From the very beginning, we built mountain bikes to take us further. To explore new trails. To discover new experiences. To push the boundaries of cycling, into unknown pedaling territory. Just as knobby tires, suspension and disc brakes took all of us deeper into the unknown, pedal assist e-MTBs have brought more of us along for the ride.
The following adventure is an excerpt from Further, Shimano’s finest collection of e-MTB tales from around the globe. These stories are told to inspire us to push our own boundaries of action, adventure and advocacy, just a little bit further with these powerful new rides.
Story and Interview by Kirk Kardashian / Photos by Chris Milliman
It’s a hot and sunny spring day in central New Hampshire, and Aaron Chase relaxes in the cool shade of the bike shop he created in his detached garage. Ozzie, a French bulldog, languidly splays along the floor by his side. Through the open garage bay doors, a gust of wind blows dust across the driveway of the wooded eight-acre Chase compound. Across the way sits a comfortable single-family log home. Down the drive are a large pine-sided barn and a rustic sugar-shack-turned-art-studio. Almost everywhere else is the personal bike park that Chase has been building since he moved here five years ago with his wife, Kara, and children, Kendall, 13 and Bode, 9. Some of the features—quarter-pipes, tabletops, dirt ramps— rise in plain view near the front yard. Others hide in the hemlocks and hardwoods, an e-bike pump track for his kids and their buddies and a perimeter singletrack trail with rock drops and punchy climbs.
Chase, 42, rolls up from a supine position, ready for the next task, and declares to his friend and tenant, Will Conroy, a young trail builder, “You can’t build trails forever. You can’t do anything forever.”
The 25-year mountain bike pro implies that you should never let yourself get too comfortable. Reinvention must happen from time to time. Like his smooth acrobatics on two wheels, Chase has made his own transitions—from racing downhill and slalom for Cannondale in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, to winning slopestyle competitions around the globe in 2004, 2005 and 2006, to creating videos for GoPro and Red Bull today—look easy. There’s no clear path for professional athletes as they approach middle age, but Chase carves his own through creativity, family values and hard work. In 2020, ready to travel less and see his family more, he became an ambassador for Commencal USA and the proprietor of the brand’s Northeast demo center, which he hosts on his propert
Outside, work beckons. The next moment, Chase pulls on his Red Bull helmet and grabs the bars of his Commencal Power SX e-MTB. He’s headed for the rocky roll-overs in the woods, to show off what a mountain bike can do with an electric boost. Bode and his gang of groms follow right behind him.
How did you get into mountain biking?
Through my dad. He did triathlons. He got me my first mountain bike when I was in fourth grade. We rode around the woods on snowmobile trails and boney, bumpy singletrack. When I was in high school, there was this local race series called Trail 66, and I was the four-time New England champion in slalom. Each race, I was winning like $450. It was an insane summer job.
Sounds like you were drawn to gravity-oriented riding pretty early.
Right after I turned Expert in cross-country, that was my exit. Those guys were taking it so seriously, and I was dying. And I had been riding a lot of trials at the time, too. I just kept bouncing around, which is my personality. Cross-country was fun, but when I was doing it, my inner thoughts were, “What are you doing? Stop this! It hurts! You’re not even good at it, everyone’s passing you.” It wasn’t hard to let that go and start jumping off stuff and filming it. It was way more fun.
You raced professionally for six years and then in 2004 became a Red Bull athlete and switched to slopestyle competitions, starred in a bunch of New World Disorder freeride films, and won the Red Bull District Ride in 2006. It was all going well…until it wasn’t.
Yeah, I broke my back in 2007 at a competition in New Castle, England. It was a huge slopestyle series with only 10 or 12 athletes from around the world. I fell off a ladder bridge in the first event and instantly had a bout of paralysis. I couldn’t feel my legs. I got to the hospital and was able to start moving my ankles, which was crazy and super emotional. I went into surgery after 10 days and had rods put in my back. The rods gave me chronic back pain and stayed there for seven years before I was finally able to get them out with the help of Red Bull and a neurosurgeon who works with Red Bull athletes. Now I’m 95 percent pain free.
Just before your accident, you signed with GoPro. Sounds like fortuitous timing.
