april 23 update

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Smoke

Well let’s pick up the weekend at midnight on Saturday.

Looks like the party is in full swing.

Of course, some people didn’t make it as far as others.

The bitter end…..

Bright and early, loading up one of the shuttles for the Sunday epic.

Today we rode out the plateau for about 25 km. Big skies and flat doubletrack. I was feeling the effects of the night before, so I opted to ride sweep. You can see the hill in the right background? That’s where we were headed.

Here’s the crew celebrating the start of the descent to the canyon.

Here’s a panorama of the top. It’s in flash, and you may have to right click and play or reload the page to see it.

Here’s Terisa on the first leg of the descent. Barb and Harley are in there somewhere too.

A bunch of tiny dots rolling across the grasslands.

Dramatic lightning.

Lining up the next pitch.

Barb and Harley snaking down the clay.

Trail hazards. I picked up literally hundreds of cactus and didn’t get a flat until after I stopped.

Here’s a friend we met on the beach at the bottom. That’s a Black Widow if you’ve never seen one before.

Ahhhh. The shuttle vehicle.

Twin 350 Chevs driving jets sure put a smile on your face.

Our driver was wicked. He was throwing 360 spins and surfing huge standing waves for us. Jet boating rules!!

If you ever want to go, check out Jetboat Adventures for more info.

Ahhhh, back at camp.

A nice shot of dinner, bikes, and a sunset.

Nothing finishes off a great day of riding like a big fat stogie.

…and there’s still more to this trip. I’ll update you in a couple of days.

apr21update

Posted on April 21, 2004 by Smoke

TONS of stuff to upadate today.

First off, a new bike. Schweet RMX from Rocky Mountain. Built up with all my faves, and with a lot of help from Manitou, Hayes, SRAM, Syncros, RaceFace, Outdoor Gear Canada, and Cove Bike Shop.

Here she is in all her glory.

Some details for you to drool over.

So I think you can tell from the background that we got into some action for the legendary April 20th weekend in Williams Lake, also known as the 4:20 Fest.

Mark Savard of Red Shred’s Bike and Board puts on this legendary party on or around April 20th every year to kick off the season. I finally made it up to it this year after near on a decade of missing out. Here it is….

We got up to Mark’s place at 1 am. There was a lot of snow lying around. Not an auspicious start. After a brief nap, we went in to the Puddle to get some last minute supplies (booze) and headed out to our campsite at Farwell Canyon, about an hour away in the Chilcoltin.

Here’s a good shot of it.

Once everyone arrived, we started loading up the shuttle vehicles. It was killer because all the key players in mountain bike tourism were there. Besides myself, Chuck from Freeride Tours, Nelly from To The Top Freeriding, and Merle from Adrenalin Mountain were all there.

We had 25 riders and an uphill capacity for another 40 or so.

The riding in Farwell is fast and open. A true interpretation of Freeriding. Pick lines, and go fast and big. After a warmup on the Classic we went over to the Hourglass.

Here we are on our way over.

The Hourglass is a thousand foot sand chute sitting at around 45 degrees with a variable drop in from one to twenty feet. It’s sick fast and super controllable. You’ll have to wait until I edit the video to see what I really mean.

Here’s a shot of Margus on the lower part of the Hourglass.

It’s so much like skiing. Here’s another reason…

Too bad you can’t get the shuttle vehicle over to the bottom. Looks like someone else feels the same way.

After another run on the Classic, we hit another big line called GodSmack. It’s five huge fingers of clay that you ride down the edges of. Again, the best shots I got were video. You will just have to wait a bit for those.

Here’s a small panorama of one of the ridges. There’s actually riders in there somewhere.

This is Brian Eller of Cove Bikes railing the sand near the bottom of finger five.

Barb catching some rays at the end of finger three.

Some more tracks near the bottom of Godsmack.

Shreddie in his Jesus Christ Pose.

The days are long up north. We had sunset at around 7:30, but it was light enough to ride until around 8:30. Here’s Brian and Cory dropping the last chute on the Classic under starlight.

I’ll get you some more shots of the nightlife in the next update.

Easter Weekend, 1st Trip of 2004

Posted on April 14, 2004 by Smoke

Presenting Callum from the UK and Christian from Ecuador. Also our first Ecuadorian. Very cosmopolitan, this Bush Pilot experience.

I have to give a huge shout out to ChroMag Bikes for their awesome frames. Ian has no idea that I’ve been shredding it up on their bike lately, but I gotta say that it’s a good’un. I’ll be posting some gushing, unsolicited testimonials on the forums soon. If you believe in the power of steel, give the ChroMag a look.

Here’s a shot of one.

That’s the top of the tripod trail in the sunny Okanagan. Easter in Canada. 28 degrees Celsius, or about 80 in the old scale. Who knew?

Here’s another ChroMag style shot.

Apparently the local elk population likes to expire on bike trails.

Anyway, here’s another shot of the top of the Tripod trail. You can see the Cathedral and Pasayten ranges on the horizon.

Here you can see how pristine the riding is. This was more of an intro day, as Callum and Christian are both rookies as far as Canadian mountain biking is concerned.