MAY 16, 2012 PRESS RELEASE

On Thursday, May 24th at 12:00pm PST (9:00pm CET) Anthill Films will broadcast the online premiere of “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS” live on RedBull.com/bike. This is going to be a unique global event in the world of mountain biking: Watch the film simultaneously with tens of thousands of people from every corner of the mountain bike world through the interactive, live online premiere – for free!  

Haven’t made it out to one of the “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS” premieres yet?  Then join us and watch it online. After being played at over 50 stops on the global premiere tour, “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS” will be aired for free on the internet. Anthill Films’ masterpiece will be streamed online on RedBull.com/bike at 12:00pm PST (9:00pm CET).

The online premiere reflects exactly the concept behind “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS”: a bike movie that is about how all sides of the mountain bike world are connected should be accessible to all mountain bikers! And this is what will make the online premiere such a unique event: Knowing that the global bike community will be sharing the same experience at the same time. Moreover there will be chance to chat with other fans as well as some of the movie’s riders and filmmakers.

 Live online premiere show time by time zone:

PST (Los Angeles) 12:00pm

EST (New York)     03:00pm

GMT (London)        08:00pm

CET (Berlin)            09:00pm

 Mind blowing cinematography, great tricks, amazing trips, proverbial to the end of the world, unexpected riding locations, athletic descents… all this comprises “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS”. The movie is a visually expressive documentation of different mountain bike communities combined with meaningful storytelling from athletes all over the globe.

The premiere will also be hosted on RedBull.TV and Pinkbike.com.

If you can’t make the online premiere, still make sure tune into RedBull.com/bike on the 24th because the film will be available to watch for a limited time.  After May 24^th there will be many ways to see the film. Screening events are still happening in cities worldwide and “STRENGTH IN NUMBERS” will be released on DVD+BluRay and iTunes globally on May 25^th.

Right on time with the start of the 2012 bike season, the world’s “who’s who” of mountain biking got together at last weekend’s Sea Otter Classic for the world premiere of the action sports documentary STRENGTH IN NUMBERS, produced by Anthill Films in co-production with Red Bull Media House. The highly anticipated premiere welcomed 1,000 bike enthusiasts to celebrate with the film’s cast and crew including Brandon Semenuk, Anthony Messere, René Wildhaber, Cam McCaul, Andrew Shandro, Thomas Vanderham, Wade Simmons, Matt Hunter, Graham Agassiz, Adam Billinghurst, Steve Smith, Aaron Gwin, Ryan Howard, Greg Watts, Alex Reveles, and Tyler McCaul.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS is a rally call to connect all mountain bikers, regardless of location or language or discipline. “After almost two straight years of work, all the positive comments we have gotten here have made it all worthwhile”, say the Anthill Crew. Their mission was to capture the full diversity of the sport – from the World Cup Circuit to back yard dirt jumps; from the largest bike park in the world in Whistler to remote high-alpine trails in Nepal; from the endless freeride lines in Utah to stunts built in the rain forests of British Columbia. And from the initial reviews, it sounds like it this mission was accomplished.

“The Anthill crew have made cine magic once again. In a world of three minute web edit it’s refreshing to see a long form, painstakingly shaped movie about the personalities and the worldwide reach of two wheels on dirt. Beautifully crafted,” says Bike Mag’s Morgan Meredith after he watched the movie for the first time.

With the world premiere over, screenings are now taking place all over the world. Audiences will be able to experience STRENGTH IN NUMBERS on the big screen from cities like London, Boston and Dubai to small mountain bike communities like Williams Lake, Bellingham, Nanaimo and Bozeman. There are over 50 shows planned so far with more being added daily. Visit www.anthillfilms.com/strengthinnumbers/tour to find a show near you.

On May 24th, Strength in Numbers will be available for all to experience with a free online premiere on www.redbull.com/bike and will be released afterwards on DVD+BluRay and iTunes worldwide. Make sure to “Like” the online premiere on Facebook to be in the loop with the latest info.

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Strength in Numbers is produced, written, directed and edited by Anthill Films in co-production with Red Bull Media House. Presented by Shimano and Trek in association with Contour HD, Clif Bar, Pinkbike.com and PRO Components. Additional support for the film is provided by the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Kona, Toyota Trucks, Scion, Oakley, Easton, Evoc, Big Mountain Adventures, Verbier St. Bernard and Ride Nepal.

Riding in Nepal on a trail at four thousand meters (13,000 ft) elevation and looking over at a mountain that is eight thousand meters (26,000 ft) tall is a surreal experience. The fact that the trail below your bike has never seen tires on it makes it even more surreal.

Anthill Films traveled to Nepal in the fall of 2011 to shoot a segment for Strength in Numbers – premiering April 2012. We went to Nepal with Rene Wildhaber and Andrew Shandro to tell the story of Nepal’s young and growing mountain bike culture.

Most people have heard of Nepal. It is well known as the home to many of the tallest mountains in the world and its bustling capital city Kathmandu. Many have heard tales brought home from trekkers suggesting supposedly abundant forests of wild marijuana found growing all over the Nepalese hillsides. Unless you have been to this isolated nation, it is hard to separate fact from fiction. A trip to Nepal is an adventure of constant discovery – from the vast spread in climate from region to region, to the rules of the road when driving. As Mads Mathiasen a Danish expatriate who has lived in Nepal for 17 years and operates Kathmandu-based Unique Trails says, “Very few people realize how big a contrast there is in Nepal. From seventy meters above sea level, the lowest place in Nepal to 8850 meters the top of the world in Everest. You have every climate zone imaginable from sub-tropical to fully arctic. They think the Himalayas and they think cold.”

There is a lot of trail to be explored in Nepal. It is a country with few roads and where walking is the primary form of transportation for the majority of the population. Trails connect the people. From the urban jungle of Kathmandu on up to the remote villages surrounding the peaks of the Himalaya. Kathmandu. Hetauda. Pokhara. Jomsom. Kagbeni. The Upper Mustang. These are places to experience. They will be forever locked in your mind, easily revisited in an instant with the slight stimulus of a photo or story from a fellow traveler.

Like the trails we experienced in Nepal, Strength In Numbers is about the threads that tie different communities of mountain bikers together. The bike is a tool of connections. Tire to ground. Foot to pedal. Hand to handlebar. Effort put out, in turn rewarded with full body happiness. Go to Nepal, meet the people and find singletrack that has never seen a mountain bike. It is the place to do it.

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Look forward to a feature story on Nepal coming in the May issue of Bike magazine.

Our trip was made possible by Ride Nepal , with assistance from Big Mountain Adventures .
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Strength in Numbers is produced, written, directed and edited by Anthill Films in co-production with Red Bull Media House. Presented by Shimano and Trek in association with Contour HD, Clif Bar, Pinkbike.com and PRO Components. Additional support for the film is provided by the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Kona, Toyota Trucks, Scion, Oakley, Easton, Evoc, Big Mountain Adventures, Verbier St. Bernard and Ride Nepal.

Routine is the last thing you expect to encounter on a mountain bike film trip. But we know the routine so well in Green River after a few days we already have the breakfast menu memorized as Carlos verbally reads it to us each morning. Eventually he stops reading it aloud and some of us are simply having the usual. Time seems to slip away in the desert.

Green River, Utah is basically a modern day ghost town. It looks like it happened almost overnight once the I-70 was built to bypass the main strip through town. This is definitely one of those places people only stop if they’ve been driving too long and need some eats or a place to crash for the night. Empty streets and buildings are swallowed up by an even emptier desert stretching out in all directions. Nothing is “near” to here. Moab, the closest town worth mentioning on a map, is about an hour drive to the south. The rocky range of the San Rafael Swell runs off into the distance in the west. North of town lies what are known as the book cliffs, which just so happen to be the mother lode of freeriding terrain. This is why so many film crews have been here over the years and it’s why we’re here now.

