EDITOR'S LETTER3 min read
Editor's Letter: Issue No. 1
On dirt, gravity, and why the best days always start with a gondola.
Every magazine starts somewhere. Ours starts here: a singletrack trail in Whistler, British Columbia, somewhere between the gondola and the bottom of the mountain, at a speed that makes the trees blur and the brain go quiet. That's a Best Day Ever. We've been collecting them since 2023, and this is where we begin.
Why Whistler First
We could have started anywhere. Monaco has the Grand Prix. Paris has the Louvre. Guernsey has Castle Cornet and the best daiquiri in the Channel Islands. But Whistler is where Just Gerald was born — on a trail called A-Line, on a Tuesday in September, when the bike park was quiet and the light through the old-growth forest was doing something that no photograph has ever quite captured.
Whistler Bike Park is the largest lift-accessed mountain bike park in the world. That sentence doesn't do it justice. What it means in practice is this: you load your bike onto a gondola, you ride to the top of a mountain, and then you point yourself downhill for the next hour. The trails range from green beginner runs to double-black lines that have ended careers. The culture is serious, welcoming, and slightly obsessed with the correct way to set up a fork.
This issue covers the trails, the food, the coffee, the après, and the one day you should build around all of it. We've paid our own tabs, ridden the trails ourselves, and come back with opinions. Some of those opinions are in this issue. The rest are still being formed over a post-ride beer at Dusty's.
"On a trail called A-Line, on a Tuesday in September, when the bike park was quiet — that's where Just Gerald was born."
What's Inside
In this issue: a guide to the Whistler Bike Park trails that actually matter (not the ones the resort brochure leads with). A review of the coffee situation in Whistler Village — which is better than it has any right to be. The best post-ride meal in the valley, and why it's not at a restaurant you'd expect. A conversation with a trail builder who has been shaping Whistler's dirt since the 1990s. And the full Best Day Ever itinerary: from first gondola to last call, with everything in between mapped out in the order it should happen.
This is Issue No. 1. We hope it's the first of many. We know it won't be the last time we come back to Whistler.
The Verdict
Charge your Garmin. Pack your knee pads. This one starts fast.
