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ErniE BUEhlEr’s

FRONTyaRdA story of fAthErhood And dirt jUmps

wORds aNd phOTOgRaphy by JOhN gibsON

postmodErn intErprEtAtion of A ZEn gArdEn, nElson stylE. oUr prEmiEr protAgonist, 19-yEAr-old gArEtt BUEhlEr, mEditAtEs ovEr his mindscApE.

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The view from Ernie’s front window had changed dramatically. Garett and Kootenay pro riders Kurt Sorge and Mike Kinrade, along with local shredders Nick Cima, Russ Fountain and Rick Schneider, had built a dirt-jump park. They made three lines that even included an old school bus they brought onto the property. The build was a four-month project that changed Ernie’s front yard forever.

His home sits on 10 acres near Grohman Narrows, across Kootenay Lake from the mountain-bike hotbed of Nelson, British Columbia. It’s primarily boat access, unless you want to take the roundabout road that is a one-hour drive from town. In the win-ter, the road shuts down completely. Ernie’s small motorboat lives down at the dock and makes the 10-minute trip to town several times a week. It usually returns overloaded with bicycles, groceries and whoever is riding that day.

Ernie’s place is hard to get to and hidden. It’s quiet here, but occasionally a neighbor will drive by on a sunny day and wave. One thing’s for sure, though: If you can ride these jumps, you’re going to go big.

gArEtt BUEhlEr asked his dad if he could build a few jumps in the front yard of their home. the answer was “yes.” But a few weeks later, when his father, Ernie, returned from work and saw what his son had done to the property, he was more than a bit surprised.

“i remember saying, ‘holy shit,’” Ernie Buehler recalls, still somewhat amused. “i thought they’d made the jumps too big and too far apart.”

no timE for school crossings: thE yoUng BUEhlEr opts for thE AEriAl ApproAch. At right, mEticUloUs AttEn-tion is pAid to thE EndUring ElEmEnts of thE gArdEn’s frAmEwork.

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“Dad didn’t really know what we were up to and thought we were just going to build one jump,” Garett recalls. “He was surprised, but stoked. He’s pretty mellow and doesn’t really care.”

A view of hAppiness And pride Looking across the yard, a huge transformation has taken place. The dirt is good, and there’s a natural downhill grade that is well suited to building jumps. And with the slope facing south, it catches the sun for most of the day.

The start gate is on the gravel road that runs along the property and leads down to the first set-up jump, which branches in three direc-tions. The left line leads to a large hip, then to a jump onto the school bus before a step-down off the bus. The middle line has the largest jump in the yard, at 38 feet lip-to-lip. The tricky, BMX-style right line

has a left-hand hip into a roller, followed by two more doubles. All three lines are tough to ride.

“It makes me happy that he built those jumps,” says Ernie. “It makes me proud. It’s pretty awesome—and it didn’t cost me anything. It makes for a more interesting front yard, and I’m never going to change it—even after they stop jumping.”

heli-skiing And huckingErnie immigrated to Canada from Switzerland in the ‘70s to learn English and find work in the mountains. He eventually met Hans Gmoser, now known as the godfather of heli-skiing, and joined his elite team of moun-tain guides. Gmoser had come up with the idea of using helicopters for recreational skiing, and experienced guides were in short supply at the time. Ernie has since logged 40 years working as a heli-ski guide for

trAnscendentAl levitAtion: kurt sorge rises Above his worldly environment.

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Canadian Mountain Holidays in the Cariboo Mountains near Valemont, B.C. He still gets hundreds of hours each year on snow and is regarded as one of the most experienced and trusted guides working today. For him, it’s not a job anymore.

Ernie and his wife had two boys, both of whom were born with skis on their feet. Now divorced, he splits his time between guid-ing skiers and his home. While many hockey dads might be driving their kids to the rink, he would be shuttling Garett and his friends so they could hurtle down any one of Nelson’s 80-plus mountain bike trails. Back then, he didn’t really get to see them ride. Now he can watch all day long.

