PLAYING THE LONG GAME

By Eric Porter

Photos by Alejandro Janeta

This trip has been a long time in the making. Sure, the details all came together in the weeks before our flights, but the idea came to my wife and me before we had kids. My job for the past two decades has been mountain biking, which is an absolute dream come true. Throughout the years I’ve ridden my bike in close to 30 countries. Traveling is one of my favorite things in life, and doing it by bike has opened doors everywhere and helped me make friends all over the world. Mountain biking is a universal language, and if you ride, you speak it. Everywhere I went, I told my new friends that I would be back one day to see them again, unsure if I’d be able to keep that promise, but at least that was my intention!

Before having kids, you generally have a bit more free time and flexibility, so my wife, Megan, would sometimes join me for adventures after I was done with my slopestyle contest or filming bike videos. We dreamed about one day having kids and bringing them along for these adventures, showing them the world and hopefully giving them much-needed perspective that you can only really get from world travel.

 

In 2009 our first son, Milo, was born, with his little brother, Owen, following in 2012. I continued to travel to more wild places to ride bikes, while Megan and the kids stayed at home. We were waiting until the kids got aware enough to understand consequences and old enough to remember these experiences. Also, we had little desire to be changing diapers on 12-hour flights around the world with crying babies. As the kids grew older and got more into bikes, we gradually ramped up the level of our family adventures. Many road trips around the West, bigger and bigger day rides, and camping trips—just learning how to travel as a family and have fun.

Trust me when I say that it’s not all fun. There are definitely hard times, too. It’s not all laughing and shredding bikes! The good always outweighs the bad, though, and we come back from every trip better than when we left.

The last article I wrote for Mountain Bike Action was about our camping and riding trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This was the biggest and hardest trip we had done together, and we were all thirsty for more! The following year I took the family to Alaska for the crew’s first bikepacking trip, which they all absolutely loved. Each of these trips were proof to Megan and the kids that they were capable of much more than they had previously thought; it just took some mental toughness and pushing themselves a bit to find out.

 

THE NEXT STEP

We decided that this was the year that we were all ready to take on our biggest family adventure yet—two weeks of mountain biking in Ecuador. Why Ecuador for their first international trip? There are many reasons, starting with how easy it is to travel to. It’s in the Central Time Zone like the Midwest, so jet lag isn’t an issue. It’s pretty quick to get there, too—just one stop in Atlanta, then a five-hour flight to Quito. They use the U.S. dollar for currency, so that’s easy. It’s also pretty affordable compared to many places you might travel to, and everything is relatively close together.

The country is roughly the size of Colorado, but it has everything from 20,000-foot-high alpine volcanoes to the Amazon rainforest and the Pacific Ocean. It’s also quite safe and has the amenities of a big city in Quito, but you are still surrounded by history and culture from the long timeline of the local inhabitants. We also really wanted to travel to a Spanish-speaking country since our kids are in dual immersion at school, so now they would get to use their language skills in real-world scenarios.

My first trip to Ecuador was in 2014 for the Vuelta Al Cotopaxi, a two-day XC stage race around the Cotopaxi volcano. I loved it so much that I returned the following year to do it again, this time with more friends and more time. We explored more volcanoes, rode more jungles and made more friends. Thanks to the internet, I’ve stayed in touch with my biking friends in Ecuador and promised them I’d be back in person to ride someday. I had a great connection with one friend in particular, Popin. For lack of a better comparison, he’s kind of like the Ecuadorian version of me. First off, we both have backyards full of dirt jumps, which is pretty unique. Beyond that, we’ve both been leaders in our community dirt jump and mountain bike scenes over the years, helping to pass on the love of the sport to new riders. Now he runs his own production company called Afuera, while I also film and edit riding for my YouTube channel. Popin would be our host for the trip, welcoming my family to his country as I made good on my promise from earlier trips to bring them for everyone to meet!

 

HISTORICAL THIN AIR

Quito sits at about 9350 feet of elevation as the world’s second-highest capital city, and most of the trails we were planning on riding go higher than that. Even though we live at around 6000 feet in Utah, we would need to get acclimatized before heading higher. Our first day started with checking out historic spots in the old part of town, which is one of the best-preserved city centers in Latin America. It’s actually a Unesco World Heritage Center. The city has an incredible history. It’s been settled continuously since at least 1600 BC. The Incan Empire defeated the native Quitu people and took control in the late 1400s, and then the Spanish went on to take it over in 1534, making it the oldest capital in South America.

