and they are the small ones!
sawyer flew into vancouver a day 'late', one after me, but in plenty of time to jump on a bus and head over the bay to north vancouver where we found endless biking. they had our rental 29ers ready to go. they also had the bike bags we had ordered and had shipped there. we put the framebags on and fit the rest into our backpacks and rode back across the bay to the airbnb to pack gear for an early start in the morning.
packing for a trip that you have to carry everything you bring, makes you think twice, maybe even three or four times, about each piece of gear. it was fun seeing what i was thinking of bringing along compared to what soy was contemplating taking. i tend to go with big picture items and he often thinks of the little things. after several iterations, we satisfied ourselves and each other enough to go to bed.
in the morning the bags still looked ready. a hot breakfast of five grain cereal filled our fuel tanks. we shouldered our backpacks and rolled away excited. vancouver is super bike friendly--union street, where our apartment was, is a designated bikeway. we fit right in with the commuters and made our way through the city, down to the waterfront, and back over the stanley park bridge. i snapped this picture just as we entered stanley park.
over the bridge and onto marine drive, we headed north toward horseshoe bay and the ferry that would take us to langdale where we could strike out to find the sunshine coast trails. they were somewhere over the bay, under those clouds in the picture soy took as the ferry started the crossing.
our plan was to get into the forest and go north for three days. at one point i was dreaming that we would go the 75 miles to the far end of the peninsula. sawyer's view was more realistic and had no fixed end point--just ride some cool single track.
after debarking and riding into north gibsons, we climbed a 21% grade and found spin cycles, the bike shop we had originally talked to about rentals. we were after some advice and bought a paper map to take along. soy had also loaded a trail app which gave us plenty of directional aides to ponder over as we tried to figure out exactly, "where the heck are we?"
i studied that paper map outside the iga grocery while soy went in and bought the rest of our food along with a bottle of alcohol for stove fuel. fully loaded, we headed uphill and into the woods. we had gotten some advice at the bike shop to avoid certain trails, so we aimed for hwy 102 to start the ride. getting there was easier said than done. we tried two access points--one a dump for old building supplies and rusting large machinery, the other chocked with himalayan blackberry (a local called them russian blackberry, maybe because of their foreign, nasty thorns)--before taking a woods road that took us where we wanted to be. finally, on some single track, we started winding through the tall trees, along steep banks, some with streams at the bottom.
it was one of those very drop offs that i pitched into soon after we started. my 29er tires didn't exactly 'roll through' a tangle of tree roots and i left the bike with a shout, tumbling down headed for a splash. somehow i managed to stop and clamber back up just as sawyer was coming to the rescue. he later told me he was questioning his judgement "bringing his old papa on such a trip?" i was glad he waited to share that, falling was embarrassing enough. what he did say at the moment, was that shouting every minute or so, was the new bear safety protocol--let them hear you coming. making noise is key at bearsmart.com where they also recommend you "put the ipod away and pay attention..."
as if on cue, only minutes later, i stopped at the top of a hill when i saw a runner coming up the trail, fiddling with his phone. i am not making that up, he was totally oblivious to us. when he did finally notice, it was with a good dose of surprise and a dash of wonder. even more interesting though, were his last words, "ride safe and watch for grizzlies..." the next time we stopped we had a chuckle at such warnings given his attention to a device rather than the surroundings. but, we did register the possibility of a bear encounter and started giving a shout "hey bear" now and again. i also felt vindicated having asked soy the night before, if he had any cord to tie up a bear bag in the evenings. ever attentive to the little details, he had some.
around four o'clock-ish, his attention fixed on water as we passed a good stream. he suggested stopping and setting up camp. while he filtered a few liters i scoped out some flatness for tent and bivy. we met back at the bikes, successful on both accounts, although the flat i found was not nearly as abundant as the water supply. we cooked up a fine supper, brewed a thermos of tea, and set about pitching our shelters. darkness settled in as we brushed our teeth and then hung the food bag. after a bit of a chat we crawled into bed.
i managed to only crawl out once to go pee, easily getting back to sleep right through to the rain and fog at first light. by the time sawyer popped out of his bivy, the oats were ready and the tea was brewing. he added a good handful of nuts from one of his numerous little bags and voila, breakfast was served. we decamped, shook off as much water as possible, and packed, wetter and heavier than day one, but happy to wake up and be out in the forest.
