Stunted No More

Among the many things that Todd “Digger” Fiander has sacrificed during his lifelong devotion to sculpting and riding mountain bike trails on Vancouver’s legendary North Shore, the most conspicuous are his knees. The meniscus, the bursa—all the squishy stuff designed to help his joints go about their bendy business—are gone. It’s just bone on bone now.

That explains why Fiander winces with each awkward sidestep this morning along Ladies Only, a double-black-diamond run, at once cartoonish and unmerciful, that he created in 1992 and is still fine-tuning today, nearly 25 years later.

I’ve run into Fiander after sampling Ladies Only. It had only taken minutes on the trail to grasp why Ladies is widely considered the quintessential North Shore run. Five corners into the descent, my shoulders felt as if someone had been tenderizing them with a Louisville Slugger. The six-inch suspension fork bolted to the front of my bike suddenly seemed woefully inadequate as I plowed through yet another narrow, steep chute