Back in 2008 magazines were ruling the earth and in many ways were my life, being that I was publishing two magazines in 2020bmxmag and [R]evolution MTB mag.
Aside creative direction and design/production across the two titles, I still shot a lot of photographic content back then. With magazines being the being the biggest form of curated content back then pre social media, MTB giant SRAM brought to life a magazine competition dubbed Process Black as a side hustle for their Black Box Labs team. Three print magazines sent their best photobro and writers to join two riders, pitted against each other in a challenge of riding and story creation.
With the international heavyweights of MTB publishing in Dirt and Bike rolling deep with inhouse photobro and editorial talent, Decline mags Scott Hart asked me to come on board and shoot/write for them as he and his crew were already tied up. I’d ridden with Scott a few times in BC and N.America at assorted industry launch events and dug the direction his mag was rolling, very much aligned with our newly born [R]evolution mag here in Aus. It was a pretty loose and somewhat hazy invite based on a very late night meal post ride, but it all became reality when the head of SRAM’s BlackBox Team team hit me up a few days later upon my return to Aus.
Scott has filled you in on some of the details concerning the event. You need to arrive on July 16th and be prepared to “work” on the 17-18th and depart on the 19th.
We’ve rented a house on the North Shore of Vancouver and your team members will be Brandon Semenuk and Jamie Goldman. The ball is in your team’s court to nail down an original article in two days. See you then.
– Tyler Morland, SRAM
So, three days later I was back sat at Vancouver airport with a bike bag and multiple camera bags watching my ride roll up, the epic SRAM Blackbox van, it felt like a heist movie… Over the following days we rolled through the North Shores best locations, from the Darkside of Mt Seymour, Deep Shore and Diggers trails to Abbotsford trails, downtown Van and some epic old school spots that I grew up watching in early NWD videos. With all the teams based out of a mansion high up in British Properties, it was a wild time with Tyler Moreland and his assembled superstar crew. Even got meet the legends Wade Simmons and Thomas Vanderham deep in the forests, just out for a casual 7okm pedal while we resurrected ancient north shore hits…
In the end it scored me a cover and massive feature in Decline, plus we’d just launched [R]evolution, so we definitely made use of the endless photos of Jamie and Brandon. Talking Brandon, he went from semi obscurity before this trip to one of the greatest slopestyle and freeride riders over the following years… Which mag won? We’ll never know, but my biased opinion is we possibly did….
Some epic times on the road deep in BC’s thriving freeride scene with the Anthill Films crew documenting it all in this little slice of freeride from almost 20 years ago in the vid at the top of the page. Give it a lil watch!