When it comes to heart-thumping fun, this park is king of the thrill

WHISTLER, B.C. -- This 13-year-old kid looking like Mad Max in full pads has just whistled by your ear, so you step a bit more away from the trail and look up again at the 10-foot rock face on the A-Line trail. Rider after rider, one after the other, is dropping off the rock as if it were nothing, like it was just a snack of sharp nails before a breakfast of rusty bolts.

It feels like you're stuck between the frames of a "New World Disorder" mountain-biking video.

Then the flow of fearless riders ebbs, you pick your bike and limp meekly away from A-Line, back to the easier B-Line.

You can't believe how good these guys are.

But that's the kind of rider attracted to the Whistler Mountain Bike Park at Whistler/Blackcomb ski area, called by some the best mountain-bike park ever built. That's the kind of rider Whistler's bike park grows.

It's a step up from the trails around Seattle.

"It's awesome," says Dave Renick of Seattle, sitting at the Whistler base chillin' after a morning's ride. "I was up here earlier in the season and the first day I was really timid. By the second day I had some confidence. It's no wonder these guys who live here are pros."

This is a place with everything a good downhill rider could want: vertical drops off rock faces, elevated rolling ramps and "ladder bridges," bunches of jumps and hits that allow serious amplitude, smooth high-banked turns, steep, nasty single track rampant with roots and rocks, jump parks, drop parks, slopestyle parks. Trails are rated like ski runs, with the technical and demanding marked black diamond and featuring names like Dirt Merchant, Crack Addict and In Deep.

The Boneyard Slopestyle Park is just uphill from the base area, and it can scare first-time visitors.

"We're fighting ourselves a bit here," acknowledges Tom "Pro" Prochazka, the park manager. "People see riders doing serious things here and some get a little intimidated. But we have trails for all skills levels. There are easy cross-country rides up on the hill."

JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I

Bikers catch a ride on the Fitzsimmons chairlift, one of two high-speed quads serving the mountain-bike park. Alternating chairs on each lift feature steel racks on which the riders load their bikes.

True enough. You can find smooth single track for the family. The park also offers clinics, instruction, tours.

But make no mistake: The main attraction here is gravity-fueled, adrenaline-charged, lift-served downhill freeriding.

There are no long grunts uphill. Two high-speed quad chairlifts, Fitzsimmons and Garbanzo, carry riders up the hill. Every other chair carries a steel rack that riders put their bikes on before sitting on the following chair for the ride up. The ski area's Kona rental bikes are big, beefy, full-suspension downhill frames built to withstand several hundred thousand vertical feet of jarring descent in a season.

The lifts allow so much more downhill time than typical mountain-bike trails, and some of these trails are so demanding, that a rider who wants to hone her or his skills can get sharp quickly. Also, the level of ridership here, while at first intimidating, becomes motivating.

"If you did a full ride to the top, you'd get one downhill run in a day, and then you'd be licking your wounds," says Prochazka. "I grew up on the North Shore, where we rode up every time, and we'd take our time coming down to savor it. We mock that here. We go faster, do rock drops, jumps, ladders. That's why riders get so good here."

The North Shore, of course, is the steep region bordering Vancouver, known far and wide and long as a hotbed of wild riding. The North Shore and Whistler draw bikers from across the continent and over the seas.

JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I

Professional downhill freerider Richie Schley takes to the air off a rock on the technical Joy Ride run near the Fitzsimmons chairlift.

Such as Stephan Henggeler of Oberageri, Switzerland, who brakes and drops his bike along B-Line upon seeing Richie Schley, star of "New World Disorder" and a mountain-bike pro who works for Whistler, during a photo shoot on the very technical adjacent run called Joy Ride.

"You're the guy in the wideo!" exclaims Henggeler with a thick accent. "It's so cool that I could come here to look at you!"

Schley is most accommodating, pumping hands and signing the riding jersey of Henggeler, who's also heavily amped to be riding Whistler.

"I was at North Shore and now I have to look at what crazy things they're doing here," he says. "I just got here and now I took B-Line, the easier one, and it's very cool to ride down. We have a lot of nice mountains (in Switzerland). We have more rock, but you have to pedal up all the stuff you ride. This is so cool."

A few minutes later two riders from Park City, Utah, spot "The Schleyer" and stop to ask for a photo with him, which he's happy to do.

