Words Fahzure Freeride Photography JP Gendron
Competing in his first Red Bull Rampage at 30 years old made Dylan Stark something of a veteran rookie. What took him so long to get there?
You’re on the hill the day before your first-ever appearance at Red Bull Rampage, a long-awaited dream come true. Your mum calls; you haven’t talked to her in two years and she is wondering if you can send her some money. After checking in with her as much as is possible and verifying her location, you hang up the call lovingly and get back to finishing building the line of your life. You are Dylan Stark.
Rad Dad
With the Instagram handle @whoisdylan, you would perhaps expect a person of mystery. And, you wouldn’t be wrong. But, I discover, the question posed by the handle really reflects a temporal component: who is Dylan now? While bikes have always been central, Dylan Stark’s life has been a bit of a rollercoaster and there have been plenty of curveballs, distractions, near misses, bicycle disciplines and hard-won wins. Through it all, Stark has been ascendant, mastering a variety of bicycle styles and video production skills and putting them together humbly with a small group of friends.
Raised in Southern California by a bike-loving dad makes the BMX background that is so obvious from his riding style an almost clichéd inevitability. Dylan’s Dad, DeWayne Stark, got Dylan started so early with BMX that he initially ran a 16/20in mullet, racing at the legendary Orange County YMCA BMX track. Racing evolved into the Wake Forest neighbourhood BMX scene that included local skate parks that banned BMXers, resulting in Dylan having to “write a letter to the judge why I shouldn’t ride my bike at the skatepark”. DeWayne was easily the most significant influence in Dylan‘s life. DeWayne and Dylan’s mum Diana had a stormy relationship, mostly as a result of his mum’s mental illness. So, DeWayne had custody of Dylan and made him one of the posse when it came to surfing, biking, motorcycling and boating. While hanging out with your jack-of-all-adventures semi-retired dad may seem idyllic, it was also punctuated by parent time with mum that often involved scrounging for food by attending whichever church was providing handouts that day.
Sofa surfing
With the exception of his time spent with mum, Dylan’s constant companion has been a bicycle, which became a preoccupation as he graduated early from high school while his dad moved to live on a sailboat. For a while just-adult Dylan floated around Portland semi-homeless, relying on state food assistance and a $200 a month ‘professional’ BMX contract. After getting kicked out of his friend’s house by his friend’s mum at a Thanksgiving dinner, Dylan made his way back to Riverside, California, where he holed up with other BMXers, shot videos, and did shows with top BMX riders Mike ‘Hucker’ Clark, Kris Fox and the Cordova Brothers.
By 2014 and now in Orange County (living in a modified garage) the aspirations of a pro BMX life were fading. Dylan took a job assembling e-bikes – test riding them showed Dylan a playful relationship with mountain bikes and introduced him to a group of riders his own age. DeWayne had bought him a used, but not abused, vintage Chumba downhill bike with which he dabbled in racing a bit, but it was riding the developing jump lines at the Zone near the Oakley Factory and at Snow Summit bike park that he really found his groove. In an after-race jump contest he won a season lift pass and one day while riding the chairs Dylan posted a picture to his Instagram page with the Chumba hanging in the background…
False starts, landing flat
While Dylan had received some notoriety from his BMX riding and was now enjoying exploring purpose-built mountain bike trails without having to do the pedalling, he was relatively unknown in that scene. The Instagram post with the Chumba changed that, as the vintage bike caught the eye of one of his followers, Brandon Semenuk, who messaged offering up one of his used Trek frames and parts. That was enough of a foothold to make the equipment match Dylan’s inherent skill and he built the bike up with big ambitions of using it to move more fully into in mountain biking. Unfortunately that track didn’t last long when one of Dylan’s friends at Big Bear bike park oversent a table top, landing flat and breaking the frame right in front of him just a few months after getting it. Nonetheless, more Big Bear shenanigans followed with a borrowed bike, a folded wheel, and a dip 360 on the Chumba keeping Dylan in the mountain bike scene spotlight. Dylan’s star, though occasionally occluded, was rising and the ever-elusive Hyper bike company thought that Dylan could be an excellent local testing resource and talent. Maybe Dylan was a little too talented and his method of testing a little too rigorous, but that entrée into mountain biking fizzled out. Dylan went back to his BMX roots and began to engage in video production.
