Stag Ride

Every once in a while I get a call from the past, and usually it involves some guy I used to ride with that is getting married soon.

Poor buggers…

I haven’t ridden with Keith since….well it may have been around 1997 or so when we did the first heli drop into Disneyland.  That does take it back a bit.  I guess I’d better treat this crew right, then.

Yes, that’s wet wood right there.  Gotta make the coastal boys feel at home, right?

The wet wouldn’t last long, though.  I think these guys scared the bad weather away.  The ladies clinic we ran across at the top looked a little nervous, at any rate.

They aren’t scary…they’re all rainbows and flowers, see?

Actually, had I known that the average level in the crew was this high, I would have…done exactly what we did.  Naramata is the bomb.  We picked off three of the best routes possible today.

Although we kept the pace up, we did find time to session a few of the classic hits like the reshaped Redemption Compression.

Also ducks.

Can you quack like a duck? (Very NSFW….you’ve been warned…)

An excellent first group of the season.  Very, very good times, with 3 solid runs and 9k’ of perfect tackiness.  Thanks to Santana for the driving.

 

NBR

Which translates to "New Beer Run" for the uninitiated.  Go to riding partner Dave suggested checking out the recent rebuild on the Beer Run, and seeing what the Grattons have been up to.

Looks like a lot of chainsaw work.  This bridge on the Upper Beer Run (UNBR?) looks to be the latest, but there’s plenty of rebuilds throughout the trail. 

Which we didn’t bother to take pics of, but that’s because it’s terribly good out there right now.  More than half of the trail has been fixed up, although rest assured there’s still plenty of that old malt flavour to remind you that it’s still the Beer Run.

Fall Bonus!  The larch trees just dropped their needles.  LOTR might be more appropriate right now.

Nice work boys.  Great to see so much love thrown at the trails lately. 

We also went for a drive on some the newer logging roads up above the Mice, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while.  We got up to 5300′ and summer tires weren’t working so well on the snow.  It’s not much further to the end, and from there you’re only 400′ from the high point.

Lots of prime terrain up there, although it’s over mature forest and finding the route might be challenging.   A quick line check on Google Earth shows that there’s only a few km of trail to link together to make this happen.  That’s a full 5k’ vertical drop there.   Food for thought over the snowy months to come…

More Trailbuilding, and Thursday

Went back to the Mice today to do a couple of little cleanup chores and to scope some lines with Andrew.  The weather was spectacular.  While the valley bottom was bathed in fog and gloom, it was a lot nicer up high.

Here’s a bit of a mosaic to attempt to show the scale of the rock walls on the new line.  There’s 4 so far, and one more which is going to require a bit more of a run out build.

Coolie decided to send a few lines of her own today, too.

Oh, and we got rid of that deadfall on Holy Roller too.