The first goal was to collect some video content to be used in promotion of the new Sea to Sky trail. The second was to shoot some photographs in Pemberton with Margus Riga for Norco and Mace.

So, part one. Picked up Margus in North Vancouver and blasted to Squamish in time to help with an interview of David Suzuki. The world renown scientist was kind enough to offer some thoughts on the environmental benefit of a good multipurpose trail through nature (in this case, from Horseshoe Bay to Lillooet). He was a real pro in front of the camera, not surprising considering his television resume; he arrived, made his on camera spiel perfectly on the first take, and was off to his next appointment in a flash. The key to his message was that humans protect and preserve what they love; so if they have increased opportunity to ‘get out in nature’ with a trail such as the Sea-to-Sky, they may be more likely to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.

Photo Credit: Margus Riga

It was a pleasure, as always, to work with Jack Christie who was the director/personality for the shoot. He promotes the outdoor lifestyle in myriad charismatic ways, whether on TV, in print, in books, or most importantly one on one with full authenticity. Margus asked me if there was anything he didn’t know about the outdoors becauseas he was constantly sharing stories and spewing out unique facts about the area. Be sure to check out his website and perhaps purchase one of his quality books. He’s good people.

A couple youngsters, Evan and Shawn, came down from Pemberton to be in the video shoot. Photo Credit: Margus Riga

Robin Harvey, the marketing/promotional gal behind the Sea to Sky Trail has been busy coordinating this day of filming, and she was able to squeeze it all in for us by the early afternoon so Margus and I had time to blast off to Pemby to get our ride/shoot on. We rode up and then down a trail called (can’t remember right now) and took photos along the way. It was glorious, except for the onslaught of giant Pemberton Mosquitos! 

Photo Credit: Margus Riga

Photo Credit: Margus Riga

We got back to the truck by 9pm. Grabbed some snacks for the drive home quite content with the days efforts.

I picked my trailer up on the way home, switched my gear and bikes for the trials variety, ready to head out the next morning for some shows! Good times all around!!

A few months ago, I went to Galiano Island, BC for a little relaxing trials riding retreat. Here is a little video summery of the trip. Alex did an awesome job editing this together!

My friend Gregor just posted an article about our trip to Galiano Island a couple months ago. Some nice pictures and a good story about our visit to one of the most beautiful Gulf Islands.

Check out the story here…

Peace…

Just wanted to share the good news that Crux was honored with the People Choice Award in the mountain sport category from the Banff Mountain Film Festival. 

The Crux Team: (from left to right: the man behind the lens-Alex, the man on the bike-Ryan, and the man behind the microphone-Shawn) image courtesy of Yorick Carroux

Here’s the posting from Banff…

If you live in Vancouver, please come out for the local stop of the Banff Mountain Film Fest on either Dec. 4th or 5th. Here are the details:

Best of Banff 2008 Hosted by The Alpine Club of Canada - 

Thurs Dec 4th Kay Meek Centre 1700 Mathers Avenue, West Vancouver. Doors open 6:30pm / Films 7:30pm 

Fri Dec 5th Hollywood Theatre NEW VENUE 3123 West Broadway, Vancouver. Doors open 6:30pm / Films 7:30pm 

Tickets: At the Door: $18 at Kay Meek; $15 at Hollywood (cash only) Outlets: $15 Mountain Equipment Co-op (130 West Broadway in Van, 1341 Main Street in North Van) Online: $18 For program details, see: accvancouver.ca Contact us at: bestofbanffinfo at accvancouver.ca

Hopefully see you there!

Ryan

My filmmaker friend Alex Lavigne filmed and edited together a short from one of my Trials of Life school presentations. He had some out takes from Crux that didn’t make the final film, they’re spliced in throughout the short. Have a look if you like:

Greetings from Banff, Alberta!

The Banff International Mountain Film and Book Festival is underway; my excuse to visit this incredible mountain town is to introduce CRUX on the Radical Reels evening of the festival. If you live in the vicinity, grab some tickets here and enjoy the selection of outdoor action films from around the globe.

Caryn and I are staying at The Fox Hotel during our visit, thanks to Banff Lake Louise Tourism for the hook up!…(I performed for them earlier this year at a conference). Today was a meandering day around town, soaking up the views, drinking tea, etc. I just finished John Vaillant’s book The Golden Spruce (check it out here, it’s a beautifully rich, true story of slightly misguided ex-logger turned environmentalist), and was excited to find out that he’s in town (the author John, not the Grant) to speak about his adventure to British Columbia’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness area which is said to be the biggest well-kept wilderness secret in North America. He, along with conservationist/author/photographer Wayne Sawchuk explored the area for four weeks, and the story of their adventure, written by Vaillant, can be found in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine. I have to go home to do a school show, and Caryn has to go home to take care of our nephews, so looks like we’ll have to miss the presentation. 

Well, since Caryn is having a little apres tea power nap, I think I may do a quick apres tea power yoga. So cheers and cheerio for now…RL

My body is sore. It’s mostly a good feeling. It’s sore from a combination of over exerted muscles and a few bruises from a crash. All part of the game I guess, they always say that if you’re not crashing you’re not trying hard enough – I don’t really subscribe to that motto, but there is a little bit of truth to it.

Linked some lines together today on the sculpted sandstone and drift log beaches that left me with a happy grin and an certain kind of artistic satisfaction.

It’s the evening now and we’re nice and warm with full bellies in the little cabin; just finished an interview by the fire for the video project which should go online through Norco’s podcast site in a month or so.