not two hundred yards down the trail, the forest suddenly disappeared. we came out into a substantial clear cut and stopped to take it in. often, people have really hostile reactions to logging, but doing it like this, 10-20 acres at a shot with some clumps left for seed trees, makes sense--if you are going to log at all. i would guess that many of those complaining live in houses built with a fair bit of wood, so i don't put too much stock in their gripes. soon enough, our path went back into the trees. check out this grin!
one of the coolest features we rode on were the bridges. they went over gullies, streams, and even huge fallen logs. riven 'boards' of ceder and fir were nailed over logs stretching across the gaps and up and over obstacles. the 'boards' could be really slick in the wetness, so most had wire mesh laid along the center. each bridge was unique in width and pitch--some as narrow as six inches and leaning heavily to one side. many were not at all straight, curving or angling around whatever. at first we walked the scanty or questionable ones, but as we got acclimatized, we started going for all but the most likely to cause a spill. soy stopped at one shot a funny movie of me 'racing' across an easy one.
at the end of 102, we took the westridge trail but after a fine start, it had so much pushing that we ultimately decided to turn around and descend. it was our first big downhill run of maybe a mile, and even though it was quite rocky--reminded soy of back east--it gave us both a solid rush. we made it back to the start of 103, the route we avoided as the map guy at spin cycles had said it was too narrow and tricky. we did have to go up and down a funky, awkward ladder over a huge log and took off down the hwy!
unlike the guys in the video above, we were whooping and hollering most of the way--single track is so much fun, even on a foggy day. like we were warned, there were some technical sections, including some really odd bridges, but most of the crazy ones you could ride around. i missed a turn at one point and started down a black diamond. after about a hundred yards of extra focused riding, i realized it was way steeper, with lots more roots and rocks than on 103. i was able to stop without crashing and climbed back up. when i got back to sawyer, we took off in the right direction, and found some really lovely riding.
some of the best of that, went across bridges, including my favorite one pictured above. it was a fairly narrow affair, starting at the bottom of a steep s-curve with a smooth curve threading the trees at the far end. directly behind where i took this shot, we stopped for lunch at a ragged tarp over a log table and benches. while eating, we also got out the paper map and fired up the app trying to figure out a path to take us up as high as we could get before camping. we decided on trying the health trail which ended just across the logging road from the end of 103.
we finished lunch and 103 quickly, and hit a logging road going up past the end of health, headed for its start. turns out that riding on a road, even a rough one, was much faster than riding single track. hence, we overshot the established top end of health and didn't stop until we found a new section, a mile or more further up.
we tried that new section, but found it was wicked sketchy with more pushing than riding, even though most of it was downhill. the picture at left shows the start of it, just off the logging road--the barely developed, overgrown path should have given us a clue to what it was like in the woods. we turned back sooner than the last false start. and continued up on the old four wheel drive roads.
we got back onto a single track called the wagon trail which took us even higher to an enormous, ameoba-like clearcut. the picture shows only one of the psudopods, maybe a 10th of the whole. the trail meandered across the opening, sometimes on skidder roads, other times through those lethal blackberries, until sharply veered off and dropped us back into the woods. given the time and where we were, we decided to camp high, and blast down and out to the road in the morning.
this time we set up a cool sawyer-made tarp--another small detail he pulled out of a little bag--to cook under as it was already spitting rain. we cooked and ate, brewed and drank, heartily and mostly dry. after we cleaned up we scouted about for sleeping sites. not surprisingly, flatness for tent and bivy were at a premium. soy ended setting up right beneath the tarp and i found a spot just beyond a huge blowdown a few feet away. brushing our teeth and hanging the food bag brought us to dark and a steadier rain, so we crawled in with minimal chatting.
as we lay there waiting for sleep, the rain increased along with the wind. i did not have my anemometer with me--being the big picture guy, i had unpacked it as 'extra' back at the airbnb--and anyway, would have had to climb one of the giant trees to get a maximum reading. but from my experience, we were dealing with some really strong wind, up in the storm, whole gale force winds category. i decided setting the tent next to the large diameter blowdown was a wise choice as it would take the brunt of a tree that got blown over. unless a branch ran me through, i would be safe--enough.
