Ya know, every once in a while you gotta go out on a limb and have an adventure.  As it has been over two weeks since my last heli ride, I was figuring it was past time for one.   Luckily, Andrew has been busy up around Lytton cleaning up an old classic at Della Creek.   He and Brant and a few other standout individuals put in some serious time on the long weekend to buff the upper trail to Askom Mountain.  To celebrate Andrew’s, Chris’s, and Ryan’s birthdays, we got a crew together and heli’d the peak.

Access is an adventure in itself, with this reaction ferry at Lytton part of the program.

Views like this are constant.   This is the back of the Stein area, so it’s about as pristine as you can get in southern BC.

We rolled into the pickup point around 1, with various random individuals converging from all points of the compass.  Ashley almost missed it, but showed up in the nick of time with a little help from our friend Tyler over at PinkBike providing some directions via sketchy internet hotspots in Lytton.  Just a side note, if you’re looking at a cell provider in BC, Rogers SUCKS.

And just like that, we’re airborne.

The birthday boy got the front seat.  It had a nice view today.

Kevin was already waiting for us up top.  Our pilot gave us a bit of a ride, and I really thought Andrew was gonna blow chunks.  It was close, I’m sure of it.

It was kind of a nice day out today.

Thanks for driving today, Dave.  I can always count on you to be in for the good ones.

Another epic vista with the gang.

Yay! The bikes are here!

Of course, Andrew’s brakes took a bit of a hit on the sling…as is tradition.   Luckily I had my Allride socks, so we got if fixed in no time with the help of our pal Ja and a couple of pointy tools.

Alright, time to drop in.  It’s about 7900′ back to the bottom according to my GPS.  Brant takes the lead here, followed by Geoff and then Jordan and Ja.

Another good one of Jordan.

That last one is Kevin, preceded by Dave. You can see Stein Mtn in the background towering over everything at 9300′.  The next one is McKenna doing some big mountain moves on the summit ridge of Askom.

It’s definitely very steep up here, and also quite loose compared to the other drops I’ve been on lately.  You didn’t so much steer down these pitches as just hang on and deal with it.  Like Dave is here.

Alright, time for the postcard gallery.  In order; Chris, Jordan, Kevin (twice), Ashley, and Brant.

We left it a bit late in the day, so we dropped in to the forest with little daylight.  The new sections of trail that the boys cut are pretty impressive. As usual, no pics when we’re too busy shredding.  Considering that we had over 5 grand left to go and it was already getting close to sunset, do you blame me?

Those beers at the bottom sure tasted good.

Made it a bit tricky to change the flat tire on the way out, though.

At least we made it back to the ferry before the day ended.

Wow.  That was a sick day.   Pretty sure that’s the biggest vertical drop in Canada right now.  Let me know if you know of a bigger one, and we’ll come check it for ya.