The Lawnmower Tour — Day 5

Another absolutely stellar day. You can sure tell that summer is over though. I forgot to mention how cold the mornings have been lately. Well below freezing, and the snow guns are running on Blackcomb already. I’d guess it was about -8C in the alpine the last few nights.

So we’ll go to Squamish where it’s warmer. Our first lap was some mellow XC-ish downhill in Alice Lakes.

A nice little change of pace from the wham-bam-bam of Whistler.

Oh……HELLO there………

Our man Ben likes the ladies, and for the most part I think I agree with him. If you’re going to ride in Squamish, you gotta check out the Eagle Run Coffee Shop. Trust me.

After lunch, it was up to 19th Hole.

We got into a new one called Cortez or something like that. It’s pretty cool, but it won’t last long. The construction is a little dodgy.

Hey, what’s brown and sticky?

A stick….get it?

Yeah, you don’t know from funny.

Lots of cool little moves made outta twigs is my point anyway. Nothing over a couple feet to worry about, and nice flow.

The best section had to have been Homebrew. Stefan was riding very good today, so I got him to follow me in there. It’s been a couple of years since I hit that one, but nothing has changed. We non-stopped the whole line and he was peaking. To hit that line at good speed with no idea of what’s coming up has got to be pretty intense. Of course, no pics ’cause we non-stopped it, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

We finished out on Deliverance. Man something was SO dead out near the top. I made the mistake of breathing through my nose and spent the next part of the trail trying not to hurl.

Unlike Christian and Holger, who were enjoying hurling themselves off of everything.

One more day, and that’s it for the big tours this year……..

The Lawnmower Tour — Day 4

Guess what?

Yeah…..

…another heli day. This time it was Rainbow, which I’ve never done before.

It’s OK…..

We got to fly with Blackcomb Heli again—it’s been too long. Our pilot even put on a bit of a show on the way up with some high performance moves around the thermals. I think Christian likes helicopters now.

Ooops….dropped em.

Well, not really…but it’s a cool shot.

So’s this group photo. The extra bodies are local Pete (the Angry Pirate) and some other Germans associated with Cosmic Sports (German Marzocchi and Cove distributor).

One of the other Germans (forget his name) on another cool bike named Herb (really).

Linda, and some nice scenery.

Ben, same.

Can’t remember this guy’s name, but more of the same goodness.

Herb, showing some lycra and a smile.

Pfft, it doesn’t look that far.

Hmmm…it’s not getting any closer.

The possee, in the sub-alpine steeps.

Time for a break, and still looking down on Garbonzo.

Once we were more into treeline we hit this old firebreak, and the fireweed was going off with fall colours.

There was also this Disney style rock action that we sessioned.

….and sessioned…..

..and sessioned some more. Hey, it’s a fun one.

Linda in some more sub-alpine meadows.

Harley said it the best….

Yeah, a pretty special day.

The trail picks up some mad flow and gets steeper as you descend, and you finish off with an old rutted out Whitler style descent called Jaws.

From there we hit A river Runs Through It, just because it’s there.

Here’s Holger on the drawbridge stunt.

..and Christian in the hollow tree.

Finally, all things come to end so we went for a much needed burger.

The Lawnmower Tour — Day 3

Another day at the park, this time with the emphasis on the Garbonzo area. Time to ‘step it up’ as it were.

As usual, Stefan was right there.

One thing all these guys could do is ride steep, wet, gnarly stuff. Funny, that’s usually the hardest thing for everyone to get their heads around.

Peter really surprised me. He’s been struggling a bit with the Whistler concept, but he just slayed this big rock on Original Sin.

This is the other Stefan. Unfortunately, he had a huge stack not long after this. There’s a cool little line called Drop-In Clinic that has a near vert drop in to a kicker. It looked to me like he sort of forgot about the kicker and sat down just before he hit it. Luckily, he flipped more than all the way over in the air and so got away with some heavily bruised ribs. still, I know all about that kind of pain..and believe me, it’s better to just avoid it.

Awesome shot of Christian.

Holger again, natural rock berm.

Ben, same place.

How ya like them chopsticks Frank?