<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"\"&lt;p&gt;Mountain bike\\u00a0photographers\\u00a0tend to be a pretty\\u00a0rugged lot. Their job requires them to ride long distances, chasing some of the world\\u2019s strongest riders up and down technical trails\\u2013often burdened with a hefty camera pack. Negotiating tough terrain with the so-called \\u2018Angry Midget\\u2019 tugging at their shoulders turns most of these lensmen into ultra-fit, singletrack-slaying machines, ready to venture wherever they need to capture the images that define them as artists.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p5\\\"&gt;The biggest assignments\\u2013those involving multi-day death marches through remote and inhospitable backcountry\\u2013call for a special breed. They demand a photographer with an extraordinary ability to withstand the elements, to cope with extended exposure to sun, wind, rain, snow and hail, invariably running on minimal food rations. They require refined survival skills, wilderness knowledge and an unflinching ability to keep a cool head when everything goes wrong. But by far the most important trait is a truly unquenchable thirst for adventure.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p4\\\"&gt;Few photographers embody these qualities more than Margus Riga. On any given day, the Estonia-born Canadian transplant is more likely to be exploring an untrammeled corner of the Chilcotin Ranges than enjoying the comforts of his North Vancouver home. Rarely seen without his camera, the restless 44-year-old spends most of his days in the mountains, scouting scenic locations from his backyard Coast Mountains to the far-flung vastness of the Yukon. And in recent years, he\\u2019s become known as one of &lt;i&gt;the &lt;\\/i&gt;go-to guys for the most arduous of missions.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p4\\\"&gt;\\u201cIf you want to go on a real adventure, Riga\\u2019s your guy,\\u201d says none other than the Godfather of Freeride, Wade Simmons. \\u201cIt doesn\\u2019t matter how gnarly the conditions are, you don\\u2019t have to worry about Riga. He\\u2019s done so many adventures and has become so efficient. He\\u2019s got it all whittled down to an art.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p4\\\"&gt;It wasn\\u2019t always this way. Born in Tartu, Estonia, when the tiny Baltic nation was still part of the Soviet Union, Riga emigrated to Canada with his mother at age 7, following the death of his father.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p4\\\"&gt;His mother re-married another Estonian who was living in Montreal, Quebec, and shortly thereafter the new family relocated to Toronto, Ontario. Riga grew up as an urban rat, rarely straying far from the confines of his adopted childhood city. After graduating from high school, he moved to the Canadian capital, Ottawa, to attend the prestigious Carleton University. Shortly after embarking on what promised to be a fruitful academic trajectory, however, Riga became bored with college life and dropped out of school in 1991, heading straight to Whistler, British Columbia, to become a full-time ski and mountain-bike bum.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cI guess I wasn\\u2019t ready for school yet, and I just wanted to be outdoors and spend time in the mountains,\\u201d Riga explains.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;figure id=\\\"attachment_124372\\\" style=\\\"width: 1500px\\\" class=\\\"wp-caption alignnone\\\"&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02.jpg\\\"&gt;&lt;img class=\\\"wp-image-124372 size-full\\\" src=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02.jpg\\\" alt=\\\"Margus Riga\\\" width=\\\"1500\\\" height=\\\"1001\\\" srcset=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02.jpg 1500w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-190x126.jpg 190w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-640x427.jpg 640w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-768x513.jpg 768w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-970x647.jpg 970w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-135x90.jpg 135w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-100x67.jpg 100w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-200x133.jpg 200w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-150x100.jpg 150w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-1151x768.jpg 1151w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-160x107.jpg 160w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-320x214.jpg 320w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-480x320.jpg 480w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-660x440.jpg 660w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-990x661.jpg 990w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/BIKP-160800-SKETCH-02-1120x747.jpg 1120w\\\" sizes=\\\"(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\\\" \\/&gt;&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;figcaption class=\\\"wp-caption-text\\\"&gt;Photo: Paris Gore&lt;\\/figcaption&gt;&lt;\\/figure&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;And that\\u2019s exactly what he did. For the next eight years, he skied and rode in these mountains, honing his skills and developing a deep appreciation for the great outdoors. Riga eventually decided he wanted to parlay his love for nature into a career in photojournalism, and in 1999 he returned to Toronto to pursue a two-year degree in magazine journalism at Ryerson University. It was here that he bought his first camera, a Nikon F401, and became hooked on photography and the fine arts.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cAfter I finished at Ryerson in 2001, I moved back to B.C. with the intention of running an adventure magazine called &lt;i&gt;Epic&lt;\\/i&gt;,\\u201d Riga recalls. \\u201cI got one issue out and couldn\\u2019t afford to run it anymore.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;He went on to work as the publisher of a quarterly fine-arts photography magazine called &lt;i&gt;Ripe &lt;\\/i&gt;and spent the next four years struggling along in the business world. \\u201cRunning that magazine was what made it concrete that I actually wanted to be a photographer rather than a magazine publisher,\\u201d Riga says. \\u201cI\\u2019d really been influenced by photographers like Blake Jorgenson and Dave Heath, and their work really started to stoke the fire that I could make a living out of it. I folded &lt;i&gt;Ripe &lt;\\/i&gt;in 2007 and then starved my ass off for the next two years. At first I had to shoot for free.