This fall I have been very busy shooting and building for Art Barn Film's short film called "You Like This", more on that in a later post though...One of the highlights of filming so far took place two weeks ago, during one of the last good weather windows of the season. Taylor Loughran is the cinematographer and producer at as well the Cini-flex operator for Mountain Shadow Productions. For all of September he had been working on the logistics of organizing Mountain Shadow’s Cini-flex and Long Ranger set-up, trying to piggy back off a music video shoot on the top of Table Mountain. Finally, near the end of September it all came together. With a three day weather window (to let the trails dry), the music video crew ready to go and the mountain bikers ready. While Taylor slept in and had a chill morning waiting for the machine to pick him up in the afternoon, myself and a crew consisting of Jeremy Norris, Dennis Beare, Andrew Teit, Miranda Miller, fellow Race Face rider Lorraine Blanchard and of course Cheekeye the dog left the coffee shop at 5:30 am and started our journey. After an hour long 4×4 and a 3 hour hike, and most of the afternoon dedicated to trail buffing we started the final hike and waited for the Heli.
At around 4:30 the heli came around the southwest ridge of Atwell with the cini-flex trained on us. We spent the next 45 minutes minutes working our way down the glacial morriane, over a gnarly knife edge, then worked an amazing alpine single track descent. The terrain on the glacial morriane was very loose almost sandy, as it had melted out during they day. After crossing the knife edge ridge, which was the closest i have come to bicycle mountaineering, we had a fast alpine single track waiting for us. I waited for Jeremy to go, preparing to take advantage of the Legend's superb pedaling characteristics and pedal my ass off. I dropped in, pedaling as fast as i could, hearing the whine of the Long Ranger just above me the whole time. All of a sudden the trail was heading back up-hill which was my cue to head to a two jump combo further down the meadow.
It was quite the experience to ride with a heli trained on you – not stressful in the least!
Stay tuned for more on You Like This! but for now check out these photos from our day.
Cini-Flex frame grab wide open on the Legend