It took us 2 days to drive here from BC. We have pickups, ATV’s, motos, shovels and picks and have been scratching away at the raw landscape with the goal of creating a progressive segment for our new film Strength in Numbers. The fact that we are even here has a sense of irony to it. We want to create a piece that will stoke people to ride and help push the sport forward but clearly very few mountain bikers will ever come to a place like Green River just to ride. Just like Alaska for skiers and snowboarders, or Jaws for surfers, these remote mesas seem reserved for the adventurous few.

Utah as a whole has shaped the face of freeriding as we know it today. All of the top riders, film crews and photographers have shot here. It’s a place with deep freeride history. Careers have been shaped and names have been made. It’s as gnarly or as safe as you want it to be. The scale is just right, not too big and not too small. Soft landings and hard lips. Ridges, ridges and more ridges everywhere you look. And the light…. clear desert skies and far away horizons are the ideal recipe for insane sunrises and sunsets daily.

It’s all here but it’s a war of attrition to pull a seggy out of an untamed landscape. It starts with wandering and scoping for days. Lots of staring and looking at things from different angles waiting for inner creativity to flick on the lightbulb. Lips, run-ins, corners and landings are everywhere but do they line up? What unfolds over the course of days is reminiscent of the scene in A Beautiful Mind when John Nash sees the mathematical patterns in everything. To a certain extent, the same thing is happening here. A world only mountain bikers can see. Riders have to visualize lines that have never been ridden and cross reference that with their own personal limits and that of their bikes. Is that dirt hard or soft? How steep is that? Is there enough speed or too much? Too much kick on the lip or not enough? Get it wrong and it can get ugly fast. Get it right and the sport inches ever forward. This defines freeride mountain biking and immense respect is due for the riders who excel at this process. It inspires and captures the imagination. It makes freeriding one the great communities within our world of biking.

Any freerider willing to go a little deeper than the last crew and willing to look at the landscape from a fresh perspective will never run out of new lines to ride. It could be in a small valley no one has set foot in or right in the footsteps of those who have passed before. New eyes and new bikes constantly open doors in a place like this. We spent three weeks in total working a couple small areas maybe the size of a few hundred acres. With shots in the bag and bodies battered it eventually becomes time to head home. As we pull onto the highway and head north we drive for a solid hour all the while passing a-grade rideable terrain. Every two minutes someone says, “I can’t believe this is still going, it’s endless, just absolutely endless”. Eventually it does end and the landscape turns back to plain rolling hills and shrub trees but the humbling feeling remains. It’s all laying out there somewhere, waiting for the right rider to come along at the right time of day to see something no one else has.
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Strength in Numbers is presented by the Red Bull Media House, Shimano and Trek, in association with Contour HD, Clif Bar, Pinkbike and PRO Components. Additional support for the film is provided by the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Kona, Toyota Trucks, Scion, Oakley, Easton, Evoc, Big Mountain Adventures, Verbier St. Bernard and Ride Nepal.

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February 15th, 2012

Adam Billinghurst is a Whistler local and a featured rider in Anthill’s new film Strength In Numbers. Adam lives to ride the Whistler Bike Park and has done so for 13 years. His commitment to living his dream is an inspirational story that revolves around the park and a man’s love for his downhill bike. Last week, Anthill Filmmaker Jonathan Schramm asked Adam some questions to find out exactly… “Who is Adam Billinghurst?”

Question: Who is Adam Billinghurst? Where did you grow up? When did you start biking?
Answer: Adam Billinghurst is just some guy that rides bikes. From Bracebridge Ontario. Couldn’t ride a bike till I was 6. Started MTB at 12. Racing at 14.

Q: Why Whistler? When did you move out to Whistler?
A: I visited Whistler for 3 days when I was 16 to ski, decided it was the place for me to live. Moved here Sept 98.

