Dirt Diggler

This one’s for Barb, my very own Fernie girl…

Yes, it’s time to head home, but I’m not leaving without having at least one solid, top notch, above-the-dotted-line-of-epicness ride.  These girls look like they might know where to find such a thing.

Thanks a ton to Ann for lining up the shuttle for us.  Tippie rode this line last night and said it was his new favourite, so Russ and I were amped to check it out today.   It’s up there all right.  Not quite the 4000’ as advertised, but close.

Also, crazy bugs.

And snow.

Time to exit, stage left.  Big props to Derek for building this one.

Russ getting ready to drop in….

And what a drop in it is.  I’d rate this right up there with Mt 7 for dramatic trail entrances.  This one is pretty hairy.

Especially on pinner XC tires.


Russell Haines image

You really gotta HTFO there (that’s “Hang the —– on”).

It’s actually only really steep in a couple of spots.  The rest of the trail has great flow, with the occasional techgnar sidehill drop.

Oh, and this rad chute on low grade coal or some other sort of black dirt.  A bit sketchy dropping in on it, and then stupidly awesome drifting down at the bottom.

Then it was time to go home.  Many adventures on the drive back, including a highway closure, a backroad detour that I think sent me into the USA, a flat tire, and a final run on a tiny spare tire.  On the way I drove by this abandoned homestead…

Crazy couple of weeks.  I’ll be sleeping it off now.

Fernie Co-ed Skills Camp – 2

Ahhhh….day 2 of the skills camp.   This is where it all comes together.  You see, with a 2 day format, you feel like such a chump after the 1st day.  Day one, we take you apart.  Day 2, we put you back together.

Awesome session in the morning.  With lots of dynamic skills on the menu, it was lots of effort but really fun.  Everyone learned to get the wheels off the ground with flat pedals, so right there it was a success.  As I like to say, everyone has developed "Superpowers."

Of course, it rained on us for the trail session, but no big deal. 

We went up to a local favourite, Project 9.  A nice enough trail, but as is the theme in Fernie, a hard climb for a short descent.  We spent a bunch of time on this little log practicing various strategies for getting over.

Jill in the last shot there has been riding for less than a week.  Crazy, eh? Well, when it works, it works.

Most of the group was done after one run.  With all the hard work we’d done, it was natural to be tired out.  A few riders were game for more, and it turned out to be the best part of the clinic.

Hedonism once again proved itself as one of the best trails in the area.  Lots of different terrain and great natural flow, plus a few low consequence features made for a great finishing session.

An awesome clinic, with fantastic results.  Thanks to Kat for all her help coaching, and congratulations to all the participants on their newly developed Superpowers!

Oh, and Happy Canada Day!

Fernie Co-ed Skills Camp

Oh wait…the Fernie adventure is not over yet.  There’s also a weekend skills camp to go yet.  I was going to say, “The usual thing, yadda yaddaa…,” but then I heard this excited and amplified voice coming from the race event area a block over from the skills park.

Yup, Tippie is in town and someone gave him a microphone.  The annual Furious 3 mountain bike stage race was on, and boy did I feel sorry for those guys having to compete in these conditions.

It was pretty good for us though.  Plenty of challenge dealing with wet roots and mod.

Day one is always a bit slow, but we did find time to ride some bridges.

Or in some cases, ride off some bridges.

Ahhh…they all got it once.  

It’s only day one, we’ll get everyone dialled in tomorrow.

First, we gotta have a water fight!