In hindsight it seems so obvious, like the love of your life who’s been hiding in plain sight for years. Attach your mountain bike to a chairlift, ride up the lift, unload your bike, then ride it down the hill. Repeat.

However, in the mid 1990s, lift-accessed mountain biking was a novel concept. Ski resort owners were scheming of ways to make better use of expensive lift and resort infrastructure that sat idle for half the year or more. A few American ski hills, like Mammoth in California and Killington in Vermont, had recently opened bike parks. Many other ski resorts were allowing bikes on lifts, but the trails were mostly technical, cross-country singletrack with—gasp—uphill sections.

Whistler, though not the first out of the gate, is truly where the bike park concept was refined and perfected. Today if you mention A-Line to a group of mountain bikers, whether in Australia or Europe, they’ll know what you’re talking about. Coincidentally during this time of evolution and transition in the resort world, a trailbuilding company emerged called Gravity Logic. The company would grow and leave its mark on bike parks across the planet. It has been involved in the design and construction of more than 70 projects in 20 countries, on four continents, and counting. If there was dirt in Antarctica, Gravity Logic would have been there as well.

The company’s success is a tale of its three founders Tom “Pro” Prochazka, Dave Kelly, and Rob Cocquyt being in the right place at the right time, spotting an opportunity in the evolving zeitgeist of mountain biking, and taking a risk. Of course, a little good luck played a part too.

Before Gravity Logic was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, longtime Whistler local Eric Wright had the bright idea of starting the Whistler Mountain Bike Park in 1996, running it as a concession. Wright hired childhood friends Cocquyt and Kelly from Otterburn Park, on the south shore of Montreal, to build the first trails.

“Dave and I had known each other since kindergarten, and we spent much of our youth together exploring the rivers, creeks, and quarries and small mountains around our homes,” Cocquyt says, remembering how they’d push their beater bikes up a forested hill and ride down roads, game trails, and walking paths.