boyfriend Bryden got to be a part of it as well! 



Malcolm and Dave from Rocky Mountain Sherpas were awesome to work with, as was Pam from Health Match BC, so all in all it was an awesome experience! 

I haven’t posted in a while as I’ve been busy………..riding!  The last weekend in June we went to Peachland to catch up with legendary duo Barb Haley and Johnny Smoke, Kranked alumni, North Shore old schoolers, and proprieters of www.bushpilotbiking.com .  Now Johnny and I go waaaaay back to the ’80′s as we went to high school together in Deep Cove, and our little girls are the same age so we always have a grand old time riding, catching up on Cove gossip, and drinking on his amazing balcony overlooking the lake.  He’s also part of the Rocky Mountain family now, rocking a sweet Rocky Mountain Flatline World Cup.  Barb was out there killing it on her hardtail, going bigger than most dare to do on a fully rigged beefy bike.  Uber photographer Ian Hylands and his wife Nicole, who also have a junior ripper, Kainoa came along for some fun too!  I think he was happy to actually get some riding time in, as this is shooting season.   Tippie tried to drift hard at the bottom of one run, and scraped off the top two layers of his forearm, which as much as I hate to admit it, is my fault, as I was hurrying him up to leave on our journey, and when he couldn’t find one armpad, I uttered the classic “you’ll be fine, don’t worry about it”.  Sorry Tippie!  The two days of riding incorporated thousands of vertical, beaches, lakes and even riding through a vineyard!  I’ll keep it short and sweet as Brett will be doing a more in depth dissection of our annual trip to Bush Pilot HQ!

The other week I did some filming with the Rocky Mountain Sherpas for a short promotional film they are making for Health Match BC. Health Match BC is a recruiting agency that works to bring registered nurses and doctors from around the world into BC, and one of the ways they do that is by showing the world how beautiful and amazing BC is. Last year they made a film to recruit doctors, and this year they’re making one targeted towards nurses. Being a registered nurse and having a passion for riding/racing my bike, they decided I could help them out by giving nurses around the world a glimpse of the riding here in North Vancouver and also speaking about what it’s like to work here, and how those two parts of my life fit together so well.

Johanna helping Dave place the tripod precariously on a rock.

Malcolm hiding in the bushes.

Filming in a creek – 3 people, 6 feet, and 1 soaker (unlucky Malcolm!)

The film is supposed to be ready by the end of August so I’ll be sure to share it when it’s out!

Well, the Olympics has come and gone to Vancouver and it sure was a blast. I used to race snowboards on the World Cup circuit for the Canadian National Team for years and I had some friends win medals. So cool!!
Maelle Ricker took the gold in womans Snowboardcross, Mike Robertson took silver in the mens Snowboardcross,
Jasey Jay Anderson took gold in PGS, and Asleigh McIvor took the gold in womans Ski-cross. At one point at one of the VIP victory parties I was dancing wearing Ashleighs gold medal and damn near chipped my tooth with it! They`re heavy! Ash is totally into the Whistler Bike Park and Rocky Mountain is setting her up with a Flatline DH bike pimped out with GOLD Raceface parts!!! Sweet!
The final event of the games (except for the Golden hockey game) was the mens PGS at Cypress Mtn. It was crazy weather with horizontal rain all day. I was surrounded by a hardcore cheering crew consisting of my girlfriend Sarah Fenton, my mom Bridget, my brother Jake, the biggest Indian from Kamloops Jim Leonard, fellow Raceface team rider and buddy, Andrew Baker and his BMX dad, Steve.
We were loud, happy and drank a lot of beer! Joanna Magic, the live event announcer interviewed me on the megatron big screen in front of 5,000 people and asked me about the old days of racing snowboards and what it was like testing product for Raceface and Rocky. A nice unexpected plug there fer sure for a media slut like me…ha ha. In the end, Jasey carved the hell outa the course and won the Gold spectacularly in the middle of a cloud! I was laughing, crying, and screaming all at once with my little posse! Such a wild vibe to the place!!!

Gold Medal Board

I built up my new hardtail for the season and went and shot a little video. I built it up using a lot of the new respond parts so check it out!

You can see the whole bike build here.

Strahan came up with the concept several months ago. I loved the idea so we set it aside and waited for the perfect time to do it. I mentioned the idea to Julian at Race Face, he was stoked and got Rocky Mountain on board as well.

The shoot was really refreshing, fun and challenging at times and was almost cut short by several gushing rivers that popped up because of recent heavy rains. We took some risks and most of them paid off. For me this video presented some challenges I’d never faced before and in the end it’s inspired me with a whole list of new ideas.

Can’t wait to get back out there and start the next project, whatever it may be!

-Aaron