WORDS CHIPPS PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES VINCENT
Dan Atherton, the legendary trail builder and architect of the Red Bull Hardline event, has got the bumpiest, most potholed driveway I think I’ve ever driven up. You know the way that car mechanics all seem to drive clapped-out cars because they’re sick of working on other people’s vehicles? That seems to be Dan’s attitude to his driveway. Behind his house sits 17 acres of woodland that hides countless marble-smooth, sculpted dirt jumps, but in front of it there’s just a potholed track. And in the middle of it all, between the potholes and the house-high jumps, we find the eldest Atherton, Dan – or Affy to his friends and family – sitting on his front deck, overlooking his neighbourhood of Corris, in the Dyfi Forest in westest Wales.