He is known as Sedona’s original mountain biker — arguably the first, but indisputably a trailblazer.

But before Simon Bosman goes vertical down the paths of Thunder Mountain, the native South African has found a steeper challenge starting just below the spires of Cathedral Rock — the most difficult run, he said, he’s ever done.

“The first time I did it was actually the best,” said Bosman, better-known for riding directly across Cathedral Rock’s White Line trail nearly 200 feet up a sheer cliff face. “I brought my nose down as far as I could, then I manualed my front wheel.

“The second time, I was kind of scared I was going to hit my handlebar. We try to avoid that.”

It all has to all work or it can be “quite catastrophic,” he said — especially if a bike rides its front wheel too hard down the rocky downhill slope.

“People say that I have a death wish,” said Bosman, 54. “Honestly, it’s completely the opposite. I just like doing fun things.”

A film crew will be the judge of that next month, when it aims to capture Bosman making the run from the spires to the bottom, which he first achieved in September.

“It’s about, basically, pushing the limits — and safely, you know?” he explained. “I have no intention of dying, [but] if I were to die doing something extraordinary like this, I’d rather that than die in an old-age home, drooling at the mouth, of Alzheimer’s, like my dad.”

South African wildlife artist Paul Bosman raised his son in South Africa in a lodge the family built when Simon was a child. He originally biked Sedona in 1982 but emigrated to Phoenix 31 years ago. He moved to Sedona permanently in 1986 two years after his brother got a job managing an Oak Creek Canyon inn.

During long winter breaks between jobs on his brother’s landscaping company, Bosman began riding the red rocks on a Raleigh Cruiser, “kind of mountain bike-esque,” he said. “High bars, a five-speed, kind of big tires, too.

“It was frustrating, at first, riding with those basket pedals. I fell in cactus so many bloody times.”

But as Bosman and 10 other riders learned how to avoid the prickly pitfall, he competed and won championships in a budding new sport — with Sedona as one of its primary backdrops.

Those athletes supported him through “pretty much constant” injuries, including three broken ribs in the past five months and two broken ribs since 2014.

“But I don’t care,” he said. “I heal extremely fast. My body’s constantly in that mode of healing.”

So Bosman insists that because riders like him understand how to get out of the run, it isn’t that dangerous.

“It’s not like I’m not scared while doing this,” he said. “I’m terrified. But I enjoy that feeling: I feel like I’m living.”

A feeling never experienced by 97 percent of the world’s population, Bosman said.

“They’re afraid they might get hurt or offend somebody,” he said. “It’s that voice in the back of their head telling them, ‘Don’t do it.’ They don’t realize their full potential in life because they live in fear.”

For more photos and information on how to join Simon Bosman skills clinics, please see the Friday, Feb. 12, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.