By 2017, Haro, who had both BMX and mountain bikes at the time, thought that Dylan might be a crossover athlete. However, that relationship folded when they discovered his affiliation with Weedmaps, an app for finding legal marijuana dispensaries, which had begun sponsoring action sports athletes. 2018 was marked by a sort of chance trip to Whistler where he snuck into the Whip-Off Worlds and got to experience the whole mountain-biking party that is Crankworx. Although he was now working as a roofer and living in a trailer, 2019 marked a real embrace of mountain biking for Dylan. By then he’d picked up a complete YT bike and competed in the Snow Summit downhill race series, becoming season champ in expert class. Momentum gathered with a trip to Sea Otter and the release of a video of the famous El Toro drop (20 stairs to flat) which went viral. A trip to Crankworx in Whistler included competing in the hip jump contest and 360ing the infamous Crabapple Hits jump line, plus the Whip-Off Worlds. All this saw 2019 end with a YT sponsorship, and a move out of the trailer and into his house with a garage.
Always the progression
While this arc of life has led to his present success, it has been an irregular path. Perhaps because of this Dylan is one of the most humble and easy-going professional mountain bike athletes you might meet. Certainly, he is focused, but he’s also open and accessible, someone you might meet at the trails or dirt jumps – just another happy rider working on their progression, but with a lot more skill and focus than you or me. Progression is certainly a thing for Dylan that is carried over into his video editing and production skills. He tells me he finds it hard to watch movies because he’s constantly breaking down the fourth wall and analysing how and why a scene was shot the way it was. You can see that in his videos, which he edits himself, through choices about shot angles, story arc, hallmarks, music, and the other people featured and appreciated. His Real Heat videos – highlight clips of his creative riding, often at classic Southern California spots – were a real turning point for him. In particular, his handrail slide on the El Toro steps was a unique crossover moment between the skate and BMX crowd and mountain biking. If you watch the videos, you might describe them as BMX-y, and indeed, Dylan’s trick on trick focus means that the riding is not fast, even if the tricks are furious. You’ll often see Dylan’s riding in the form of a combination trick in an improbable location. The fact that Dylan is now on a mountain bike means that those tricks can be even bigger.
Of course, 2020, the pandemic year, came and went without much happening in terms of events and gatherings, so with a sponsorship in hand and a good base Dylan hit the local sites hard, developing a deep portfolio of mountain bike and BMX tricks on video. 2020 was also a year where a number of keystones fell into place, including Brittany, his partner who also rides; the house, conveniently located near some great southern California hills; and his good friends – Marky, the digging machine, and Andrew ‘Salsa’ Jimenez, his grade school friend and videographer. The many elements that an independent freerider needs for success were finally all in place. That combination resulted in the release of Real Heat in 2021, which was a hectic year as the world came back online and Dylan started to explore the event-based freeride competition scene. The video parts and exposure at events were enough to pick up sponsor Pit Viper and provide the space and time for full-time mountain biking.
It was clear that Dylan had a knack for the BMX–MTB crossover and his support allowed him to develop a bike set-up that facilitates his style. Dylan has a quiver of YT bikes, each of them set up in a unique crossover fashion. His dirt jumper is a simple affair with just a single rear disc brake, a set-up he also runs on his urban mountain bike. You will most frequently find him on a TUES with a single crown fork, no dropper post and a single rear cog. This set-up minimises cables, making bar spins and tail whips much easier, while the single cog and compact chain tensioner mean no jumping around of the drivetrain – compact and tidy, it keeps components out of the way for grinds and other urban inspired riding tricks. Perhaps it comes from Dylan’s broad rad sport background, but he is a big fan of the grind. Like rip sliding a wave or snow cornice, riding a rail is a game of hop-on/hop-off, a sliding tightrope. It’s a feeling he loves.