It was natural to fall back on adventure travel after the injury knocked me out of competition. Cannondale was making enduro bikes. They were like, Oh, you want to ride the enduro bike more? Great! Mountain biking was huge for Red Bull and GoPro. Everybody wanted me to ride the products they were selling. That wasn’t a hard switch.
What was it like going to a competition as a freeriding filmmaker instead of a competitor?
People would see me riding and say, “You’re gonna win, man!” And I was like, “I’m not here to win.” I’m going to have three cameras on me, this is going to be the best run ever. This is so much fun. I’m not nervous. I’m not even training. I’m just there to experience it, soak it all up and film the whole thing, and then bring the content back for GoPro and Red Bull. And then social media pops up and I’ve got hard drives full of footage. I’m still shooting things all the time with a GoPro.
You lived in New Jersey for 12 years, which is kind of a surprising basecamp for a professional freerider.
Belmont, my home town in New Hampshire, didn’t have Highland Mountain Bike Park right next to it like it does today. When I got out of high school, I was ready to get out of here. I was ready to see the world. I was being taken all over the place. Jersey was great because Mountain Creek was right there, and I had a lot of friends there, like Jeff Lenosky and Adam Hauck. We had a solid crew that would ride every day, go hard all the time, build and film. After a while, our kids are growing up, and my wife and I are both like, “Are we staying here in New Jersey and hunkering down at the end of a cul-de-sac, or are we going to go home?” So, we moved back. I’ve got an awesome compound in the woods. We can do a ton of stuff up here, and I’ve got plenty of room.
What does your riding look like these days?
I’m either doing an e-MTB ride from my house, or an e-MTB ride at Highland on Thursdays and Fridays. It’s 15 minutes down the road. I’m doing three sizable peaks and then coming back for lunch, instead of being out there all day and packing a lunch and being completely splattered. I get more of a workout with an e-bike than I do on a pedal bike, anyway. I love the feel of climbing on my e-MTB. It’s fun, and I can stay in it, and I can use my whole body instead of just concentrating on grinding my quads and trying to keep my back locked and not moving anything else. It’s just different for me. I’ve kind of done it all, and now that e-MTBs are big it’s so exciting.
It’s so much fun to watch Bode and his buddies rip around the compound on their e-bikes.
Totally. And e-bikes will keep the playing field level as my kids get faster than me. When I was a kid and biked with my dad, I remember feeling so tired, while he could always keep grinding. He’d be like, “Here, I’ll just grab you by your jersey and pull you up the hill. Keep pedaling.” Now I go on an e-MTB ride with my kid and we ride all over the place. It’s just a blast. People say he’s going to get spoiled on an e-bike. I say that he rides his pedal bike all the time, but the e-MTB gives him confidence and power to accomplish things,especially climbs or riding through bumpy trails. Now he can push through all that. And he’s getting tons of riding time. Bode is nine and can do tricks I couldn’t do when I was 19.
What’s your setup with Commencal?
I’ve got a dedicated “click and mortar” store. You can come here to demo the bike, but all the inventory is online. It’s a business model that’s becoming more popular now. The bikes are great. They’re aluminum and direct-to-consumer, so the prices are good. They make awesome mountain bikes, e-MTBs and awesome e-MTBs for kids. I’m in the best place here and able to share the stoke with so many people who are always hitting me up anyway. They say, “I’m a dad, what should I get for my kid? What should I get for myself? What’s an e-bike? Is that for me?” There’s so many questions. I can help them find the right ride.
What’s on the horizon for 2021 and beyond?
I’m stoked to continue making Mtn Mods videos with Red Bull, where I build terrain features at different resorts. Building obstacles to ride and shoot on is something I’ve always done. With Mtn Mods, I’m leveraging my name and position with Red Bull to make these cool things happen, and it’s stuff I want to build and ride, but it also becomes a permanent feature for others to ride. We made them at Highland, Thunder Mountain, and Killington. And it lookslike I’ll be making one this summer at Mountain Creek. Beyond that, I’m cooking up an uphill e-MTB race at Mt. Washington, where riders race the train on the Cog Railway, all the way to the summit. If the train catches you, you’re out. It’s going to be gnarly and beautiful.
