Excellent North Shore Adventures

It’s a travel day, but the sun is out and there’s bunnies everywhere on the Shore.

Not only is it a great day to ride, but it’s also Wade’s Excellent Adventure (a mystery route race on Fromme), and I’ve got a date to sell Barb’s old V-Tach.

First we had to go for a test ride, so I met up with the buyer at a secret location and headed up to Floppy Bunny for a lap.

Heidi stroked that bike up the hill easily, and then proceeded to slay the Bunny.  Hard to believe she’s only been off-roading for a few weeks.

While we were out, the old spidey sense started tingling.  I can’t go for a ride on the Shore without finding at least one new trail…

We have a buyer!

Barb will miss the V-Tach, but it’s clearly found a nice new home.  Heidi will be making lots of new friends, I think.

So now I was free to head up for the final lap of the race, which as it turned out was a run on a freshly refurbished Ladies Only with Arthur and Monica.

BUY MY DVD!!!!!!

Thanks for all the hard work, Digger.  Also ran into Sarah and Jessamy.  Jess was stalled, so Sarah hit the restart button.

Good to see the ole’ Brown Fish Jumpers out competing and taking home the hardware.

Not as good to see that Tippie had a bullhorn. He still managed to lose his voice, though.

For gods sake, put a shirt on man.

Oh, and then I found out it was Chaz’s 50th birthday.  Seriously, that little hairbag there is a half century.  Way to go, bro.

Ride Guide – Day 5

Happy birthday to me….

I don’t feel so good.  Oh, and it snowed in the mountains last night.  Top of Iron didn’t look so good for today.  Chris looks pretty bummed about it.  He says he’s got some alternatives for us though.

Yeeehaaaa!  Swakum Mtn is more than a good alternative.

What looked like a write off turned into a full on session. 

Lots of gaps, including this road gap, and one awesome slider section.

No pics of the slider, but I got some good video which I’ll post up around Christmas.

Want to find this trail?  Look for this guy.

Ride Guide – Day 4

Hey look! Wade’s here, and it’s amazing how much larger he looks in pictures.

Take that, Boyko.

Even the Newf gets in on the fun.

We are in Merritt today, and since we’re getting crap weather we went for a little stroll to check out the jumps that the Collective built for Vanderham’s segment in Seasons.  I also found this wasp nest that got eaten by a bear.

After lunch, a couple more locals showed up to reveal some hidden gems.

This is an early season trail in the burn that rolls into something called Windy Canyon.

Good riding, but not the nicest day.

The Canyon was super rad (oh, say hi to Shane and his black eye).  A really tight and twisty slot canyon through sandstone.  Natural berms the whole way.

Hard to show what it looked like, but this sort of gives you the idea.

We got surprisingly good results for an off day, and we also got into the Pilsners early.  Taste the rainbow…

We also had a look at this gnar chute, but we decided that it was just too much work for our limited time frame. One day…

We had to get back to the AP Ranch anyway.

Our host and his tiny chainsaw.

Bear attack!

Poor Ben, we’ll miss him.

OK…how to cheat with a Newfie.  Make the stakes “the loser buys a round for the winners”.  Stack the deck to give everyone a killer hand.  Let the Newfie win, while we all tie…

Then make the Newfie drink 3 shots.

Things got messy after that.

Especially when the Newfie found out what we’d done…

Technically, it’s after midnight at this point, so it’s actually my birthday and I’m going to be paying the price tomorrow.

Yikes.