Video: What the Heck

March 05 — 2020 | Isle of Skye, Scotland

Danny MacAskill on... an ebike?

Yeah, we know, we know: it's a stock play to slide an ebike into the stable of all of your top athletes and let them loose into the world to evangelize... but in Danny's case, we honestly couldn't keep him away from the damn thing.

After seeing the Heckler unlocking massive climbs in Downieville, Danny's eyes lit up and the rocket took flight. Let the Heckling begin, this time in Danny's own backyard.

More From Danny

This isn't the first time Danny's thrown a creative spin on a brand-new bike. His full-carbon trials bike was a special project from the team in our composites lab where we prototype carbon fiber mountain bike designs right at the Santa Cruz Factory.

“Danny wanted us to make him a carbon trials bike” explains Nic McCrae, composites engineer at Santa Cruz. “I had no idea what kind of journey that was going to be, but it sounded like there’d be a whole lot of new stuff to learn working on a project like this so I just said yes, and used it as an opportunity to take our in-house R&D facility to the next level.”

We've made a few tweaks since it first was released into the wild of Danny's imagination but the story still stands.

The Downieville Connection

Downieville, our home away from home. Those massive climbs we mentioned earlier? They surround the small town of Downieville. One glance at a map of the terrain and it's immediately clear that the existing, most popular trails are the tip of a particularly large and rocky iceberg.

With that knowledge in hand and our friends at Yuba Expeditions to lead the way, it didn't take long for us to show up in town with a few Hecklers and a drive to explore big days that were previously protected behind otherwise nightmarish climbs.

Unlocking Rare Rides wraps it all up in seven minutes that'll open your eyes to the possibilities.