Real heat, mo’ money
2022 was Dylan’s best pro cycling year yet, but the personal life punches kept coming with the death of his dad – “my biggest inspiration and best friend” – in March. Real Heat 2 premiered in April earning both accolades and cash for Dylan through its pay-per-view launch. By June, that video had paid for itself and was made free. Racking up over sixty thousand views, and with plenty of big drops, desert and dual crown riding, the video caught the eye of the people at H5 Entertainment, earning him an invite to their Proving Grounds event, a Red Bull Rampage qualifier.
Dylan did not miss the Proving Grounds opportunity. A bit like Rampage-light, it has slightly smaller features, a pre-constructed line and much less forgiving soil. For his contest run, Dylan threw down all of his classic tricks, no-handers, a corked back flip, 360, and capped it off with a flat spin 360 one-hander while flipping off the judges and spectators. Dylan said something about that gesture being an inside joke with the judges, but I think it was just as much a f*ck yeah as a f*ck you. A second place finish behind freeride legend Brett Rheeder earned him his Rampage golden ticket.
For the Rampage novice and sudden invitee, the process can be overwhelming, and certainly not well executable without the help of a crew. Dylan called Marky to cut loose from Costco and liberated Scribbles, his high-stoke buddy from Whistler, to come down and help with the build, with Salsa on camera. YT supported the effort with a UTV, pit crew, bikes and digging equipment, and an outdoor afternoon taco bar (Dylan loves tacos!)..
Two elements of Dylan’s line were particularly notable: first, he was hitting the Canyon Gap, a 70-foot flight over a 40-foot deep crevasse that Kelly McGarry made famous; second, he had a series of BMX trick features laid out at the bottom that would take a massive amount of digging and sculpting.
The first couple of build days appeared a bit overwhelming and exhausting for Dylan and his crew. Even though he had teamed up with Syzmon Godziek, Dylan’s lower line was all his own and it was a struggle to get it finished and rideable before the big day. As digging moved into digging and practice in the three days leading up to competition, Dylan injured his ankle, casing a gap jump at the bottom of the course. While this wasn’t good news, it seemed to settle the crew and heighten everyone’s resolve with Dylan backing off riding for a day and contributing to the build while trying to give the ankle a rest.
The day before Rampage the team was focused on getting the lower skatepark-like section finished. It appeared to have a straightforward modest last drop of 15 feet into a run-in for a dirt quarter pipe which was frustrating the team as the dirt was soft and they lacked water to properly finish it. After several unsuccessful attempts to flair the quarter pipe, Dylan put down the bike and picked up the shovel and the team worked until dark to finish it smoothly, knowing it would have to wait until showtime to see if it worked.
Let the show begin
The morning of Rampage it was clear that Dylan and his crew were excited about what they had planned and there were whispers in the air that there was a “plan”. The weather was predicted to be calm and sunny in the morning with wind picking up in the afternoon. Every rider knew that they might not get a second run. Some first-year Rampagers choose to take a first run whose sole goal is to be clean, whereas veterans will usually throw most, or all, of their good tricks, perhaps saving a variation or two for a possible second run. Dylan rode it like a veteran, blowing a kiss to DeWayne in the heavens, and dropping in.
On most features, Dylan had a trick executed and he progressed down the course with a toboggan, massive tuck no-hander over the canyon gap and flat spin 360 over a lower gap jump. Watching it on TV, at this point Dylan slowed, and the camera moved to Marky and Scribbles placing a 16in high rail just ahead of the last drop in the skatepark zone. Dylan hopped up on the rail, sliding on his bottom bracket off the drop, only this time a little too sideways, forcing him to drop a foot on the landing and slowing his approach into the quarter pipe which he 180ed. I know the end bit was supposed to include a barspin off the rail and a flair in the quarter pipe (because I saw it in practice), but the relief on Dylan’s face and in his body after completing that run was certainly a victory. Because of the wind, second runs didn’t happen, and though he didn’t finish last, Dylan also didn’t finish in the top ten, meaning he’ll have to qualify for Rampage through his 2023 activities. I’m looking forward to that because I like a story with real heat – sometimes warming, sometimes burning. It’s that winding uncertain trail that holds your attention and rewards the progression… just ask Dylan.