Dopo la sua disastrosa caduta alla Rampage 2023 era calato il silenzio su Gee Atherton. Oggi il britannico torna con un video girato in Svizzera ad Engelberg-Titlis.
Gee said “From the start, the Ridgeline Series has been about taking mountain-biking to the limit… exploring what’s possible on a bike and creating the most stunning footage in the most amazing places around the world. I love that feeling of being on the very limit of how far we can go …
I’m super proud of what we achieved in the Series so far, but I wanted to move beyond the adrenaline and glamour of a four minute edit. I wanted to show the reality behind those action highlights, the hard grind, the setbacks, and the absolute trust in my bike, my crew, and my equipment that are essential in the making of these films. I want to keep on pushing boundaries and this film gives an unvarnished insight into what that takes. Every single step felt like we’d picked a fight with forces way bigger than ourselves.
People ask me how I forget or block out the injuries I’ve sustained on previous Ridgelines, but you never forget, I’m never without those injuries, in my mind and in my body … for me it’s about how you operate with them and learn to be ok and accept and carry them – this is who you are now. These extreme locations make all of us dig deep into a zone you can rarely access elsewhere.”
Every Ridgeline film has presented a new challenge, pushed the team that bit further, but moving out of Wales into Alpine terrains super-sized the challenges – instead of hiking up to Terren y Gesail 666m above Dyfi Bike Park Gee and the crew faced 3,600m ascents with crumbling rockfaces and 600m sheer drops… every step they took the mountain resisted their efforts.
Ridgeline V was co-directed by Gee and his long-time friend and collaborator Dan Griffiths (Moonhead Media) a veteran of the entire Ridgeline series. Rather than honing in on only spectacular riding shots they set about showing the whole process, 8 days of physical and mental overdrive. Gee said “We’ve grown accustomed to fast-paced riding edits, with awesome skills in stunning settings but it’s always harder than it seems, every time we do these edits something unpredictable happens, I wanted to go beyond the wow-factor of those edited highlights to show the true cost of those 120 seconds or so”
The film is the second in the series to feature the A170, Gee said “Without 100% trust in the bike these films would not exist. I needed something with raw power, precision, and reliability to tackle these extreme terrains. The A.170 checked all the boxes”. It’s also the most int1se and personal film to date revealing a side to Gee we’ve never seen before. Advised by Camera Operator and Lead Mountaineer, Brodie Hood, a hugely experienced action and adventure specialist, the team abandon the final 50m ascent to the summit and head back down the mountain.
Gee said “It was so hard, absolutely gutting. We’d had two quite unproductive days because of the weather, but we’d found this spectacular peak and had scouted right up to 100m from the summit before it got dark. Next day we’d headed back up there, bike on our backs, gruelling hours of anaerobic climbs across this vast 45 degree slab, we were at all at our absolute limit. And then we saw it, this really tricky ridge, no anchors, overhangs, crumbly rock…
I’ll admit I was in full turbo mode my default mode is always “Let’s get it done” …. I kept walking back up to the difficult part and looking down the 600mm cliff edge, the rocks crumbling away in my hands, it was terrifying – such a slap in the face. I was so, so close to just picking up the bike and going for it, but even at time I kind of knew…
Brodie said “Look, you might get up there but there’s a 50/50 chance you’re going to kill one of your crew, I want to take these guys home to their families ” He’s a pretty adventurous dude, he’s constantly charging ahead, fearless, never gets tired – so when he says “ don’t go” it’s sobering.”
As hard as it was to walk away from what could have been some of the best footage we’d ever captured, we had to face reality and next day we went again with a different approach to the same ridge, the front face was (just about) manageable so we got our shot after all.
Big thanks to the crew – Brodie Hood, Dan Griffiths/Moonhead Media, Jamie Robertson, Nico Turner and to the town of Engelberg, Titlis Cableways, Deuter, Red Bull and Prologo for their support.
Il "così si ammazza" saranno bene fatti suoi?
Sono pieni i bike park (e le piste da sci in inverno) di gente impedita e incosciente che rischia di più e fa danni che pesano sulla salute pubblica e soccorsi mille volte più di quanto potrà mai costare un Atherton sbriciolato, eppure nessuno si indigna.
Anche riguardo il rispetto dei luoghi si potrebbe scrivere un poema, a me basta vedere che sono saliti e scesi a piedi (e con un impianto, che al rientro hanno pure perso e son tornati in paese a piedoni).
Avessero usato elicotteri magari avrei avuto da ridire, così non ci vedo nessun sacrilegio.
Da un forum di MTB mi aspetterei commenti sulle linee, un "sarebbe stato bello vederlo passare di là.." o sulle manovre che ha fatto, o sulla bici e come è montata, non queste lagne sempre uguali.
Il tuo commento invece è più che centrato, è vero che dal video pare che si siano incamminati un po' alla spero in Dio, potevano fare meno fatica se si organizzavano meglio con tempi e percorso di salita e discesa.
Tornando al sodo, le sequenze che hanno portato a casa sono in effetti epiche. In più intorno a 8:50, quando scende per quella parete crepata in contropendenza, fatica a rallentare, e gli scappa di lato la bici mi si sono letteralmente rizzati i pochi capelli che ho in testa.
E' una sensazione provata da tanti di noi sulla roccia in contropendenza, ovviamente in scala 1000 volte inferiore e in tutt'altro contesto. Pensarla li dove se cadi e scivoli non la racconti, è veramente da paura :-((::!::!: