After a great rest yesterday, it was time to try some more bike riding.  I must admit, I was a little depressed with the way summer seems to have ended after such a brief showing this year.  Only 8 weeks of hot weather, and now we’re right back to cool and wet.  So lets go to the alpine!

Little White is the high point in the immediate area.  at 7120’, it’s almost 6000’ above the lake.  It’s also a very long approach, with a long drive around the back and a bit of a gruel to carry up around the back. 

Not too bad, actually.  About an hour, of which half is fairly easy, and the hard half has some decent views.  And some fresh snow.

Once you’re up though, you’re on top of the world.

Can you see the bear?  I think he was as surprised as we were.

We sat and watched him run away.  It was good, because he stuck to the route we were following quite nicely.  Took the guesswork out.

Some nice alpine singletrack.

There’s my house.  See?

First snowball fight of the season.

The first part of the descent is pure freeride.  The trail appears and disappears until you get to treeline, and you end up riding on these cool rock outcroppings through the tundra.

When you enter the forest, it turns into an old doubletrack (an old telegraph line actually) that goes through this hall of mirrors.  Imagine Whistler’s B-Line trail covered in loam…for an hour. 

Mark does his best Blair Witch Project face for us…

A little shot from the hip during the descent.

Not really the most photo worthy trail, but lots of fun to scream down at full speed.  Very loamy and smooth, a nice change from Whistler for the boys.

Half way down, and we take a break at the Bellevue Ck. trestle.

We traversed on the KVR for a while to get to an old trail into a canyon.  It rarely sees any traffic at all, and is very dark and surprisingly wet.  It felt a lot like Squamish, right down to the mossy rocks and cedar trees.

There is also this crazy section that was painted red during the fire of 2003. The retardant that the bombers dropped has set, and the colours are bizarre.

Johnny “I hate hopping trees” Cote, has had enough at this point.

A great addition to the local inventory.  We dropped 6900’ (2100m) over 20 miles (32km).  Here’s some more mapness for ya.

Click on the map to see it in a new window…

Or check out Little White in Google Earth (you may have to right-click and ‘Save as…’):

Little White kml file