Scope Mission

This is it then.  The last day of summer/first day of fall.   It’s all over at 7 PM today.

Yeah right.  It’s time to put the throttle down and get things done more like.   Today we’re going to make a scoping mission off of Reco Peak down to Sandon to check out the ground for a potential future trail.

We’re going over there, eh Mike?

Yup, we’re really guiding now.  As there’s no trail, it’s a bit more challenging dropping in.

We had some fun roaming around the ridges in the alpine. This is called “assessing.”

I’ve been hearing about this zone here for a while, and Buehler shot some nice lines here recently.   I think there might be some possibilities here for a few more lines, what do you think?

Mike found a couple here…

There are a million old mining roads to access this zone, and plenty of old cabins and such.  Here’s one of the better known ones near the Mercury Mine.

Looks like there’s a bit of undergrowth to deal with in a few spots, but I’m thinking we’ll be fine putting a new trail in here.

So there you go (it’s the orange line in case you’re confused).  7700′ of descending, and with all our little explorations it worked out to about 24 km.  Not a bad way to spend a Monday.

reco3forks

 

Retallack Legends – 3

I’m not even going to try to top yesterday.  Record setting multiple heli drops?  Yeah, we got it done.

I didn’t make it out to the Legends trip last year, but everything I’ve heard tells me that this we got more riding, with better weather, on better trails, with a much more relaxed and awesome atmosphere.  Schley and Tippie were awesome the whole time, and as always we had a great crew of riders to share the trails with.

Today we got up late, ate a bunch of great food, slayed trails all day, and finished it up with some more great eats with these guys:

I think that pretty much says it all

Retallack Legends – 2

Or you can call it by it’s even better title: Double Heli Day!

That’s right, today we’re doing a double lap of Reco with the heli.  It’s already here, may as well.  Dude and I didn’t get to ride the first bird, though.  We hiked up before everyone while the rest of the crew got to the choppa.

It was actually quite relaxing.

Not for very long though.   With a tight schedule on this, one of the last days of summer, we were very busy in a very short period of time.

Unloading guests and rigging bikes has to go smoothly and safely, and with fast turnaround times we were hopping.

The best part is that we got to have one inspection lap so that we could shred it hard on round two.

It was a pretty nice day to be in the alpine, yet again.

OK, it’s time for a postcard shot photo dump.   This isn’t even half of the group out today.

While our “Legends” (and I am using that term loosely) were having photo orgasms at the top with Blake Jorgenson, the rest of us were off the front looking for more vert.  We needed to get back to the LZ for another lap.

Just an aside here…  If you want to know what makes a successful freeride athlete, it’s not just raw talent or looking pretty or a determination to push the envelope (all very useful attributes, though).  Nope, it’s a willingness to do the same 20 feet of trail over and over and over again until you get the shot.   I should probably spend more time doing that sort of thing, but I really just want to ride more.  So now you know…

We took a short breather for a little group shot anyway.

We also had a little time at lunch to scope out this stepdown in the area.  Nice riding, buds.

OK, time for the second bump, which is personal best #8 in a season for me, and #9 for my bike.

After this mornings workout, getting everyone up for round two was a piece of cake.  The second run down the ridge was just amazing.

Some more postcard shots.

You know what?  We still weren’t done.  We got to the bottom just in time to hook back up with a couple of keeners with Mike’s group for a full T2B on the Kessel Run.

Which just happened to end at a fire in the pump track with cold beers and hot nachos.

Whattya think?  Having fun yet?

PS — Happy Birthday Wade!   Sorry we weren’t hanging on the peak together today, hope you had a good’r…