While the difficult black diamond runs are the eye-poppers, the Whistler bike park's trail arsenal includes a variety of riding. The park was opened in 1999, but wasn't a hit until its two most popular trails, A-Line and B-Line, were built a couple of years later.

That first year the park hosted 11,500 "rider-visits." Last year the park was cookin' with 62,000. Whistler bosses this year project 75,000 to 80,000 and are eyeballing 100,000 in 2005.

The park is popular among Western Washington riders, especially since The Summit at Snoqualmie and Crystal Mountain quit running lift-served bike operations two years ago, apparently because of liability issues and environmental concerns on their leased national forest lands. They'll have another option next year, however, since Cypress Mountain ski area in West Vancouver announced last week that it will operate a mountain bike park beginning next summer.

At any rate, A-Line is a single black diamond that advanced riders worship. Schley describes it as "gentle terrain with moments of very difficult stuff." Don't go there unless your chops are happenin'.

B-Line is a blue run for intermediate riders, a fairly smooth single-track beauty through the trees, with nicely bermed turns. It's twisty-turny on top, becoming fluid and flowing at the bottom. It's perfect for intermediate riders, smooth enough to really crank.

For novices, the green run Easy Does It is wide and smooth and most anyone who can grip a brake can ride there.

JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I

A freestyle rider tackles an obstacle at Whistler Mountain Bike Park. In addition to all the natural challenges, the park offers three feature parks of man-made obstacles.

A typical strategy for riders new to the park is to start out on B-Line or Easy, depending on skill levels, and advance to harder runs. A good gauge of whether you want to step up to A or other black runs is the short-but-rough blue, Ho Chi Min. It takes off from B-line about midway from the top of the Fitzsimmons chair and is tight and twisty and full of roots and rocks.

"If you can handle Ho Chi Min, you can ride trails up top," says Prochazka.

"Up top" would be the trails -- served by the Garbanzo lift -- that were opened just this season and all black diamond: Original Sin, Goats Gully, In Deep and No Joke. Garbanzo adds another 2,200 feet of vertical and tops out at an elevation of 5,453 feet. The weather is cooler up there, the views superb, and the mountain's black bears are seen regularly.

"In spring it's not uncommon to see four to eight bears in a day," says Schley. "I've seen five in one run. Right now it's hot and the bears are in the woods."

A couple of trails actually pass over bear dens, which, of course, the animals don't use after rubbing their eyes open in spring. Sometimes bears are seen on the lower slopes, along with a variety of chipmunks, grouse and other critters.

The park also offers habitat for aspiring BMX and downhill rats at three "skills centers" of varying difficulty, each with multiple ramps, hits and jumps for practicing.

The park's camps and clinic are well regarded. The clinics are offered daily, the camps periodically. Schley, who helped design many of the features in the park and is considered the "godfather" of local freeriding, teaches five camps a season, now finished for the year.

They're a great way to pick up skills and keep yourself intact.

It's not hard to get in over your head here, and falls happen, just like on the ski slopes.

You really need to approach this park with caution and follow the rules, posted at the base.

We saw a guy bite a big one near the base of the Joy Ride rock. He shook it off. But we also saw a guy carried on a stretcher off the Boneyard park to a waiting ambulance.

You will want to wear pads here.

At the same time, the area maintains a Bike Patrol that cruises the park, and a gravel maintenance road makes rescue accessible. If you're going to get hurt on a mountain bike, it's better here than 10 miles down some remote trail in the backcountry.

One look at all the riders flying off rocks and you'll understand.

Park nuts & bolts

* Space: About 150 kilometers over about 40 trails (it varies week to week), with 3,400 feet of vertical descent -- 1,200 feet accessed by the Fitzsimmons chairlift and 2,200 for experts only accessed by the Garbanzo lift; three feature parks and three skill practice centers.

* Time: May 22-Oct. 3 daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., with extended hours to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 4.

* Currency flow: Ticket prices (all Canadian) are $39 for adults, $35 youth/senior (13-18 and 65+), $19 for kids 10-12. Extended sessions 3:30-8 p.m., $29.

* Hooking up: See www.whistlerblackcomb.com/bike or call 866-218-9688 for general information or 604-938-7275 for the weekly "Dirt Phone" report.

Copyright © Seattle Post-Intelligencer