Who Killed Mike the Bike?

Produced by Grit and Thistle The Rider and The Wolf tells the story of Mountain Bike Hall of Fame cyclist Mike Rust who went missing without a trace in 2009. The film celebrates Rust’s life as a Colorado bicycle pioneer and delves into his disappearance in the San Luis Valley—an almost lawless part of Colorado’s Wild West—examining innovation, tradition, independence, irreverence, body hunting and what it’s like for a tight Irish family to lose a brother.

Who killed Mike the Bike? As our calendars clicks around to March 31, it marks the fifth year that Mountain Bike Hall of Fame cyclist Mike Rust has been missing after confronting thieves near his home in Saguache, Colorado. Local rumors run wild —some think the killers tossed his body down a mine shaft: others say he’s just one of 13 missing people in the San Luis Valley; a few believe that he ran off to Mexico — we hear many versions as people drop by our studio after learning that we are making this film: The Rider and The Wolf.

It’s a difficult and sometimes dangerous business, making a film about an unsolved murder that took place only 40 minutes from the town where we live. We work with his family and close friends who are still grieving and angry, and we are dredging up a mountain bike story that started over 30 years ago in Crested Butte, Colorado — a town full of hard-living, transient mountain people.

As the powder piles up on the mountains outside, director Sam Bricker and editor Claude DeMoss live in the editing cave, crafting the story, dealing with massive data, arranging and rearranging over 7,000 clips on a souped-up Apple iMac, as they try to pare an eight-hour timeline down to a single hour.

At the same time, director of photography Nathan Ward is setting up show dates from Italy to Durango, fielding calls from media, pitching potential sponsors and using the Mountainfilm Commitment Grant to keep the electricity on long enough to finish this documentary.

Who killed Mike the Bike? Stay tuned for the release of The Rider and The Wolf, where we pay homage to one of Colorado’s free spirits and a true mountain bike pioneer.

—Nathan Ward, Grit and Thistle Film Company

We asked the 2013 Mountainfilm Commitment Grant winners to report upon their projects. This blog marks the first in the series.