Watching some footage from Darkfest earlier this month, I was struck by a sudden realization: I couldn’t tell the men and women apart. It wasn’t just the anonymity of full-face helmets and baggy jerseys; the women were hitting top-to-bottom runs, sending massive jumps, and pulling out their best tricks, just like the men. No women hit the biggest jump on course – the 110-foot monster gap that made a legend of Tom Isted with his record-breaking backflip last year – but neither did most of the men. The best tricks came from male riders, but some of the men were scarcely doing tricks at all. The point being, in their third year at Darkfest, women were fully in the mix. Peers. Equals. Ticking off some of the world’s biggest jumps that scare everyone who rides them, and that most wouldn’t contemplate regardless of their gender.

As a fan, watching 2021 Queen of Crankworx Vaea Verbeeck hollering her way down the 90s is every bit as entertaining as slopestyle extraordinaire Isted giggling to himself from the high of opening up the 110 for another year. Listening to Chelsea Kimball repeat “you got this” and “keep rolling” as she tried to get her first top-to-bottom is as relatable as local racer Théo Erlangsen cursing absent organiser Sam Reynolds for leaving him to test all the jumps ahead of the opening day.

Darkfest is a non-competitive event. There are prizes given on the final day, but it’s all pretty informal, in the true spirt of freeride and Sam’s vision for the event (they only introduced a “best run” category last year, having wanted to avoid putting too much pressure on the riders). But racing is nearly always segregated by gender, so surely Hardline would be a different story?

Women have had a tough start at Hardline. An earlier plan to have multiple World Cup winner Tahnée Seagrave lead the charge was scuppered by injury, so the first woman to ride in the event was up-and-coming Kiwi racer Jess Blewitt in 2022. Jess broke her collarbone in a crash before completing the course, but even getting as far she did was a landmark achievement. Fast-forward to 2023 and Jess was back as part of a six-woman “progression camp”, a mix of some of the leading women in both downhill racing and freeride assembled by Tahnée Seagrave. In the end, the girls only had a few hours on track before the event was cancelled due to excessively spicy weather conditions. They still managed to tick off several of the gnarliest sections of the track, with the racers and freeriders sharing knowledge from their respective disciplines to help guide each other down the treacherous Welsh mountainside, with a little help from three-time Hardline winner Bernard Kerr.

On to 2024 and Tahnée was back with a new squad, including Scottish racer Louise-Anna Ferguson who stood in for an injured Casey Brown in 2023, and junior World Cup Overall winner Gracey Hemstreet. After 10 years in the Dyfi valley, the chosen few found themselves at a brand-new track in Tasmania. That meant that unlike previous Hardlines (or Darkfest), the course was new to everyone, so the women had an opportunity to be true pioneers. And pioneer they did, with Tahnée sending the biggest drop on course, a 65-foot road gap even larger than its Welsh counterpart, before three quarters of the men. Thanks to justifiable caution in the face of high winds, Tahnée didn’t manage to tick off the final jump and so was unable to qualify for the race, but Gracey and Lou made it in.

The previous day’s rain made the course tricky to read, with slick sections persisting in the upper part of the track while deep, powdery dust concealed rocks and holes further down. Gracey dropped first and laid down a respectable time, ultimately finishing ahead of Reed Boggs and Thomas Genon, as well as Canadian phenom and favourite for the win Jackson Goldstone, who DNF’d after a gnarly rock garden crash. Lou ended up coming last, but completing her run after two crashes was still an impressive feat. But what was really cool was that there wasn’t a separate women’s category – the girls sat on the hot seat and set the benchmark times for following riders, as much a part of the event as any of the men. And regardless of the results, both riders entered the history books as the first women to race at Hardline.

On to the big one: Red Bull Rampage, the crown jewel of the mountain bike freeride calendar. For three years, women had their own, non-competitive version called Formation, which took place on a previous Rampage site in the Utah desert and was founded to accelerate the progression of women’s freeride. Last year, it was abruptly cancelled, and it was then widely expected that women would finally be invited to Rampage. When that didn’t happen, the mountain bike world erupted. Women were furious, of course, and took to both social and traditional media to decry the decision, alongside plenty of men including two-time Rampage winner Brett Rheeder. The #letthemride hashtag spread across Instagram, cheered on by MTB meme slingers Girls Pull Up Not Out. Meanwhile, comment sections filled up with some of the most virulent misogyny I’ve ever seen.

So, will women be at Rampage 2024? After last year’s debacle and a demonstrable lack of support from organizers, do they even want to be, or will they branch out on their own? They certainly have form, with women-only events like Hannah Bergemann’s Hangtime, Casey Brown’s Dark Horse, and Chelsea Kimball’s Desert Days, which was kicked off in the wake of the Rampage and Formation controversy. We’ll have to wait and see. But whether they have their own events, their own categories, or just mix it up with the men, the future of women’s freeride has never looked brighter.

Ultimately, it’s not about the best trick or the fastest run, it’s about the people and the stories they tell. That’s what we connect with, as riders, as fans, as humans. The women of freeride mountain biking have waited a long time for their stories to be heard. Will 2024 be the year they can finally share them with the world?