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;Increasingly specializing in mountain-bike photography, Riga began submitting his images to &lt;i&gt;Bike&lt;\\/i&gt;, and in May 2011 he landed his first cover\\u2013of Brett Tippie and Johnny Smoke attempting a harebrained first descent on the bald face of B.C.\\u2019s Yak Peak.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cWhen &lt;i&gt;Bike &lt;\\/i&gt;published that photo, that was the icing on the cake, and I told myself, \\u2018Yeah, I can do this,\\u2019\\u201d Riga says.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;Though he shoots everything from contests to company product catalogs to earn a living, his heart belongs in the backcountry.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cI like the raw, survivalist feeling of a big backcountry adventure,\\u201d he says. \\u201cFor me, it doesn\\u2019t all have to be \\u2018fun\\u2019 to be fun. I like that whole battle of always having a lot of shit working against you. The loss of control and the whole feeling of the unknown is always exciting. I love the adventure as much as the photography.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;figure id=\\\"attachment_124382\\\" style=\\\"width: 617px\\\" class=\\\"wp-caption alignnone\\\"&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112.jpg\\\"&gt;&lt;img class=\\\"size-full wp-image-124382\\\" src=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112.jpg\\\" alt=\\\"Margus' first Bike cover, with Brett Tippie and Johnny Smoke.\\\" width=\\\"617\\\" height=\\\"783\\\" srcset=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112.jpg 617w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-504x640.jpg 504w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-71x90.jpg 71w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-79x100.jpg 79w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-158x200.jpg 158w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-605x768.jpg 605w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-160x203.jpg 160w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-320x406.jpg 320w, http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/2016\\/10\\/may20112-480x609.jpg 480w\\\" sizes=\\\"(max-width: 617px) 100vw, 617px\\\" \\/&gt;&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;figcaption class=\\\"wp-caption-text\\\"&gt;Margus&amp;#8217; first Bike cover, with Brett Tippie and Johnny Smoke.&lt;\\/figcaption&gt;&lt;\\/figure&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;Any rider who has spent time in the wilderness with Riga will attest to his outstanding outdoorsmanship and relentless work ethic.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cHe\\u2019s so badass, he\\u2019s so fit, he never whines and he\\u2019s always in a good mood out there,\\u201d says Squamish-based ripper Kenny Smith. \\u201cThis is important, because when you\\u2019re out there in the middle of nowhere if someone gets whiny and a little negative it\\u2019s bad for the entire group. And you can\\u2019t go home and cry to mommy, because you\\u2019ve committed to this shit and you\\u2019re out there.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;Riga is at least a decade older than most of the athletes he shoots with, but this doesn\\u2019t prevent him from keeping up.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p9\\\"&gt;\\u201cI find him really inspiring because he\\u2019s an older dude, but he just loves being out in the middle of nowhere and he\\u2019s still so motivated to get out and do crazy shit,\\u201d Smith says. \\u201cWe call him \\u2018Raptor Riga\\u2019 because he can have a 40-pound pack on and still somehow claw his way up a big mountain. Ol\\u2019 Raptor Riga can climb, he can descend and he can shotgun beers.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;Riga\\u2019s riding abilities extend beyond strength and endurance. Many high-level pros consider him to be one of the most technically gifted of all the mountain-bike photographers in the industry.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;\\u201cHe absolutely kills it on a bike,\\u201d says Smith. \\u201cWe\\u2019ll be out shooting with James [Doerfling] around Williams Lake, and we\\u2019ll drop into these insane chutes and he\\u2019ll just bomb down them after us. He\\u2019s like a kid in a way. It\\u2019s really inspirational.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;In turn, Riga chalks up much of his talent to the fact that he\\u2019s spent so much time riding with pros in the prime of their careers.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;\\u201cMany of the people I\\u2019ve grown up with and evolved with are pro mountain bikers, and when you\\u2019re shredding with the world\\u2019s best riders you\\u2019re going to pick up a thing or two,\\u201d he says.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;Having earned the respect of so many big-mountain pros, Riga has become a role model of sorts, and his passion for wilderness adventure has spread to several freeriders, providing them with a potential future path that could help prolong their careers.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;\\u201cI used to be into just doing the gnarliest lines and building the craziest shit,\\u201d says Smith. \\u201cBut Margus really opened my eyes to these big wilderness trips and the adventure side of mountain biking, which is the best part of it for me these days.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;Riga\\u2019s influence extends far beyond his positive attitude and abilities, however. More than anything else, it\\u2019s his images of riders enveloped in stunning landscapes that have the most impact.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p class=\\\"p10\\\"&gt;\\u201cNot only can Margus get out and do the adventure, he can artistically capture what many others cannot,\\u201d says Simmons. \\u201cHe can move so quickly through an environment and still capture the very essence of the place.\\u201d&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;h3 class=\\\"p3\\\"&gt;More profiles:&lt;\\/h3&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/features\\/profiles\\/the-slasher\\/\\\"&gt;The Slasher&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/features\\/unexpected-treasure\\/\\\"&gt;Unexpected Treasure&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/features\\/profiles\\/dirt-hero\\/\\\"&gt;Dirt Hero&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.bikemag.com\\/features\\/profiles\\/accidental-racer\\/\\\"&gt;Accidental Racer&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.bikemag.com/features/profiles/backcountry-beast/>