Matt Hunter

I was born in Kamloops, British Columbia in 1983. Singletrack zigzags through the hills behind my parents' house; bikes were freedom. I explored the hills and trails wherever and whenever I could. I was 12 when I got into XC racing. I was really into it until I was about 15, when I started focusing more on DH riding. Some of my friends who I raced with made the same transition, and we started to learn together. We started building big jumps and aggressive trails. We filmed ourselves riding and I made a short video. I entered the video in an online contest, the "Ultimate Freeride Challenge" and ended up winning. That was the beginning of my sponsored career in 2003. Specialized sponsored me then and I have been with Specialized ever since.

My focus has always been shooting photos and filming video segments, that is what I love to do. I really enjoy finding adventure in the mountains - whether it be challenging moves and airs or maybe it's a multiple day ride.

I like watching big mountain skiers and snowboarders, the way they shred the mountains in the snow inspires me on dirt. Besides riding, I surf, fish, and backcountry skias much as I can.

Sponsors: Specialized, Shimano, Adidas Eyewear, Dakine, Chromag, MRP.

I love living in B.C.

February 25, 2009

I love living in BC. The riding is amazing, the mountains are big and there is always something to do outside. Unfortunately the winters are really long and I start to really miss my bike after a while. Skiing can fill the void for a while but then singletrack dreams start to wake me up when February rolls around. So I came up with a plan. I knew of an area in BC's interior that has some really warm days and very little snow. The mighty Fraser river flows nearby and warms the valley, and the mountain has a perfect West face that gets a lot of sun. This mountain in particular also has the largest scree slope I have ever seen. I rode it last year for a shot filming for Seasons and it was an amazing descent. Unfortunately the only way to the top is to hike it - and it takes about three hours, but these are desperate times.

So I called a couple of friends who I knew were also itching to ride their Demos, we packed up the truck and it was on. We had to take our bikes apart and tie them to hiking packs, and the

climb took us about 3 hours. The following photos tell the story of our trip. It was awesome.

Stats for Matt Hunter are coming soon.