In my mind, Red Bull Rampage is essentially the Olympics of the freeride mountain bike world. Red Bull’s invite-only mountain bike event has been going on each year (minus covid) since 2001. Held in Virgin, UT it’s home to some of the steepest, most high-consequence terrain any competition has to offer. But what sets it aside from other competions that many people don’t realize is that not only are these guys’ riding the most insane lines, they’re also digging them!

One of the most unique factors about Rampage is each rider getting to choose his line within a specific zone. From there, they’re allowed two diggers, who help them formulate a high-scoring run. All this physical work right before a massive high-stakes competition is damn impressive. Armed with shovels, pick-axes, rakes, water sprayers and more, they slug everything up and down the hot Utah cliffs for days at a time. Meticulously dialing in their line feature by feature.

When it comes time for competition day, each rider gets two runs. Because of the intense labor that goes into these runs in the days prior, it’s not uncommon for their ‘comp run’ to be their first full run connecting all the drops and features these cliffs have to offer.