{"id":436,"date":"2007-11-05T17:33:20","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T03:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/05\/whistler-mtb-day-5\/"},"modified":"2007-11-05T17:33:20","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T03:33:20","slug":"whistler-mtb-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/11\/05\/whistler-mtb-day-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistler MTB – Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 31 July 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sunny, 24-28C breezy<\/p>\n

I awoke yet again to the keitai and returned to the comfort of sleep. Considering the physical fatigue I had, I surprisingly wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to sleep straight through the night. I would usually wake up before sunrise and check the clock on the keitai, only to discover that it was still like 03:00. It was hot at night, even with the window open, and the bed wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that comfortable either. Breakfast was pizza muffins, coffee, milk and OJ. Today was going to be a deathmarch, so I filled the reservoir to capacity. The legs were a little tired, but the ass was getting sore from all the saddle time.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Valley<\/a>We left the village like yesterday, but headed South on the Valley Trail at the golf course. The path roughly paralleled the 99, then dropped to the shore of Alta Lake at Alta Vista<\/em>. It climbed along the knoll at the south end of the lake, then dropped down again at the end of the lake and weaved along the valley bottom past Nita Lake<\/em>. Passing all the new construction by the BC Rail Whistler-eki<\/em>, we rode through Alpha Lake Park<\/em> and around the North side of the lake heading roughly West, passing more bear poop. The trail followed the railway along the gravel ballast to Alta Lake road. We crossed the road and followed the tracks briefly to where the trail dropped into the trees and became the Miller Creek Trail<\/em> below the powerlines. Descending alongside several cataracts along the creek, the doubletrack trail descended gradually to water level, at which point the creek overflowed the trail at several points. During the spring thaw, this part of the trail must be under half-a-meter of water. The trail ended at Function Junction<\/em> where we crossed the 99 and headed South toward the future Olympic village.<\/p>\n

\"Riverside<\/a>In years past, the plan would call for riding Trainwreck<\/em> and Trash<\/em>, but the widening of 99 had permanently disturbed these trails. At the bridge over the Cheakamus River<\/em>, we entered the Riverside<\/em> trail. The climbing began. The river itself rose steadily, but the trail along its bank rose and fell from near waterline to the top of the high bank and back down again at the evil whim of the trail builder. The surface was smooth packed gravel and the rolling was easy, but the constant climbing and descending became frustrating. There was a gravel road paralleling the trail and river, which would have been a steady climb, but much less scenic. Reaching the suspension bridge, we took a bar break before continuing on.<\/p>\n

The plan was to find See Colours and Puke<\/em>, a new switchback ascent along the Whistler mountainside. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really clear from the hand-drawn scribble that the bike shop guy drew, other than it was uphill from Highline<\/em>. Crossing the bridge and climbing up to the Cheakamus Lake Access Road<\/em>, we turned uphill to the South. The climb was steep and grueling. Again, since the remaining amount of climbing for the remainder of day was unknown, I dropped granny to conserve energy. The road leveled out after about 100-meters of vertical. We passed the bottom end of Highline<\/em> and continued uphill. After another climb, the road again flattened out. We passed a trailhead marked Hair Straight Back<\/em>. Since it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t match the name of the trail we were given, we continued on. After passing a lookout on the right, the road turned to the left and ahead was a view of a nearly vertical hillside. Wherever this trail we were looking for was, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ahead. It had to be the trail we had seen earlier.<\/p>\n

\"Hair<\/a>Returning to the Hair Straight Back<\/em> trailhead, we again entered the realm of pain and torment. The trail rose as a steep overgrown doubletrack. At what initially seemed to be a right switchback, the road ended and the singletrack began, continuing to the left. In my tired state, the climb was just a little too steep for mid\/32. Also, the trail was brand new, so the surface was soft and draggy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like riding through a thick lawn. I had to run a couple of gears lower than required on a similar broken-in slope, but even then the rolling resistance was higher and my energy was quickly tapped. The further in we got, the steeper the slope became. At one point, I began pushing the steep switchbacks, just riding the less steep straight sections. Near the top, the slope diminished and the trail became more rideable, even with the rough, soft surface.<\/p>\n

Reaching the top, we turned down the lower part of Babylon By Bike<\/em> and descended to the North. The trail was grown in and unused. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear that more than a few riders had used this section of the trail this season. Probably most were coming down to the junction and going down Hair Straight Back<\/em>. Reaching the doubletrack gravel road, we continued downhill, looking for Tunnel Vision<\/em> on the right. We passed a trailhead, but mental momentum and iffy maps made us pass it up and we continued down the road until we found ourselves at the upper Highline<\/em> trailhead. The road we had come down was steep, loose, and rough, and in our tired state, we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to go back up it. We descended Highline<\/em> to the Cheakamus Lake Access Road<\/em>, then dropped back down to the river and took the Farside<\/em> trail on the opposite bank from the Riverside<\/em> trail we had taken uphill. This trail also rose and fell along the riverbank, but since it was generally downhill, it hurt less.<\/p>\n

Popping back out onto the road at the bridge, we backtracked to the village. We ran into cyclocross dude out with his kids on the valley trail at Nita Lake. Right before Wayside Park<\/em> at the South end of Alta Lake, a squirrel tried running across the path. It hesitated when Sara passed, but continued, and then froze again when I approached. I hit it squarely with both wheels. For the road ride back, I had Pro Pedal<\/em> turned all the way up, so all the force went into the squirrel. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look back to see what happened to it, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure it was fatal. My legs and back were spent. The rolling hills on the valley trail required significant downshifting, and the climb up out of Alta Vista was pure hell. My ass definitely wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t my friend anymore. I had nearly used all of the water in my reservoir.<\/p>\n

\"Pasta<\/a>The Asian family was at the pool again when we went down to the hot tub. It was still sunny out, so this combined with the hot tub and my already hot and tired body yielded dizziness and an almost \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shocky\u00e2\u20ac\u009d condition. A cold shower and some cold MD brought me back to normal. Dinner was at Lupino<\/em> Italian restaurant. I had the linguini with meatballs. Dinner included soup or salad and bread. I chose the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moroccan style\u00e2\u20ac\u009d garbanzo and tomato soup. The food was good, homestyle Italian fare and was very reasonable at $15 CAD including tax and tip. We walked up to Cows<\/em> for dessert. I got a sticker for my snowboard and double scoop of Chocolate Mud<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c chocolate ice cream, chocolate chunks, and fudgy slurry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in a cup for $5 CAD.<\/p>\n

Pictures here<\/a><\/p>\n

D = 23.48-miles, Vavr = 7.0 mph, Vmax = 26.1 mph, T = 3-hours, 21-minutes<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 31 July 2007 Sunny, 24-28C breezy I awoke yet again to the keitai and returned to the comfort of sleep. Considering the physical fatigue I had, I surprisingly wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to sleep straight through the night. I would usually wake up before sunrise and check the clock on the keitai, only to discover that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5,8,13,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-72","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}