We’ll be heading home in the morning as it sounds like the rain will start overnight. That’s all good. It’s been a great little riding retreat, and I felt that spark and love for riding trials that I needed after about a month off from riding. Getting my riding imagination going on natural terrain is some good therapy after a season of about 150 shows.

The sun is setting, the cabin fire is burning, the tea is hot, and the view is gorgeous. I’m on Galiano Island for a few days filming a podcast with my buddy Alex Lavigne, and the first day was great!

Our friends Greggor and Jenny showed us a fairly secret spot on the Island called Rock World, it’s basically like a mini Stonehenge or a standing stone zone much like you’d find in the UK. So it turned out to be a very unique area for some trials lines. Most of the rocks were too tall and they were spaced such that you couldn’t jump from one to another; but the individual rocks I did make it on were a great challenge.

I have to be honest though; I haven’t ridden my trials bike for about a month, whew! My arms and shoulders are already sore. My back is even sore because I had a couple high bails and a couple large’ish drops. It’s funny how my trials mind is sharp and has the vision, but my body was saying take it easy boy!

We have another day or two of riding, then back to the mainland. I’m hoping to hit a few rock and log lines at the beach tomorrow. Galiano has the most amazing sculpted sandstone shapes at the beach, but the tide schedule isn’t so favorable for us, so we’ll do our best. Nice to be back on the trials bike, and good timing too as I have a couple school shows coming up.

This morning I met up with pro-photographer Stephen Wilde  to shoot some photos for a story that Mountain Bike Magazine is doing about me. Their journalist David Howard has gone in to some depth about my career and lifestyle, so today we went to work on capturing that. A bit of trials, a bit of mountain biking, some yoga poses, and, oh wait, shoot, I forgot to get him to shoot me drinking tea!

I have never shot with Stephen before, so I browsed his website, and could immediate tell that he’s got an eclectic taste and style, and the images struck me as very film like. Sure enough, he used 3 or 4 different film camera’s today, in a variety of formats, and like a ‘ol film pro, didn’t use the flash once. Here are a couple images from his website.

I have been a hobby photographer for a good part of my life. Watching my Grandpa patiently take nature photos, then seeing my dad run around the mountain taking photos of me cross country racing, photography has been bred in to me. I remember my Dad teaching me about shutter speed and aperture; and then going out to experiment on plants, bugs and trees. It was such an enjoyable learning curve, and so exciting to see the results after development.

It has been a long time since I was on a film photoshoot, as opposed to digital. It’s almost weird not to be able to preview the image right after the shot has been taken. I think there is a rare confident patience that is inherent in a film photographers style, it’s almost romantic.

I have been a snobbish digital SLR user for the last few years, and was adamant that people could not tell the difference between a good digital image and a film image when put side by side. My ego was wrapped up in that argument because I had spent so much money on a nice digital camera set up. Over the last year or so I have been able to observe that digital ego, and of course, that allowed it to subside and me to see things from a different perspective. Caryn has always been drawn to film photos more than digital, part of it may be noticeable, and part may be just in the patient artistic touch that comes through in a film image.

Thanks for the shoot today Stephen!

One of the joys of living in the Vancouver area is that the snow is conveniently located up in the mountains. That hasn’t been the case for the last week or so, it dumped about a foot and half at my house, and that seriously put a cramp in my pre-season trials riding! I don’t really consider building a huge snow fort training. Now I know I am totally spoiled living in Vancouver where most of the winter I can ride outside no problem, and I know a good chunk of the people who read this may be in the middle of a severe winter lock down, I feel you, I really do! I guess I’m just psyched to get riding! It’s a nice time of year for me to ride, my show count is low, so the time and energy I do spend on my bike is mostly fun practice. I am busy booking shows right now, and pretty soon it’ll be full on demo time, and my energy level for extra practice will go down.

Talking about Vancouver weather, and talking about demos, I have some shows coming up in Vancouver for the Outdoor Adventure Sports show. Anyone living in the area that is interested in going can print out the 2 for 1 coupon I have attached below, love to see you there!

One of the most common questions I get about Crux is whether the soundtrack is available. Well it is now through iTunes, just search for ‘Crux Soundtrack’. Corduroy Kid worked some magic on this soundtrack! Here is the announcement directly from the musician himself:

“Okay so I’ve been lending music ahemm licensing music to these outdoor filmmaker thrill seeker types for the last 4 or 5 years right. Well last May, my friends, filmmaker Alex Levigne, and allstar world trials/yoga zen like rider Ryan Leech asked me if I wanted to compose a soundtrack for their film. This film would follow 3 riders from Victoria BC thru to Nova Scotia, and on to Austria on Ryan Leeches summer tour 2007. I had a couple of ideas kicking in my brain bucket regarding tempos after having worked on a couple of Ryan’s previous films. I gave these guys two pitches ‘Sonic Pleasure’ and ‘Mood Ruff’ this in return gave them the inspiration to ride to the new music on their ipods and start filming…kind of a reverse process for soundtracks…but very cool. After the first two songs, these guys mainly wanted Corduroy kid flow with lyrical gravy…which was really really hard for me…. after all, how do you write lyrics about riding a bike etc…without writing lyrics about riding a bike. In the end I think some cool lyrical relationships were formed and it’s a damn good record on its own…so with that said go check it out on iTunes, it’s only $6.00!!

Love to all of ya, Shawn”

On that ‘note’, I’ll sign off for now! Ryan