Don Trails

My mission to try and document the riding scene in Ontario finally led me to one of it’s hot spots, the Don jumps. It’s unfortunately a political hot spot as well. I’ll do my best to shut up and post pics without opening a can of worms, but it’s hard not to comment on the issues. I decided to go shoot there because it is a huge part of riding in the GTA and for a lot of riders, it seems it’s all there is. Zach Tatem invited me down for a group session at the dirt jumps.

The scene in Ontario is very disjointed, or at least it can seem that way from the web. Face to face, on the trails and at events the scene is one of the best. I find that a great proportion of the riders that are unhappy with the community are riders who uniquely ride the Don and maybe have the odd trip to Blue Mountain. They ride with the same two guys and complain about the same issues. I think it’s challenging to have a community if 75% of that community only ride 2-3 different trails all summer. As a result, I think a great number of riders lack perspective. This also places those 2-3 trails under huge pressure to accommodate, what I think is, too diverse of a spectrum of riders.

Personally, I find the community to be wonderful and have met and ridden with all kinds of great folks. I have really made an effort to find new trails in Ontario and ride as many of them as I can. There are so many, I haven’t even come close to riding them all this summer. I have tried to be an ambassador and share what I know by inviting as many riders as I can to these trails. Some have accepted and seen the light while others have chosen to keep riding the same 2-3 trails. Case in point, only three riders came out for Zach’s session. For me, that is the community. The three guys who showed up!

This is where the other main issue arises with the community in Ontario. There are those who want to ride unaltered, low traffic, technical single track and others who want to change trails to comply with popular demand. What makes the community so disjointed is guys can’t post trail maps and broadly invite anyone because there is a real chance that issues such as the ones that have plagued the Don will ruin these trails as well. Guys who really ride know of these places and that is the real community in my opinion! It’s no coincidence these are also the trails without controversy. I think the community is divided between people in the know and people who aren’t. It’s sad, very sad, but we have so little quality riding that people are scared to attract undue attention to their gems. My advise on community, is reach out and ride with new people at new places. Get out of your stale repetitive pattern and ride what is here! Stop trying to fix what is broken and don’t break what isn’t!

So now that I have rambled on for more than I should have, here are the shots from the Don. My goals was to bath the jumps with warm light and make them looks friendly. Most of the images I have seen of the Don look very tight and sterile. I wanted to show the scene, the jumps and community more than individual riders and tricks alone. I had a great day shooting and met some great new people. I am going to make an effort to get back again before the snow flies. I hope you enjoy the shots.