Would You Ride in the Most Extreme, Death-Defying Mountain Bike Course?

Red Bull Rampage takes guts.

Red Bull Rampage
Kurt Sorge of Canada winner of Red Bull Rampage, during finals at the Red Bull Rampage, an invitational only competition and the pivotal freeride mountain bike event in the world. (Photo by Daniel Milchev/Getty Images)

For two weeks in October, the Gooseberry Mesa on the outskirts of Zion National Park becomes the home of the Red Bull Rampage, a competition of skill and guts that takes the idea of mountain biking to a whole new level. The course itself is not pre-built — riders and their two-person dig teams have to plan and dig the route themselves. The terrain itself is physically demanding, and to create the route, the teams use pickaxes, shovels, and sandbags — which they haul up the mountain — to carve out the riders’ jumps and paths. The competitors call the gnarly race “controlled chaos.”

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