soon after these comforting thoughts, a light appeared outside the tent and sawyer voiced his concern. "i just reset the tarp so it wouldn't dump the gallons of water it was collecting on me, but if things get really desperate, is there enough room in there for me?" it was a solo tent, but how could i say anything but "sure"--he's my only son, flesh and blood, and all that. we would make it work. i never heard from him again and managed to sleep fairly well, again with only one pee break, albeit a wet and windy one.
the morning was pretty murky, the forest floor littered with tree detritus, but it was not raining too hard and the wind had calmed considerably. as i was boiling the water for cereal, soy emptied--as in dumped out--his bivy bag of at least a pot full of rain. thank goodness he had a thick pad for a float, and that it never got really cold. we finished cooking our oatmeal, emptied the 'nutbag', and filled our stomachs. that definitely made us feel good and ready for the last day's decent.
all packed, things even wetter--and heavier--than yesterday, we started out toward upper tube and the downhill rush we had planned. soon enough the wagon trail took us to the top of upper tube and we dropped in.
it had all the promises of downhill singletrack, berms, series of berms, drops, launches, the only thing i don't remember were bridges, but it went fast and i may have missed them. we emptied out onto the logging trail we had taken the day before. our big smiles only grew as we rolled back into the woods onto lower tube. too soon, given the joy of flying through the woods, we popped out onto another logging road. it was there we met with the aftermath of last nights wind and had to drag the bikes and ourselves under a large aspen blowdown. around the corner, somebody had already cut out another big maple. trees in the roads were definitely getting thicker and we were happy to duck back into the woods again. but at downhill speed, that only lasted a while.
onto the main trunk road, our speed only increase all the way down to hwy 101, the paved road on the sunshine coast. there across the street we spotted a bus stop--how convenient.
when the next bus came along, we 'front loaded' the bikes, dropped in some change, and sat down satisfied. at this rate we would make the 10:30a ferry and be able to get back to north vancouver by 3:00p, our witching hour to return the rental bikes.
the rest of the bus ride and on the ferry we both said, the only thing that could have been better, was an additional week, or month, or year, maybe even endless...that would be sweet!
sawyer flew into vancouver a day 'late', one after me, but in plenty of time to jump on a bus and head over the bay to north vancouver where we found endless biking. they had our rental 29ers ready to go. they also had the bike bags we had ordered and had shipped there. we put the framebags on and fit the rest into our backpacks and rode back across the bay to the airbnb to pack gear for an early start in the morning.
packing for a trip that you have to carry everything you bring, makes you think twice, maybe even three or four times, about each piece of gear. it was fun seeing what i was thinking of bringing along compared to what soy was contemplating taking. i tend to go with big picture items and he often thinks of the little things. after several iterations, we satisfied ourselves and each other enough to go to bed.
in the morning the bags still looked ready. a hot breakfast of five grain cereal filled our fuel tanks. we shouldered our backpacks and rolled away excited. vancouver is super bike friendly--union street, where our apartment was, is a designated bikeway. we fit right in with the commuters and made our way through the city, down to the waterfront, and back over the stanley park bridge. i snapped this picture just as we entered stanley park.
our plan was to get into the forest and go north for three days. at one point i was dreaming that we would go the 75 miles to the far end of the peninsula. sawyer's view was more realistic and had no fixed end point--just ride some cool single track.
after debarking and riding into north gibsons, we climbed a 21% grade and found spin cycles, the bike shop we had originally talked to about rentals. we were after some advice and bought a paper map to take along. soy had also loaded a trail app which gave us plenty of directional aides to ponder over as we tried to figure out exactly, "where the heck are we?"
i studied that paper map outside the iga grocery while soy went in and bought the rest of our food along with a bottle of alcohol for stove fuel. fully loaded, we headed uphill and into the woods. we had gotten some advice at the bike shop to avoid certain trails, so we aimed for hwy 102 to start the ride. getting there was easier said than done. we tried two access points--one a dump for old building supplies and rusting large machinery, the other chocked with himalayan blackberry (a local called them russian blackberry, maybe because of their foreign, nasty thorns)--before taking a woods road that took us where we wanted to be. finally, on some single track, we started winding through the tall trees, along steep banks, some with streams at the bottom.
