Photographer Bryce Piwek made the trip to the Fraser Canyon, BC with Luke Fulton and Ace Hayden after this year’s Crankworx festival in Whistler.
This is what happened.
I had come up with the idea for this trip this past spring. Having always been fascinated with the rugged landscape of the Fraser Canyon’s hoodoo chutes and fall-lines, I made the decision to make it happen. Since I was planning photographing the trip, I got in touch with a few friends that I knew would be stoked to point their bikes into some steep big mountain lines and scare themselves.
Luke Fulton and Ace Hayden were on board from day 1 and we decided to meet up in Whistler after Crankworx, make our way through Lillooet and down to Spences Bridge and keep our eyes peeled for any possible lines along the way.
We found our first possible zone about an hour outside of Lillooet that Luke had spotted from the highway. Right away we spotted a cool looking ridge line, and Ace had eyed up a super steep, tight chute line with lots of exposure.
But, sadly this first area was a classic “looks good from afar but far from good”. A short test ride along the first ridge line revealed the dirt to be extremely unforgiving. The August heat had baked all the moisture and sand out of the ground leaving a hard pebbly crust; not exactly fun to ride.
After discovering that the first zone was a bust, we headed out and continued driving through Cache Creek for our first night.
In the morning, we slowly continued our way south. We stopped in a couple more areas with no luck and made the decision to b-line it straight to Spences Bridge.
When we arrived in Spences Bridge, we headed straight for an area Ace knew about through Graham (Agassiz) that was with an earshot of town. We drove in as far as we could in our trucks, and then headed out by foot.
As soon as we arrived, we knew that we had some solid riding to be had. It was mid-day in 30º+ heat so we headed down to the river to cool off and wait out the rest of the afternoon for the light.
After some lunch and relaxation we made our way to the base of the chutes. Both Ace and Luke found their line fairly quickly.
Ace, having ridden in the area before, picked out a super technical line that started on a shelf above one of the main chutes that fell away into a tight, super steep right to left turn that shot out the bottom.
After seeing Ace’s successful line he was eager to find one of his own and found a gnarly straight shooter line with a steep entry point that opened up into a straight, high-speed chute. He hiked up to his big line and polished it off like it was nothing.
Luke, shredded some simpler lines to get a feel for the dirt and for my camera with some amazing light.
The next day we headed out in the morning to ride one of the most iconic jumps in the area. A left hand hip over looking the Fraser river.
When we arrived, after some brief buffing of the lip, it was go time and Ace and Luke started sending. Ace was styling it out with some whipped downside tables and Luke was cracking out tables good enough to eat on. After a solid 2 hours of shooting and sessioning we called the trip a wrap.
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Photos + Words by Bryce Piwek
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