Whistler MTB – Day 4

Monday, 30 July 2007

Sunny, 22-27C slight breeze

Woke up to the keitai alarm and went back to sleep. It was clear out and looked like it would be good ride weather. I wasn’t hung-over from the Hoegaarten. Breakfast was coffee, milk and cereal, OJ and yogurt. I took the spikes off of the Sidi Dragon II’s and replaced them with the filler screws from my spare old SRS Sidis. This was going to be a long ride day, so I filled the reservoir to ¾ capacity.

We headed out on Main Street, passing the library, still under construction, and South along Northlands Boulevard to Gateway Drive and Whistler Way. Crossing under Highway 99 on the golf course road, we entered the Valley Trail Northbound. After passing the golf course and Whistler Cay, we crossed the River of Golden Dreams and the railroad tracks. At the lower gravel quarry, we entered the Emerald Forest area. Immediately the climbing began. Contouring around the forest along the Southern side along an old doubletrack, we climbed through the cool forest. Various trailheads entered the forest to the right. If I wasn’t already sucking wind, I would have enjoyed the scenic view out over the wetland to the left. Passing the wildflower-covered second quarry, we quickly arrived at the trailhead to A River Runs Through It.

The trail was immediately technical. The first section was downhill along a cut in the hillside with a drop to the left. Yumps and dips, critical wheel stopping roots, and tombstone rocks made me flail and dab. It was a long trials trap. Then the climbing began – evil technical climbing. It seemed that no gear was the correct gear. The long sections were too steep for mid/32, but granny was too low for some of the steep rooty/rocky stuff and the wooden stunts. For the most part, the stunts had no workarounds, as they were built to get over or around unrideable conditions. I rode up one stunt that rose up to a notched tree stump in a too-high gear and ran out of leg torque at the top. I turned the steering to put the front wheel against the ears of the stump notch so I could either dab or backpedal and trials it forward, but ended up high-siding to the right and falling over 1.5-meters to the workaround stunt below, then down into the gap between. I got a bruised ass and a carpet-burn scrape on my right forearm through the jersey, but was otherwise unscathed. I got a good closeup look of the rough-hewn roof-shingle-like planks that the stunts were covered in. Jeff was surprised that I wasn’t cut, splintered, or otherwise shredded from hitting the edge of the planks. A little further on, I found the lone tombstone rock with my front wheel on a long gravel climb and got judo-thrown onto the trail sideways, cranking my right hip on the hardpacked gravel.

Back up to road level, the trail became Bart’s Dark trail through the swampy climb paralleling the Alta Lake Road. Wooden stunts elevated the trail over the worst sections. Reaching the trailhead at the parking area opposite the Rainbow Trail parking area, we entered the second portion of A River Runs Through It. Climbing briefly along an escarpment, I could hear the source of the name of this trail. A narrow hillside cut dropped into a rocky bowl at river level. Instead of making a bee-line for the river, the trail wound through the bowl over a maze of various stunts, the taller ones with workarounds. The river became visible, along with the signature log crossing. The log was large, maybe 3/4ths of a meter in diameter. Set fairly high off the ground on sturdy foundations, the approach and sortie ramps were long so as not to be too steep. Jeff suggested mid/32 and I went with his recommendation. The climb up went fine, but once on the downhill log, I spun out about halfway across. I could see how this could cause panic. I simply stopped pedaling, stabilized, and kept my eyes on the sortie and all went well. The log did narrow toward the end slightly, so the sawcut flat on top decreased in width correspondingly.

Rolling down the sortie ramp, I saw a tripod and someone’s huge pro photo bag. In the trail ahead was a surreal sight – a woman in yoga wear in an upside-down pose between two trees. If it wasn’t for the foreshadowing of the photo bag which made it obvious that it was something like a catalogue shoot, it would have been really weird. As it was, we paid them little mind beyond the initial hellos and had a bar break while they went on with their business.

The trail from this point was fairly level, with some rolling climbs and descents through the forest understory. There were fast twists and turns like Joe’s Black Water in Mililani. It was all midring or higher. We happened upon a teeter-totter, which I rode around once, lined up with, committed to, and immediately rode over once. It was a heart-rate-spiking moment, as this was the first (and only) teeter I rode. The fulcrum was maybe a meter and a half high – not deadly, but definitely painful. We came across other teeters, including a “W” style double, and a sequential double. The consequences of failure were too great for me to even think of attempting these on this second day of riding. This was the gravy part of the trail, and it was all over too quickly. It would probably be good to bypass the first part of the trail and come up on the road and do the second part, then catch the first part of the trail as a downhill on the way back to the village.

Coming out onto the Alta Lake road, we rode down to Rainbow Park on Alta Lake for a bar break. The sun was out and bikini girls were everywhere. I didn’t confirm it, but the beautiful blue lake looked awfully cold. Seeing the beach-like scene up in the snow-capped mountains in Whistler seemed oddly contradictory to someone like me from a subtropical island. As we set out for the next leg of our journey, we saw some bear poop on our way out of the park.