it was one of those very drop offs that i pitched into soon after we started. my 29er tires didn't exactly 'roll through' a tangle of tree roots and i left the bike with a shout, tumbling down headed for a splash. somehow i managed to stop and clamber back up just as sawyer was coming to the rescue. he later told me he was questioning his judgement "bringing his old papa on such a trip?" i was glad he waited to share that, falling was embarrassing enough. what he did say at the moment, was that shouting every minute or so, was the new bear safety protocol--let them hear you coming. making noise is key at bearsmart.com where they also recommend you "put the ipod away and pay attention..."
as if on cue, only minutes later, i stopped at the top of a hill when i saw a runner coming up the trail, fiddling with his phone. i am not making that up, he was totally oblivious to us. when he did finally notice, it was with a good dose of surprise and a dash of wonder. even more interesting though, were his last words, "ride safe and watch for grizzlies..." the next time we stopped we had a chuckle at such warnings given his attention to a device rather than the surroundings. but, we did register the possibility of a bear encounter and started giving a shout "hey bear" now and again. i also felt vindicated having asked soy the night before, if he had any cord to tie up a bear bag in the evenings. ever attentive to the little details, he had some.
around four o'clock-ish, his attention fixed on water as we passed a good stream. he suggested stopping and setting up camp. while he filtered a few liters i scoped out some flatness for tent and bivy. we met back at the bikes, successful on both accounts, although the flat i found was not nearly as abundant as the water supply. we cooked up a fine supper, brewed a thermos of tea, and set about pitching our shelters. darkness settled in as we brushed our teeth and then hung the food bag. after a bit of a chat we crawled into bed.
i managed to only crawl out once to go pee, easily getting back to sleep right through to the rain and fog at first light. by the time sawyer popped out of his bivy, the oats were ready and the tea was brewing. he added a good handful of nuts from one of his numerous little bags and voila, breakfast was served. we decamped, shook off as much water as possible, and packed, wetter and heavier than day one, but happy to wake up and be out in the forest.
not two hundred yards down the trail, the forest suddenly disappeared. we came out into a substantial clear cut and stopped to take it in. often, people have really hostile reactions to logging, but doing it like this, 10-20 acres at a shot with some clumps left for seed trees, makes sense--if you are going to log at all. i would guess that many of those complaining live in houses built with a fair bit of wood, so i don't put too much stock in their gripes. soon enough, our path went back into the trees. check out this grin! one of the coolest features we rode on were the bridges. they went over gullies, streams, and even huge fallen logs. riven 'boards' of ceder and fir were nailed over logs stretching across the gaps and up and over obstacles. the 'boards' could be really slick in the wetness, so most had wire mesh laid along the center. each bridge was unique in width and pitch--some as narrow as six inches and leaning heavily to one side. many were not at all straight, curving or angling around whatever. at first we walked the scanty or questionable ones, but as we got acclimatized, we started going for all but the most likely to cause a spill. soy stopped at one shot a funny movie of me 'racing' across an easy one.
at the end of 102, we took the westridge trail but after a fine start, it had so much pushing that we ultimately decided to turn around and descend. it was our first big downhill run of maybe a mile, and even though it was quite rocky--reminded soy of back east--it gave us both a solid rush. we made it back to the start of 103, the route we avoided as the map guy at spin cycles had said it was too narrow and tricky. we did have to go up and down a funky, awkward ladder over a huge log and took off down the hwy!
unlike the guys in the video above, we were whooping and hollering most of the way--single track is so much fun, even on a foggy day. like we were warned, there were some technical sections, including some really odd bridges, but most of the crazy ones you could ride around. i missed a turn at one point and started down a black diamond. after about a hundred yards of extra focused riding, i realized it was way steeper, with lots more roots and rocks than on 103. i was able to stop without crashing and climbed back up. when i got back to sawyer, we took off in the right direction, and found some really lovely riding.
some of the best of that, went across bridges, including my favorite one pictured above. it was a fairly narrow affair, starting at the bottom of a steep s-curve with a smooth curve threading the trees at the far end. directly behind where i took this shot, we stopped for lunch at a ragged tarp over a log table and benches. while eating, we also got out the paper map and fired up the app trying to figure out a path to take us up as high as we could get before camping. we decided on trying the health trail which ended just across the logging road from the end of 103.