Q: What has got you to where you are now?
A: Doing almost whatever I wanted has got me to where I am now.

Q: Why are you stoked on the life you live now?
A: I’m stoked on life because I live in paradise, have amazing people in my life, and I do what I love to do.

Q: What is your perspective on your future?
A: My future involves more biking, some ups, some downs, then death.

Q: What does it take for you to follow your dreams?
A: To follow your dreams you have to have them first.

Q: What advice would you give someone working towards his or her dream?
A: Just because you’ve found a dream to follow doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. If you love it enough you’ll keep doing it.

Q: Describe your bike?
A: My Session 9.9 is bicycle perfection. I watched it more than my TV for the first several weeks I had it.

Q: Describe the roll your bike plays in your life?
A: My bike plays the same role as oxygen in my life.

Q: What is a great day for you in the bike park?
A: A great day for me in the bike park is a full day of riding two days after a heavy rain followed by sun. Twenty degrees (Celsius!). Four pack of shredders. No line-ups. Riding as fast as I possibly can.

Q: How has it been having early access to the carbon session?
A: Getting the carbon Session 9.9 early was insane. People stared. It stopped conversations in the line up. It was like I was riding a carbon unicorn. After waiting for it to be built I was literally shaking with excitement. I got it and sprinted to the lift. I couldn’t wait to shred this rare machine. As the lifty unloaded my bike the chairlift stopped with me 10 feet away from the unloading zone. I instantly jumped off the lift to the ground and climbed up to get my bike and sprint to the trail. True story.

Q: Are you a happy person?
A: I am a happy person. I’m also a lucky person.

Production for Strength in Numbers is currently underway. Learn more at:
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September 29, 2011

There is a piece of contemporary MTB history in the making located at the corner of Trout Gulch Rd. and Cathedral Dr. in Aptos, California. If you show up with a shovel you are more than welcome to be a part of it.

The Post Office dirt jumps are built on a private lot at the corner of Trout Gulch Rd and Cathedral Dr in Aptos, California about fifteen minutes south of Santa Cruz down Highway 1. The lot the jumps are built on has a slight slope to it and there is only one tree. The lot is leased to the town and the jumps are public and legal. The jumps are called Post Office because the Post Office is directly across the street from the lot and at the time that name made sense to the kids that began riding and building there. Those kids have grown up and are now known as the Aptos Crew led by Cam McCaul and Greg Watts.

Regarded as some of the best jumps to be found in North America, people travel from all over the world to ride Post Office. A statement of fact that only sounds far fetched to those who do not dirt jump. The take offs are steep and appear to be vertical making the first drop in at Post Office an intimidating experience for any rider. Riders love these jumps because once the lines are learned they flow and ride perfectly.

The jumps in their current state are the result of ten years hard effort. The first place Watts will take you when you arrive to ride at Post Office is to the hardware store to buy a shovel. It is friendly reminder that you get back what you put in at Post Office. This is a common sentiment in many dirt jump communities and a commanding belief held by all the local riders in the Aptos Crew.

The perfect balance of speed and amplitude is the magic of what is goes on at Post Office. The lines are built so that the skill of the rider is the only variable in this equation. A perfect take off provides the perfect opportunity for the perfect trick. And a perfect landing leads to the next opportunity. These jumps are sculptures with more purpose than just to be looked at. They do what they were designed and built to do. If you ride the line clean, the jumps will reward you with the opportunity to fly.

The Post Office jumps in Aptos are a beautiful thing. A vacant lot that brought strangers together to become best friends. Jumping bikes for fun that nurtured a hard work ethic and built livelihoods. A crew of mountain bikers brought together based on a common focus of riding bikes they way they like to.

The Aptos Crew began with a piece of land and a few piles of dirt. But what exists today does so regardless of land. Post Office has always existed on borrowed time. It has always been known by all in the crew that one day the lease may not be renewed. Though their land is not permanent the strength of their crew is, and that is a story we can all learn from.