How does the perfect off-season session start when your backyard is one of the best-known riding destinations on the planet? For SHIMANO Factory rider Dane Jewett, a top day starts at the bottom, with SHIMANO’s new GRIPD Enduro Flats, completely redesigned and ready for anything the versatility of Squamish can deliver.

First stop? An old trail brimming with new flavor.

Jewett and his brother Jakob and their buddies, Ryan Griffith and Griffin Tulk, alongside Jackson Goldstone and some other locals had recently finished resurrecting an old, decrepit DH track that had long been forgotten, bringing it back to life as a training ground for the World Cup season (this seems to have worked out just fine for Goldstone, who had stellar start this year, with three consecutive World Cup wins). The guys spent two months rebuilding the bottom section, bringing in a machine for the first time to complement hand work, sculpting step-ups and a huge triple to accentuate the natural trail’s features, creating the ultimate big-bike track, and one that hasn’t seen much time in front of the camera.

“We made it way wider, bigger and flowier than before, it’s fully different,” said Jewett. “It’s probably one of the better trails in Squamish right now.”

The crew, which also included Natasha Miller, Lucy van Eesteren, Ryder Bulfone and Jacob Murray, next hit the Squamish Dirt Jumps en masse, just as the jumps were opening for the season. Murray has been one of the main diggers behind the tools, maintaining and shaping the jumps, and played an integral role helping the Dirt Wizards Jump Association improve and reintroduce the jumps to the community last year. For van Eesteren, initial trepidation upon rolling up to jumps turned into glee as the crew stacked laps on laps.

“It was kind of different for me,” said van Eesteren, who was riding in Shimano’s new GF800 Women’s flats. “I’m not on my dirt jumper that much, and I’d never ridden those jumps on that bike. The people we were riding with were so good, it was kind of intimidating because they were smashing it.” But very quickly, the good times were flowing. “It was a sunny, beautiful day, with just a tiny bit of cloud cover, the jumps had just opened and they were in really good shape.”

In another zone, the crew, along with Anthill Films, scouted a massive rock sitting in a clearcut overlooking Squamish’s iconic Howe Sound. It didn’t initially look like much, but with some vision and about a week’s worth of work scratching in the run-in and landing, they turned it into a wall ride that doubles as a pretty rad statement piece and blank slate for artistic expression on the bike.

“I think everyone is going to be pretty blown away,” Jewett said.”It’s one of those features everyone’s going to want to go hit.”

Done and dusted. A perfect day indeed.