There’s something attractive about watching a documentary of people doing things that you know you’d break your leg doing. Most Warren Miller movies come to mind, along with really anything Mount Everest.
Local producers KGB Productions and Gravnetic are looking to add to these addictive films with their new mountain biking documentary, “Freedom Riders.”
(There is a subtle difference between freedom riding and freedom writing…namely, the verb.)
The movie centers on the evolution of freeriding, which can have different meanings to different mountain bikers, but general settles on doing your own thing on your bike, on mountainous trails, with gravity in control. Yikes.
There is also a look at how the U.S. Forest Service got on board a couple years ago. Read the words of the freeriders themselves:
Rewind nine or so years. Teton Pass didn’t have any freeride bike trails – unless you were in the secret, squirrel-like group that knew of them. Illegal trails were being built on the Pass by a group of local renegade bikers and no one knew of these trails outside of them – not even the Forest Service. It wasn’t until a hiker on Teton Pass got lost on one of these illegal trails and Teton County Search and Rescue officials couldn’t find them.
Trees were dropped on the illegal trails making them impassable by bike. The Forest Service wanted answers. And the sport of freeride biking on Teton Pass was on a fast track to the grave. But, a handful of these riders who built the illegal trails stepped forward to the Forest Service, admitted their wrong-doing and over the last few years have forged a strong, positive working relationship with the Forest Service to jointly build LEGAL trails on the Pass. With this partnership, in 2007, came the construction of the first-ever downhill specific mountain bike trail on Forest Service land in history.
Did I mention there will be sweet shots of guys/gals on bikes doing break-your-leg stuff?
The showing will be at 9 p.m. at the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish on Oct. 14, and the tickets are $6 available at Great Northern. Proceeds from the film will benefit the mountain bike non-profit IMBA – – which works locally to help maintain trails.
Sounds like a good time. Visit their Web site for more info.