Mountain Biking Montana

Beginning with a backtrail ride around Mt. Helena near the capital city of Helena, this program visits some of the most interesting places to bike in Montana. Serving as guides, local mountain biking experts take viewers to places like Sour Dough Canyon near Bozeman, Grizzly Gulch and York Trail, and Missoula's Patte Canyon where beautiful scenery and tough trails combine for some thrilling rides. In between this tour, scenes from Glacier National Park, mountain bike races, and outstanding demonstrations of stunt riding are shown. The musical soundtrack, by a Montana rock-n-blues band, Thrill Hill, is energetic and well-balanced, but the voice-over narration makes the program very impersonal. Video footage combines some stills with live-action, slow-motion and special effects dissolves, but the clarity and color are only average, and there were no location/travel maps. A Montana state biking enthusiast and activist gives an interview on how to keep mountain biking active in the state, but the interview was neither well-edited nor particularly relevant to the video topic. The producer could have done a much better job advertising Montana as a mountain biking mecca. For libraries looking for a fast-paced mountain biking travel video full of excitement and innovative photography, choose Full Cycle: A World Odyssey (VL-9/95) instead. (J. Scholtz)