Swansea Season Opener!

The time has finally come! The annual Mt Swansea season opener! So for the past few years myself and a group of friends head up to Mt Swansea to officially start the season. Now camping in May to some people sounds dumb, but we have a firm belief that Swansea has a weather bubble... all bad weather seems to divert its way to golden or just around us. For all previous years this was true. Friday night we arrive on the mountain to be welcomed with some rain, after a all nite rager we all awoke to ...

With the majority of us going camping unprepaird some people found themselves simply sleeping by the fire the entire nite in the snow/rain, and others waking up to lakes inside their tents. Needless to say it was a rough cold morning. But me being the old man that I am its gonna take a a lot more to deter me from riding, so after 45 mins of bugging and pissing a few guys off and convincing them its go time, the boys threw on the race kits consisting of flannel and double layered flannel...Bikes commenced.

Myself Brandon Dixon, Kurt De freitas, Andrew Hargreaves and Chris Pilling set off to ride bikes and take advantage of the epic conditions and hopefully get some nifty pictures.

After and hour or two the snow was melted and the rest of the crew joined up. We pumped out some solid laps and after some poor communication we were left near the bottom of the mountain without a shuttle, making the best of the situation we all decided to sesh up the classic hip. After a few mins it turned into a competition of who could go the highest and farthest AKA "Hit Kyles Can" (the can being the marker). Convinced I was in the clear that no one could come close to my legendary sender I was due for someone to rain on my parade. Everybody's Drop In hero Jared Jesperson and NSMB team member Matt "the snake" Montandon decided to join the party, right off the bat Jared's turn-downing and bar spinning the hip made us all feel like this was our first day riding out bikes, and of course his following run he set is goal on hitting my can...moments later my hopes and dreams were crushed with the sound of the can being destroyed. Mean while were putting on our training wheels.. Insert "The snake" Montandon..with a few pedal strokes he was 5-10 ft higher and further than anyone else with his natural steezy style.

Finally our shuttle 45 mins later arrives with egos in check we set out for a few more laps before the end of the day. In typical Swansea style the Saturday nite is the nite to let loose...many many tasty beverages later a full moon and clear skies and a 7ft fire we all knew we were on the right track and without a doubt had a nite for the books.

This Photo was taken at 1 AM

Its Sunday, for most people the day to head back to reality, so simply no neat stories to tell BIKESBIKESBIKESBIKESBIKES.

Swansea Season Opener! on pinkbike.com