Ecuador sits on the equator as well, as I’m sure you can imagine from the name, which gives the country some unique characteristics. There are really only two seasons—wet and dry. We were visiting in May, which is the end of the rainy season. The sunrises and sunsets are consistently at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day, all year long, which is crazy! Another cool fact is that Ecuador’s highest peak, a volcano called Chimborazo, is actually the furthest point from the center of the earth, due to the earth being a squashed sphere with the widest part being on the equator. It’s 20,549 feet above sea level, but much higher when measured from the center of the earth, or from the peak’s distance to the moon.

The next day we loaded the bikes on the tailgate of Popin’s truck and headed out for our first ride of the trip. The plan was to ride Casitagua, an extinct volcano on the outskirts of Quito that tops out at about 11,500 feet. You can shuttle up a dirt road and then ride singletrack with a handful of climbs and a ton of fun downhill all the way down to the actual equator! There are some restaurants nearby, and there is a park where you can learn about the physics of standing on the middle point of the earth.

The ride started out amazing. It was a really fun, flowy, narrow trail with views on one side of the city and a massive caldera on the other, which is the depression in the middle of a volcano. As we got further down the hill, it quickly became apparent that we were visiting at the end of a very wet rainy season. The trail had been eroded into waist-deep ruts in some spots and much deeper in others. This was something I knew we might encounter, but Megan and the kids had never seen anything like it. Imagine your favorite trail being good to go one day and the next time you ride it there’s a ravine! Trails in Ecuador are often built without proper grades, water bars and other techniques used to prevent erosion. In fact, many trails in Ecuador are centuries-old paths from one village to another or are just a direct route to wherever people wanted to go. They weren’t built with years of planning and funding like they are in the U.S.

While it can be frustrating to the locals, it also means that their trails are often rugged and raw, and give the rider a much different experience than the perfectly built and maintained trails we have in Park City, Utah. It’s part of the experience I wanted the kids to have to help them better understand how good we have it back home. It’s also a great lesson in personal responsibility; no one is there to make sure they don’t get hurt. It’s up to them and only them to stay safe and uninjured. Thankfully, we finished the ride safely with no surprise visits to the bottom of a ditch!

 

TOUR DE VOLCANO

The rest of our first week of the trip saw us riding volcano after volcano, since that’s how the mountains in this area were formed. Some have been active as recently as 2016, but nothing major has happened in a while. The boys thought it was pretty wild to be riding a different volcano every day, especially because they are all so unique! The Pichincha volcano is home to the Teleferico, which is Spanish for “gondola.” Its primary use is to get tourists up the mountain for sightseeing and hiking, as well as checking out the mega swing set on the edge of the hill!

They also have several downhill trails that are pretty wild, dropping 2500 feet vertically back to the city. Years ago they were very well used and maintained with jumps and a dual-slalom track, but they are a little more raw-feeling now. The trail we rode down was similar to a bobsled run, much of it carved out knee- to waist-deep with big berms and the occasional scary rut in the bottom. Milo loved every second of this trail, but Owen is smaller and less experienced at 10 years old and was in a bit over his head, although he still loved it as well. Thankfully, he was up for the challenge and is used to chasing his older brother down scary trails. He had one slow-speed, over-the-bars crash in a steep section but got out unscathed, thankfully. I think it was a good wakeup call for him to dial it back a bit and ride more within his limits. As his dad, it scared me a bit, too.

I put a lot of time into the risk management for this trip and knew full well how much of an ordeal it would be if someone had a real injury. The reality of being in a place like this is that there’s no real Search and Rescue possibility like in the USA. You are more or less on your own. Once you get to your vehicle, or an ambulance, it will take a long time to get to a medical facility due to overcrowded, narrow roads and lots of traffic. At that point, you will be well taken care of, but a serious injury would be a pretty scary situation, and nothing would move very fast. I did my best to communicate these risks to the kids, but anyone who is a parent knows it only goes so far. At a certain point, kids want to figure things out on their own.