we finished lunch and 103 quickly, and hit a logging road going up past the end of health, headed for its start. turns out that riding on a road, even a rough one, was much faster than riding single track. hence, we overshot the established top end of health and didn't stop until we found a new section, a mile or more further up.
we tried that new section, but found it was wicked sketchy with more pushing than riding, even though most of it was downhill. the picture at left shows the start of it, just off the logging road--the barely developed, overgrown path should have given us a clue to what it was like in the woods. we turned back sooner than the last false start. and continued up on the old four wheel drive roads.
we got back onto a single track called the wagon trail which took us even higher to an enormous, ameoba-like clearcut. the picture shows only one of the psudopods, maybe a 10th of the whole. the trail meandered across the opening, sometimes on skidder roads, other times through those lethal blackberries, until sharply veered off and dropped us back into the woods. given the time and where we were, we decided to camp high, and blast down and out to the road in the morning.
this time we set up a cool sawyer-made tarp--another small detail he pulled out of a little bag--to cook under as it was already spitting rain. we cooked and ate, brewed and drank, heartily and mostly dry. after we cleaned up we scouted about for sleeping sites. not surprisingly, flatness for tent and bivy were at a premium. soy ended setting up right beneath the tarp and i found a spot just beyond a huge blowdown a few feet away. brushing our teeth and hanging the food bag brought us to dark and a steadier rain, so we crawled in with minimal chatting.
as we lay there waiting for sleep, the rain increased along with the wind. i did not have my anemometer with me--being the big picture guy, i had unpacked it as 'extra' back at the airbnb--and anyway, would have had to climb one of the giant trees to get a maximum reading. but from my experience, we were dealing with some really strong wind, up in the storm, whole gale force winds category. i decided setting the tent next to the large diameter blowdown was a wise choice as it would take the brunt of a tree that got blown over. unless a branch ran me through, i would be safe--enough.
soon after these comforting thoughts, a light appeared outside the tent and sawyer voiced his concern. "i just reset the tarp so it wouldn't dump the gallons of water it was collecting on me, but if things get really desperate, is there enough room in there for me?" it was a solo tent, but how could i say anything but "sure"--he's my only son, flesh and blood, and all that. we would make it work. i never heard from him again and managed to sleep fairly well, again with only one pee break, albeit a wet and windy one.
the morning was pretty murky, the forest floor littered with tree detritus, but it was not raining too hard and the wind had calmed considerably. as i was boiling the water for cereal, soy emptied--as in dumped out--his bivy bag of at least a pot full of rain. thank goodness he had a thick pad for a float, and that it never got really cold. we finished cooking our oatmeal, emptied the 'nutbag', and filled our stomachs. that definitely made us feel good and ready for the last day's decent.
all packed, things even wetter--and heavier--than yesterday, we started out toward upper tube and the downhill rush we had planned. soon enough the wagon trail took us to the top of upper tube and we dropped in.
it had all the promises of downhill singletrack, berms, series of berms, drops, launches, the only thing i don't remember were bridges, but it went fast and i may have missed them. we emptied out onto the logging trail we had taken the day before. our big smiles only grew as we rolled back into the woods onto lower tube. too soon, given the joy of flying through the woods, we popped out onto another logging road. it was there we met with the aftermath of last nights wind and had to drag the bikes and ourselves under a large aspen blowdown. around the corner, somebody had already cut out another big maple. trees in the roads were definitely getting thicker and we were happy to duck back into the woods again. but at downhill speed, that only lasted a while.
onto the main trunk road, our speed only increase all the way down to hwy 101, the paved road on the sunshine coast. there across the street we spotted a bus stop--how convenient.
when the next bus came along, we 'front loaded' the bikes, dropped in some change, and sat down satisfied. at this rate we would make the 10:30a ferry and be able to get back to north vancouver by 3:00p, our witching hour to return the rental bikes.
the rest of the bus ride and on the ferry we both said, the only thing that could have been better, was an additional week, or month, or year, maybe even endless...that would be sweet!
No comments:
Post a Comment