How Red Bull Dreamline came to be in Western North Carolina

Red Bull Dreamline comes to WNC

There is a theme developing in our blog at the moment. You could call it a look to our past and where we have come from. Perhaps when these old stories are told we can move on to current events. In 2014 Eva and I had the ever so surreal experience of working with Red Bull and in so doing saw the realization of dreams; appropriately by hosting Red Bull Dreamline a Signature Series Event. Red Bull told the story of how it all came to be in this article Dreamline Lands Down on The Bike Farm.

After Dreamline, Eva and I handed off the reigns of the old Shoal Falls Farm to the Katechis family so that we could build our own brand and pursue a second project, a Pisgah mountain biking retreat with unprecedented proximity to National Forest, exactly what we had been dreaming of. Bike Magazine told the story here The Bike Farm’s New Roots.

A story that was not told and is long overdue is how Dreamline actually came to be in Western NC. Red Bull did their thing to put on an incredible event, Adam Aloise and the boys at Dirt Factory built an incredible set, Oskar Blues and the Katechis family hosted, The Bike Farm lined all the players up, but there was another person in the crowd that day, and he was the unsung and unidentified man who actually brought Dreamline to Western NC. That man is Evan Voss. More than a year before the riders took to dirt, Evan having heard of what The Bike Farm was trying to create, asked me if I knew of a chunk of land in the Brevard area where a Red Bull dirt jump event could be held. Evan explained that he had a friend that worked with Red Bull and they were looking for a place to hold the event. I said, uhh yeah, I know a chunk of land. I took Evan out to the old Shoal Falls Farm. A beautiful piece of land near DuPont State Forest. We had been working to broker a deal between the current owners of the land and the Katechis family that founded Oskar Blues brewery. Evan dug the spot and made the connection. Soon, Luke Seile from Become Co, Adam Aloise from Dirt Factory, and Jason Hines from Red Bull came out to see the farm. They loved it, we all high fived and I said there is one problem. We don’t own this spot and neither does our POTENTIAL partner. They looked a little puzzled, scratched their heads and said potential partner? I said yeah. They said ok, we have some time see what you can get done. That was sometime in the summer of 2013. For the next six months or so we worked hard to get stars to align, tried to get a property acquisition to happen, as well as get the folks from Oskar Blues to sit down with my new friends at Red Bull. I had the previous owners of the farm agree to letting us host Dreamline (and then scrape it) regardless of a sale just to hedge our bets. The rest of that story is history, the land was purchased, we got Dale at the table with the folks at Red Bull and the dreams came true.

The part that was left out of that history for far too long is Evan Voss. These words can’t express our gratitude and explain just how pivotal he was, but it is better than nothing I hope, and better late than never.

Rider: Evan Voss
Photo credit: Todd Nichols