 

A RIDE INSIDE

Another volcano we rode was quite a bit different. It’s called Pululahua and is one of only two inhabited volcanic craters on the planet! It’s a geobotanical-protected reserve and feels like you are dropping into Jurassic Park as you drive over the rim and descend into the crater. It’s often surrounded by clouds that roll in from the Pacific Ocean each afternoon and is more of a rainforest at the bottom (technically a cloud forest) compared to the alpine environments we had been riding in on the higher volcanoes. The trail we rode goes around a steep volcanic dome rising out of the middle of the crater, which was formed during the last eruption and subsequent collapse around 2450 years ago. The trail is one of the coolest I’ve ever ridden, and something I’ve told many stories to the kids about riding from my previous trips. One of the best ways to describe it is by imagining that you are the massive boulder rolling down the tunnel after Indiana Jones. Much of the trail is a deep trench carved out by generations of locals walking the trail, and the copious amounts of rainfall helps as well. It’s deep in the jungle, and the overgrowth makes it a real tunnel. It’s an incredible riding experience unlike any I’ve ever had anywhere else in the world, and it was amazing to share it with the kids.

Our final volcano ride of the trip was about three hours from Quito, called Cotopaxi, which is one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes. In fact, it was erupting last time I was in the country but has since chilled out, thankfully. We stayed at Tambopaxi, the only lodge within the national park and also one of the coolest places I’ve ever spent time. As soon as we arrived, we saw that you could ride horses there, which Owen has been wanting to do for a while. This was a great way to relax a bit and get some nice views of the area. Back at the lodge that night, we dined on my favorite Ecuadorian traditional meal, locro de papa, which is a potato and cheese soup that is unreal. It’s common in the highlands, and is served with avocado, cheese and roasted corn kernels. Nothing warms you up after a cold day on the mountain like this.

We hoped to wake up to clear blue skies and a full view of Cotopaxi, but had to settle for spotty clouds, cool temps and occasional rain. The ride we were doing involved a shuttle up to around 15,000 feet, just below the climbers’ shelter, called a “refugio,” where we would ride a downhill trail back to the base. The unique part about this trail is that due to the ever-changing nature of a volcano, certain sections of the trail are basically freeride style, down soft dirt slopes that allow you to choose your own route, and make big ski turns. This is another experience that I was really hoping to share with the kids. Not only is it extremely unique to be able to do this, but it also speaks to their love for skiing and snowboarding powder all winter. This ride quickly got cold and wet, but thankfully we had enough gear to keep us warm and having fun. We’ll have to come back another time to see the mountain on a clear day, but it wouldn’t be as special if conditions were always perfect.

 

CHOCOLATE AND WILDLIFE

After we got our fill of volcanoes, we headed down in elevation to Mindo, which is a rainforest at about 4000 feet that is warm and wet. It’s home to a mind-boggling variety of birds, including toucans and hummingbirds, butterflies, snakes, frogs, and many more animals. It’s becoming somewhat of a destination for adventures. This is where we took the sketchiest chairlift I’ve ever ridden as well. The MTB trails in the area were pretty limited, especially at the end of the wet season, but we rode what we could and then did our best to explore and learn. This area is one of the main places for chocolate in the world, and it was fascinating to learn how they take the cocoa bean fruit and turn it into a chocolate bar.

As our trip neared the end, we stopped by Rumibike, which is a dirt-jump park in Quito that has a pump track and a variety of lines. It was a great way to connect with the local riding community and have some fun floating through the air. It was easy to feel like we were home for a couple of hours, just like in our backyard, hitting jumps with our friends, part of the local crew, speaking the language of bikes.

Over the years since having kids, I’ve missed countless days riding my favorite trails with friends. I’ve missed out on plenty of powder days in the winter as well. It’s even harder now that we have social media to remind us what our friends are doing that we didn’t get to do that day; however, on those days when I missed out on shredding, I was spending that time on the bunny slopes teaching the kids to ski and snowboard. I was at the pump track and on singletrack with the kids teaching them how to ride. I was playing the long game, putting the time in to create a fun environment where the kids could fall in love with the sports that have guided me through life. Of course, you never know what your kids will want to do. All you can do is support them in what they are into, but so far we’ve been in alignment with our recreation. Looking back after an incredible trip with the family to ride in Ecuador, all the solo ride days I gave up were worth it to be able to have these experiences with the family. The best part is, we’re just getting started on a lifetime of adventures together!