We climbed up Alta Lake Road Southbound as it rose and fell and rose again along the hillside. Reaching Stonebridge, we turned up the newly paved road into the future high-dollar estate subdivision. There were few lots sold and even fewer with anything built on them. The temperature was peaking in the upper 20’s and the heat lingering over the asphalt was oppressive. There was no shade to shield us from the midday sun along the wide roadway. Not knowing how much more climbing we had ahead of us, I dropped into granny ring and milled up the steep climb. As the road briefly decreased in angle and came around a slight left-right chicane, I spotted something near a bridge railing ahead. It was black with a collar of some kind. I thought “dog” for a brief fraction of a second until my sense of scale indicated that the animal’s shoulders were blocking my view of the railing.

“Bear,” I spoke, not yelling. Sara, who was right behind me, saw it as I came to a stop and the adult black bear turned at the end if the guardrail and disappeared up into the treeline. Jeff was far enough behind that he didn’t get to see it. We continued up the road slowly, but when we arrived at the bridge, the bear was long gone. He had either gone up the doubletrack past the bridge, or gone down into the ravine below the bridge. He had probably come down the Southern part of Danimal down onto the road. We continued up the road with a newly refreshed awareness of the proximity of potentially dangerous wildlife. Climbing past the entrance to the Northern part of Danimal, we found the entrance to Beaver Pass. I was happy to be in the shade after the hot grind up the road. The trail immediately became a tightly switchbacked technical climb through tight trees. It quickly came out into the light under the powerlines, but continued to climb, winding through the blueberry bush scrub, before a technical descent down onto an old doubletrack lined with mulberry bushes. We were in berry-land amongst the bears. Great.

At the top of a steep rise, the doubletrack intersected an unfinished driveway. The trail picked up on the other side, up a rough gravel powerline access road. At this point the trail became singletrack, being one of the original two tracks of an old access road. Brush and saplings had grown in onto the road base, but the original width could still be seen, not unlike stuff back home like Waimano Mystery or the Mililani valley trails. Here also the fun part began. A long, fast descent took us down several pitches to a large rock face. At the top there had been a junction, with the main trail to the left, and a side trail straight ahead. As we descended the first pitch, I could see that the straight trail went out along a granite knob, then dropped in, coming left and rejoining the main trail we were on at a log bridge over the stream that bounded the trail on the right.

At the rock face, the trail turned right and out over loose, clinkery shale bits toward the edge of a cliff. A tight left turn put the narrow trail along the cliff edge then down into the trees. There were too many consequences of failure here, so we walked it. Between the loose surface and the yumps and dips in the narrow trail, the potential of going off the cliff edge was too high. Once in the trees, the trail became tight, steep switchbacks and soon popped out onto the Whip Me Snip Me doubletrack. The trail picked up again on the other side, but there was caution tape across the trail entrance. Jeff walked in a little way and said it was more technical switchbacks. We figured it would just do that all the way to the road, so we opted to go North up Whip Me Snip Me and descend further on.

The road rolled along smoothly at first, then began to climb slightly. We passed a really cute Asian girl on an XC/AM bike going in the downhill direction. So those did exist here (Asians and XC/AM bikes). After a slight left turn it began to climb steeper, and just when it seemed that the top of the pitch had been reached, the trail just turned and climbed even more steeply. Once again, my heart rate was almost redlined and my legs were burning. Entering the deep forest, the trail rose alongside a small brook filled with water-loving plants and mosses. The water fell in steps from little pool to the next, making soothing waterfall sounds. The sunlight that managed to break trough the heavy tree canopy above danced along the moving surface of the falling water. Jeff and Sara had both motored past me, leaving me to have this Zen experience by myself, gasping for air, leaning against a tree at trailside. Recovering slightly, I restarted the climb, concentrating on my breathing rhythm – left-right-inhale, left-right-exhale. I ground through the pain and delerium and reached the top of the pitch at the junction with the Rainbow-Sproatt Flank Road.

After a bar break, we descended the sweeping Rainbow Trail to Alta Lake road. We talked with a cyclocrosser from Seattle who was out for a ride on his old Bridgestone MB-5. Heading North on the road, we rode until we reached the gravel road at the bottom end of A River Runs through It and backtracked through Emerald Forest and the Valley Trail to the village.

We had the pool area to ourselves that afternoon. It was still sunny and hot out, so it was difficult to stay in the hot tub for long. It was nonetheless nice and relaxing. Dinner at Brewhouse finished the day. I think we discovered a few winters ago that they no longer have dry ribs on the menu, but I was again disappointed. Had a Big Ass Wheat Beer hefeweisen. It was good with no flavoring adjuncts – the malt flavor was clearly evident. Nice dry finish. We shared some excellent chili-lime wings. After a starter salad, my dinner was the Whistler Special pizza with bacon, mushrooms, peppers, cheddar, mozzarella, and BBQ sauce. I didn’t like the BBQ sauce, but I didn’t expect to beforehand. I think it came out to under $40 CAD with tax and tip… Dessert was a Nestle Rolo ice cream novelty bar back in the condo, followed by some milk and Mountain Dew.

Pictures here

D = 15.12-miles, Vavr = 6.4 mph, Vmax = 29.5 mph, T = 2-hours, 21-minutes