Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Memorial Adventures

What a weekend! Why can't they all be that long? We also lucked out with the weather in our all star list of events. Saturday morning Aaron, JVG and I headed north to tackle Mt. Galbraith, near Bellingham, and on the approach we thought we would try something new. We had heard about some new trails in Anacortes, near Whistle Lake, and thought we would give them a try...thanks for the idea Kathy! We stopped in Mt. Vernon and picked up some trail maps for $4.99 and headed out for 3.5 hours of good riding. The trails are very well kept and fast. We probably speant over 30 minutes in total looking at our maps to route find our way through the maze of butery trails.

After that Rinn and I hit Galbraith for over an hour of fast paced riding. He broke his seat post on the first feature we rode (horizontal ladder) and stayed out of the saddle for the rest of the ride, good thing most of it was at race pace!

Saturday night we camped near Grouse Mountain...in someone's front yard. We got kicked out of our camping spot at midnight by the grouse mountain parking patrol and headed down the street for some real car camping. We were going to run the Iron Knee trail race from Grouse Mountain to Deep Cove on the Baden Powell trail. It turned out there was no race day registration so JVG and I ran half of it backwards and snapped photos of the runners and Rinn (who was smart enough to pre register) as he passed through. It was a great way to see the race and the trail, which was unbelievably beautiful. We also saw lots of familiar faces from the canadian AR scene and some new faces as well. Lots of cool peeps.

Post trail run we headed up to Whistler for an all out assault on the cross county trail Saturday afternoon and the down hill park on Monday. We hit up Danimal, Bob's re-bob, whip it snip it, and a bunch of other trails that were below the snow level of 3200ft. Monday was an absolute blast in the Whistler Park and we tore it up. We enjoyed all of the trails, I think we had the most fun on the captain insano super tech trails that were made much easier with our rental bikes which had 8 inches of travel up front and in the rear. They were Rocky Mountain RMX's...quality bikes. I was a bit worried about getting injured but made it through with a sore foot and a couple fo scrapes that will go away soon. Only a couple of falls and lots of good times. For any bike rider that has ever thought about hitting Whistler....get up there and check it out. They make such sweet trails and focus so much of their energy on the bike scene it is a must do on your adventure travel checklist.


here is Aaron ripping it up on joyride...big rock drop.






2 comments:

Matt Hart said...

well done! great to see you guys up there sorry we didn't hook up for a ride. next time!

Anonymous said...

Welcome to my neck of the woods. Next time, pick a weekend when I'm actually home damn it!
Glad you had fun!