Mountain biking down an impossibly steep and exposed cliff in the rugged Virgin Mountains of southwest Utah can have dire consequences.
A fall can mean paying the ultimate price.
“It was definitely terrifying,†said Bend’s Carson Storch. “There was no option to fall, anywhere. If we would have fallen off one of those cliffs, we would have died.â€
Storch, 23, had already reached the highest ranks of professional free-ride mountain biking, but last week he might have scored the best result of his still-young career.
He finished third and won the Best Trick award Friday in the Red Bull Rampage, a high-profile event in which mountain bikers ride down precipitous cliffs and launch off a series of natural jumps near Zion National Park.
The 2016 Rampage, the 11th edition of the event, featured 21 riders from around the world who were judged on the style, difficulty and execution of their tricks off the natural obstacles.
Storch earned the Best Trick award for his nearly flawless 360-degree rotation down a 36-foot drop.
He was set to compete in last year’s Rampage, but he sprained an ankle in practice just before the event and decided to sit out the contest.
“All year I was trying to catch up,†Storch said this week upon his return to Oregon. “I traveled a lot and competed a lot this year, and had a really up-and-down year. So it felt amazing to come back and kind of prove to everybody, and prove to myself, that I can do it. It’s the biggest accomplishment, by far, I’ve ever had in my career. It was pretty cool.â€
Storch called the Rampage the “biggest, most progressive contest†in free-ride mountain biking. He earned $25,000 for his performance.
Canadian Brandon Semenuk performed a back flip in his winning run to claim his second Rampage victory. Frenchman Antoine Bizet took second, finishing his run off with a double back flip.
Several days in advance of the finals, individual riders worked with their two-person crews to build their jump lines in the sandstone ridges just outside of the town of Virgin. Teams were each given four build days, followed by four practice days, according to .
In previous years, the Rampage included man-made wooden jumps. But the 2016 event was all natural. Storch and his crew of two diggers — friends from Canada — spent the majority of their build days constructing a 100-foot-long landing for his 360 drop. They carved out two rock walls with sledgehammers and rock picks, then filled it with dirt to create the landing area.
“I decided to do my own thing, and I wanted to do some tricks that I hadn’t done before at Rampage,†Storch said. “That 360 drop … it was the biggest part of my run. … We just found a good drop to build. It was a massive build. It took almost the whole entire time. It was just a crazy amount of work, but it ended up being well worth it. I have never, ever, put so much work into one feature before.â€
Much of his run was extraordinarily exposed along the knife’s edge of a ridge.
“You kind of had to go for it,†Storch said. “You had to be on it, because there were no-fall zones everywhere. They are big cliffs … really big cliffs.â€
A replay of the Rampage is available on , and NBC will air the competition Nov. 12.
A 2011 graduate of Summit High School, Storch grew up snowboarding, skateboarding and riding dirt bikes and mountain bikes in Central Oregon. By the time he was 15, he said, he knew mountain biking was his sport.
Now with sponsorship from Rocky Mountain Bicycles and Red Bull energy drink, among many others, Storch is making a living as a pro free-ride mountain biker, traveling the world to different contests but always returning in the offseason to Bend, where he was born and raised.
His breakout season was 2014, when he finished eighth at the Red Bull Joyride in Whistler, British Columbia, and 15th at the Rampage.
Storch’s specialty is slopestyle mountain biking, which — much like slopestyle in skiing and snowboarding — includes riding down a series of jumps and features and getting judged on tricks performed off those jumps. Mountain bikers often execute tricks such as flips, spins, and tail whips.
“Our sport is growing really fast, but it’s still not quite at the level of other action sports, like skateboarding and surfing,†Storch said. “So this contest (the Rampage) upped it a lot. First place was $75,000. That’s getting in the realm of the World Surf League and some of the skate contests.
“It’s kind of a legendary event that’s just cool to be a part of.â€
And, he might have added, to simply survive.
— Reporter: 541-383-0318,
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