CORDILLERA - Nico Vink

Text by Nico Vink I’ve been riding for almost 40 years, and I’ve always looked for new things and ways to ride my bike. One of the boxes left unticked was a backcountry freeride trip. The past 15 years I’ve spent mostly creating what we ride. Whenever I watched ski movies, it always intrigued me how they ride mountains, not trails. We’ve ridden various locations in Chile, starting south of Santiago and then working our way north towards Antofagasta. We rode new zones and old zones. There’s one specific zone I really wanted to go back to in the north. It’s a zone we found with Brage whilst shooting for his Eternal Sandscape video. During that shoot I got injured and didn’t ride the zone as much as I would have liked, so I was super stoked to make it back. In addition, I’m also stoked that I got the opportunity to ride Markus Stöckl's speed record zone — something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. I’ve been talking to my friends about wanting to do this type of trip for a few years. Marcin Rot and Oscar Harnstrom both showed tons of motivation to join this adventure. In addition, Roco Leandro, a super passionate Chilean bike rider, also joined for part of the trip and introduced us to some epic locations and lines. A trip like this is very time-consuming and comes at a very high cost if we were to take a professional filming crew for the whole duration. That’s why we chose to mostly self-film. In addition, we worked with Sherpa FPV, Gonzalo Robert, and Benja Villela for parts of the trip. This trip definitely fulfilled my desire to ride mountains, not trails. La Cordillera de los Andes is vast, and there’s a lot more to explore. Looking forward to what’s to come. This trip would have been a lot more difficult to realise without the help of the Chilean locals — Pablo Yarur from Pyts Park — and the brands that support me. Thank you Schwalbe and Ion for chipping in with the additional budget!!! Thank you, everyone. Riders Marcin Rot https://www.instagram.com/marcinrotac... Oscar Härnström https://www.instagram.com/oscarharnst... Leandro Roco https://www.instagram.com/learoco?igs... Media Sherpa FPV https://www.instagram.com/sherpa.fpv?... Gonzalo Robert https://www.instagram.com/gonzalorobe... Benjamin Villela https://www.instagram.com/benja.ville... Bart Cautaerts https://www.instagram.com/bartcautaer...