Life Outside Spring 2019 - 32

If you weren't a badass, you weren't
riding that thing and coming out alive!
FACING PAGE
A rider takes full advantage of
Brad Stone's work.

HEAVY EQUIPMENT
Machines, not designed for
operation on the side of a
mountain, are nonetheless
the first step in creating trails.

bus carried golfers, hikers, pool-goers and, now,
mountain bikers, to and from the resort.
With an extra bedroom and couch space, Stone
played host to a rotating cast of pro-level riding buddies. Soon, a youngish resort manager took notice
and asked Stone if he'd be interested in building a
lift-serviced bike course. While they couldn't pay
him anything, Stone was free to use Wintergreen's
Bobcat, miniature-backhoe, dump-truck, gravel and
sand piles-whatever he needed to make it happen.
When asked for direction, the manager shrugged.
"He basically told me to use my judgment and
build whatever I thought was appropriate," laughs
Stone. "I was 23 years old and a professional downhiller at that. For me, it was like being handed the
keys to the Cadillac. It didn't take me five seconds
to say yes, I was completely onboard."
Though Stone had ridden umpteen pro-level
courses, he had exactly zero experience building
them. In fact, his resume amounted to routine
maintenance on cross-country single-track and
helping a friend construct a home motocross park.
Furthermore, he knew nothing about running heavy
equipment, much less doing so on the side of a
mountain. But considering his connections in the
field-and the almost unfathomable opportunity-he decided to consult with friends and wing it.
Early that spring, Stone went to work flagging trails.
As fate would have it, the manager took a lengthy
vacation just as construction began. For good or

Spring 2019 \\ LifeOutside Magazine

ill, Stone and his rotating crew of pro riders were
left to do as they pleased. And they were taking it
seriously. Like, way seriously.
"Back then, there weren't any true models for
building bike parks, especially on the East Coast,"
says Stone. As a result, the group congregated in his
condo to discuss the elements of a dream course-as
in, The Holy Grail of Downhill Riding. Stone took
notes and incorporated the suggestions into his
design. If the friends weren't training or off making
money, they were working on the course.
Ultimately, it was a track for experts and experts alone.
"If you weren't a badass, you weren't riding that
thing and coming out alive," Stone chuckles. "It
had more than 50 jumps, bank curves, whoops,
berms and ladder-bridges up in the trees. Guys
would come in from out West and say, 'Dude, this
is unreal!' It was the craziest system of gravity trails
any of us had ever ridden and-to put things into
perspective-out of the dozens of pro-level bike
parks I've built since then, if it had survived, it'd
still be the craziest."
As riders spread the word, elite MTB-ers descended upon the quiet mountain community. With the
trail beginning and ending less than 100 yards from
Stone's condo, his home became the epicenter of
an underground, X Games-style weekend scene
featuring upward of 50 riders at a time.
When the resort manager returned, he nearly
had a heart attack. Older community members
were filing complaints left and right. The local nature group was up in arms. The course was unsafe
for amateurs and therefore viewed as a liability.
Animosity hovered like a toxic cloud.
Used to the stigma against alt-sports, the riders mostly shrugged it off-they were milking it
for all it was worth. Stone, meanwhile, put his
condo up for sale.
"There was a lot of disgruntlement about how we
took the thing and ran with it," he admits. "Never
in a million years had they anticipated us sinking
so many hours into the project. Today, I wouldn't
approach a build like that for under $250,000. And
that's my, like, super lowball figure."
By the spring of 2003, the Wintergreen homeowners' association had banded together to shut
down the trails. But not before Stone was approached by management personnel from Snowshoe Resort in West Virginia.

Life Outside Spring 2019

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