Shooting Pro Hard Enduro: Red Bull Outliers - The Track Walk

In mid-August I got back from shooting for a week in Ontario at the Canadian Grand National Championships and the final round of the Triple Crown Series. Next big challenge for me was to shoot Red Bull Outliers - Round 4 of the FIM World Hard Enduro Championship Series here in, and around, my hometown of Calgary AB. As the FIM explains it, Hard Enduro has become “one of the most challenging off-road motorcycle [disciplines] in existence.”

In a nutshell, FIM Hard Enduro World Championships consist of an Enduro Cross style prologue and one or more stages of racing in extreme off-road environments. For Red Bull Outliers, the prologue would take place at Olympic Plaza in downtown Calgary, with the single Hard Enduro stage being run in the Badlands just north of Brooks in Steveville, Alberta (about 2.5 hours east of Calgary). I’ll cover the prologue and the hard enduro stage in later posts, but for this one I’m going to share my experience going to shoot the pro riders’ reconnaissance track walk out in Steveville on the Thursday afternoon before the weekend of racing.