“The B.C. boys are the best in the world,” Ernie says. “It takes a lot of dedication, and you have to love it and not be afraid. It’s pretty wild, but it looks like those kids know what they’re doing. They’re a radical group of guys, and they like to party, too. It’s a good thing for a while, but he can’t do it for the rest of his life.”

nArrowing the gApWith a quiet wisdom gathered slowly over time, Ernie sees similarities between men like himself, who spend their lives on skis, and those like his son, who live to ride bikes. He likes the fact that Garett has chosen a bike over a pair of skis.

“The skiers are more at risk because of ava-lanche,” he says. “It would bother me more if he was extreme skiing—the avalanche fac-tor is huge. The crashes are harder in biking, though. There’s a lot of camaraderie between these bikers. And they respect each other, and I like that aspect.”

Even though the age difference between Ernie and his younger son is 47 years, Garett can relate to his dad.

“The lifestyle is similar for a mountain-bike rider and a ski guide.” Garett says. “I don’t work a job. My dad wants to be outside all day long. We both like to hang around the fire then watch TV.”

it’s All About jumpingErnie’s elder son, Jackson, has talent on a bi-cycle as well, and enjoyed a career as a pro-

for the record: this is not

gArett buehler’s dAy off.

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fessional road racer. But from the age of six, all Garett wanted to do was ride jumps. And when he saw Kranked 2 at the age of nine, the stage was set.

“I thought that movie was the coolest thing ever, and it’s what got me into mountain biking,” he says. “They were going to crazy places and hav-ing fun. Now my life is about riding my bike.”

the preferred nomenclAture is...Now 19 years old, Garett is a respected part of the freeride scene. He’s garnered a handful of sponsors, but he doesn’t like to be called a “freerider”—that term is so 2005. If you must categorize him, the term he prefers is “big mountain.” And if you had seen him take the slam of his life at the 2010 Red Bull Rampage, you would probably under-stand why. With his group, complicated BMX-style tricks on smaller bikes are out, and hitting massive jumps on downhill-style bikes is in.

“I’m not a dirt jumper,” Garett says. “I like to ride my bike Kamloops-style. I like big jumps and big airs in general. These [front yard] jumps are going to help. We would go sometimes a week or two before hit-ting a big air, and now it can be every day.”

He points out, though, that there is a big difference between his front-yard jumps and the 40- to 50-foot step-down jumps he will face during competitions and film shoots.

“With a gap jump, you have the same speed the whole time,” he explains. “But with a step-down jump, it’s like riding off a diving board. You gain more speed and go weightless. Then you start to get a bunch of speed and it gets loud. Then you hit. Ditching is not an option. The consequences are more serious when you are drop-ping, as opposed to a gap jump.”

nelson’s spin on shuttling: from left to right, gArett, nick cimA And kurt. below:

cimA becomes one with the Autumn lAndscApe.

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big mountAin or bustGarett and his fellow big-mountain pros don’t race, instead competing in con-tests and riding for video and photo shoots to keep their sponsors happy. They are gunning for top results in big-mountain contests such as the Red Bull Ram-page in Utah and the Chatel Mountain Style contest in France—contests that suit their hard-charging riding styles. The Kootenay crew has the desire. And Ernie’s front yard is now the place to make it happen.

“We’d been building jumps all around Nelson for years, but they al-ways got torn down,” explains Garett’s friend Sorge. “When Ernie said

we could build at his place, we pulled the trigger and got it done. Now we can get our tricks dialed on these jumps, then head out and do them on bigger jumps in contests.”

It’s now the middle of winter, and the jumps and bus are blanketed in a thick layer of snow. Ernie pulls a sled full of supplies up the hill from the boat dock. Walking across the yard, he pauses to look at the jumps, shakes his head and smiles. In just a few months, the boys will return. Even though they have taken over his yard, it’s still his place. The view out his window will remain the same. And that’s just fine with him.

sorge probes where form And function

meet At his rAmpAge proving grounds.