Interview: Rider Reflects On Solo Hardtail Night Lap Of Utah's Gnarliest Trail

If there is someone who best exemplifies moving in silence in the world of freeride it is Justin Hoelzl. Though his internet presence is small, It would be impossible to meet the ever-charismatic Justin and not remember him.

Without warning, on January 21, 2024, Hoelzl dropped a video of hitting the legendary freeride trail King Kong. On his hard tail. At night. Watch the mind-blowing video below.

King Kong is perhaps as close to Rampage as a trail can get. Located in Virgin Utah, the home of Red Bull Rampage, Kong is on a very short list of the gnarliest trails in North America.

In "Magnum Kong", Justin rode and self-filmed himself tackling the iconic trail. Setting up his own camera shots only adds to the gnar, as Hoelzl had to rock climb up to grab his camera, rather than stay in rhythm riding down.

The cherry on top of this video is the fact that Justin left his home in Salt Lake City on the afternoon of his effort. He drove the four hours to Virgin and immediately pedaled up to take on King Kong.

Hoelzl is not scared of a drive. In 2022, some friends and I went on a morning ride with Justin in Bellingham before he left around noon for the 15-hour drive back to SLC where he had work the next morning. With this in mind, a jaunt to Virgin is nothing!

Justin also pushes boundaries riding terrain that most full suspension riders are scared of on a hardtail. What makes hardtails gnarly is that on steep chutes, the lack of rear suspension provides far less grip and braking traction because the rear wheel bounces around instead of absorbing bumps. Newton's third law is pesky! On a trail where traction is paramount, Justin had no issue with his trusty Chromag Stylus.

As gnarly as Justin makes riding Kong look in the video, the darkness robs it of context. Daytime videos of the trail show the insane amount of exposure on either side of the rock drops. There is very little room for error. Watch Peter Jamison’s POV below to put the risk of King Kong into perspective.

After I watched Justin's video I was blown away. I had to know more! I reached out to him and he was kind enough to grant me an interview and he spared no detail! Read his thoughts on the effort below.

When did you do this? Was it just this past weekend? If so that is a good turnaround from you and Michael Chungbin on the videography! Tell me about the process.

I had a work conference in Vegas from January 16th-18th. So around midday Monday the 15th, I left from SLC and drove to Kong. I cooked two quesadillas, packed geared gear, and started filming.

In terms of turnaround, it was fast. [Video editor and color corrector Michael] Chungbin is an absolute beast. With that said, this was definitely premeditated. I had written out a plan of the moves I wanted to do, a song, and a general shot list after I rode it for the first time.

I had spent a flight to visit family for the holidays writing everything down. So I had a decent plan of what I wanted. I banged together the rough cut edit the night of the 16th once I got to Vegas. Then on the 20th, while visiting Chungbin, he did all the heavy lifting with the color mix and had some awesome input on the edit part that made it so much better.

Author's Note: Michael Chungbin and Justin Hoelzl are longtime friends and have collaborated on multiple projects. See their edit "Skidrow", documenting one of Hoelzl's trails below.

That does not sound like most people's Vegas work trips! Was it your first time on Kong with a hardtail? How many times have you done it before in general? You must have been confident on the trail to try that.

Haha yes, first time on a hardtail in the video. It was my second time down the trail overall. The first time was November 3rd, 2023, in a similar-ish fashion. I was en route to Vegas to see my all-time favorite band, FIDLAR, on the night of the 4th.

I drove down to Virgin to camp and meet some buddies. I got into town in the evening, cooked some dinner, and then a larger group said they were going to dinner. I was antsy from sitting in the car, so I figured I'd go for a pedal instead.

I went for a solo pedal lap up to Flying Monkey. I had the urge to look at Kong, as all I had ever heard was how wildly absurd it was. I pedaled up and rode down Monkey until the entrance of Kong. Via looking at the first move, I thought it looked sweet/super fun, and pretty manageable. I scoped, then hit all the moves, and an hour-45 after leaving the old rampage site to pedal up, I was back to my car at the bottom.

Diving in further on my first lap down it, at this time, I had been really craving to try and get into filming and had been trying to come up with ideas. Between figuring out moves/features, immediately jumping into my head, was how cool it would be to film this at night. It also spawned the idea it would be cool to ride it on the hardtail, as I am a huge proponent of taking hardtails on tech/jank, it's a blast!

So when I finished up and got back to our camp, I texted my buddy a little self phone filmed clip on one of the moves. And his reaction was, "What the f*** is wrong with you?" He also told me about a video of local, Danny Mac, running a POV down it, as I have/had been off social/instagram for a bit, and that people were loving it (cause he was ripping it, as he does). So that got me stoked and I told myself next time I am in town, I am going to scope out/ go for it.

How long were you planning this ride before executing the trip?

As I touched on above, I had been planning on it since I first rode it in the late Fall of 2023. I was just waiting for my schedule to clear enough to get back down there. So when the work conference popped up, I opted out of the paid flight through work and drove down myself the night before so I could make it happen.

How would you rank this on the scale of the scariest things you have done on a bike? Talk me through your thought process.

I always find fear, comfort zones, and risk tolerance super fascinating because it is so subjective between riders. Slow tech & jank moves have always been, comparatively to other types of riding, my strong suit/ what I am most comfortable in. I think it partially stems from growing up in Connecticut, with any of the good, progression pushing, riding being weird rock moves or skinnies, etc. There isn't a ton of vert and for the most part, there really aren't any jumps.

So, when I first started riding, all that there was, was weird rock up and overs and rollers, slow-speed XC rock gardens, which in retrospect, drove me to be really comfortable with slow awkward maneuvers, hopping around, and keeping balance going really slow over weird obstacles. I started with an odd base skill set for riding, then as I progressed, I found zones that had bigger drops and bigger rock moves. The rock moves and rolls came easier, and drops were a little harder.

When I got to the point where I started traveling more than 30 minutes to ride and going to bike parks, I'd spend all day working on jumps and being incredibly sketchy as I had never really ridden jumps before. But the couple laps a day where I'd take a break from trying to learn jumps and do the gnarly tech trails, I could handle them comfortably (not fast for sure though.)

Beyond my background, personally, it also makes sense with how I am wired. I have a terrible attention span until I don't. When I do lock into something, it's pretty unbreakable. Additionally, I have the memory of a deep-fried bowl of egg salad, it's bad. But because of that, when I look at features, I really have to study them, and then, lock in when I actually go for them. But if I were to race, it'd be bad, I could probably do 30 course walks. Come race day, remembering precise lines, it ain't happening. There would be way too much to remember for me.

People always subconsciously assume they are the norm or at least somewhere around it. It's weird to think of yourself as a true outlier. With riding, for the longest time, I just unconsciously assumed that everybody progressed in the same manner that I did. So, when riding with people, I'd be pretty nervous to hit a jump or jumpline and then a buddy would run it like no big deal. But then when we would go to hit a sketch rock move, it'd be no no-brainer for me, and then they might be nervous.

In my head, I wouldn't understand, cause I just assumed everything was related/ linear. If they could do that jumpline, why can't they do the rock move? Jumps are so much harder. Well maybe perhaps, not everyone started by pedal kicking up and over boulders. They might have started by riding jumps. Not sure why it took me so long to realize but I always find it so funny and cool what works in people's heads with riding and what they can justify.

Author's Note: Despite his talk about jumps being hard, Justin can backflip his bike.

To me, that leads into risk management. Which is what I really find hilarious. What we justify as acceptable is based on comfort zones, even with how outrageous it might be. On paper, Kong, solo, in the dark, is pretty dumb and hard to justify, as the trail is very exposed. There are a couple of moves where if you were to botch it, you'd be extremely lucky to get out unscathed. But because this kind of tech/jank riding is what I am most comfortable with.

Even with those consequences in mind, the process of putting that aside and riding it isn't as bad for me because, my whole time riding, I have been refining the process to work through that kind of stress. But on the flip side, if you were to try to get me to learn a fly-out bar, I'd have a minimal process to work through that fear and focus on what I actually need to do. Even though, in the grand scheme of things, failure, in trying that, is exponentially less harmful if something were to go wrong. Exposure just makes potential harm exponentially rise.

Unfortunately for me, and a buddy can attest, my trying to learn fly-out 360s was absolutely pitiful. I was hardly committing and always just bailing. But that's what makes bikes fun. Just because you know how to do one thing/area, does not mean you can do something different easily. There is always something new you can learn or improve. It's all about learning the bars of mental gymnastics. With each new thing you learn, you get to refine that process, which gives you a stronger road map for learning the next thing.

Once again, apologize for the crazy tangent, but the scariest thing I have done on a bike, no. The most consequential, most likely or it is really far up there.

What were your contingency plans for this solo escapade? Was the Facetime with Michael a check-in to make sure you were okay?

The Facetime with Chungbin was to let him know I was done riding and all good filming. It would be wrong to say I wasn't hyped and wanted to share with a bud too!

Once I dropped in, the phone went away for good. I usually ride solo like this. It is the escape, why bring in what I'm trying to get away from? Even in groups, the phone would really only come out to grab a video or a photo. Bikes are the top dog, why dilute with something that can be such minutiae? The best-case scenario of me doing something on my phone is watching bike videos. So then why watch when I can enjoy it in real life? I can watch endless edits later when I am not out and about.

Once I dropped in, the phone went away for good. Bikes are the top dog, why dilute with something that can be such minutiae? The best-case scenario of me doing something on my phone is watching bike videos. So then why watch when I can enjoy it in real life?

I am really bad at letting people know what I am up to or actually doing though. Recently, I have gotten better at it. I think maybe 2 or 3 people knew what I was doing. Chungbin was one because I had been picking his brain on what I should do for the project in terms of the video/lighting end. He knew exactly what was going on; he was already looped in. Probably told my buddy Adrian too. But beyond that, I think I told my girlfriend I was filming a trail at night in Virgin on the way to Vegas and I had been chatting with parents on the way so they knew I was camping in the St. George area haha. I have been trying to get better at letting at least one person know who would have a decent insight into the situation and would have an idea of actions to take if I am doing something alone no matter how dumb.

For the videography nerds out there, what camera (or cameras) did you use to film this edit?

I opted for my Nikon d3200 w/Bower 8mm 3.5f fisheye and Nikkor 18-55mm 3.5f and then GoPro Hero 9 black for POVs.

What is your next project?

I am really stoked to dive into filming. This was a personal shake-down for me to confirm that I do actually like filming and that I can do it before I sink a bunch of time/money into it. In terms of me in front of the camera, I have a couple of items with some stuff I want to do over the winter but mainly have been building a new trail. That's the long-term project on my personal agenda that I am amped on.

What I am really excited about is a video I am filming of my buddy Seabass this winter! We have a lot of shots we want to get and I have a decent outline I have written out. On top of that, he is one of my favorite riders to watch. He is an absolutely feral gorilla on a bike who puts 138% into his riding. It is wildly amazing to watch! I am beyond stoked to keep working on that and then pester some of my other buddies to make them hike different stuff a trillion times while I stand with a camera!

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