Scott Gambler - Ridden

Adrian Montgomery - Scott USA's Marketing and PR manager was up in BC from Sun Valley ID showcasing the new gambler to some of the leading media in the area. Cam over at NSMB and Adrian hooked up with Scott Canada sponsored rider Darren Butler over at Endless biking and spent 2 days riding the North Shore on the bikes.

Full NSMB write up on the Gambler here..

Adrian then headed up to Whistler with the bikes in the NSMB Toyota to let us ride them in the park and get a feel for their sizes.

We had a short an da long, 1 setup as a standard FR10, the other in more of a DH guise although set up as Adrians personal bike as opposed to OEM spec. Aside from backwards brakes on the first afternoon, the bikes were super smooth and working well. Second day saw a switch up of brakes (it seems Saint hydros do work well enough upside down) and let us give the bikes a little more gas!

The DH10 (long) that suited me was fast and still took speed into corners well, shifting was a bit random after Adrians big crash the day before but the bike was still progressive and when I could find a gear pedalled really quite well for a 40+lb DH bike. The big thing for me was the absense of the chain kick when rapidly going through the travel, something that I got to quite enjoy on the High Octane. The back end was super plush through the seemingly endless travel and braking really didn't seem to upset things back there at all.

All in all, for a bike not set up how I'd spec it, it was lots of fun and already super stoked for delivery in '08!

Mountain Bike Rides.co.uk

Pete and some of the guys that I met up with to ride with at home over the winter popped out in August for a couple of weeks (complete with significant other halves) for a holiday of riding, drinking, fooling and sightseeing.

Pete's (well, probably Jenny's as she was the one with the big camera) photo's are up on his site Mountain Bike Rides.co.uk along with a growing selection of helmet cam videos from the bike park

Check them out.

Cheakamus Challenge

This weekend saw the King of Classics, Cheakamus Challenge XC race.
It's a 73km point to point XC race with over 2000m of vertical climbing between Squamish and Whistler. Every year the race breaks the souls of many a recreational racer but each year they come back for more.
This years lineup included Anreas Hestler, Max Plaxton, Neal Kindrea and Whistlers resident Loonie champ Matt Ryan.
Looking like a wet race for 2007, there were just 217 starters on the long course that saw a few slight changes over last years redesign. An added section of the new Sea-To-Sky trail brough some added pain at the midway point of the race whilst highway construction crews did a good job of keeping the road sections safe.

Max Plaxton took his 3rd consecutive win over Squamish hero Kindrea and Whistler's Matt Ryan made 3rd spot.
BBB rider Jonny made 15th overall and 2nd in catagory behind Japans #5 national rider (4th overall in the Cheak) Takenouchi Yu.

The rain held off and the course remained relatively dry - all in all a great day on the bike, even for those who braved the course for over 7 hours! Nice work.

Scott USA's 2008 Range

Scott USA have launched their 2008 web site with their 2008 bike range.

New to the site are the Gambler, Aspect and extremely fast looking Scale Ltd.

Check out their new offerings here