Mt Washington

My big Sister is turning 50 some time this week. A camping trip had been arranged for the celebration. I came over a day early and as much as my mom wished I had come over to paint her fence, Mt Washington has remain unchecked of my list for too long now. Especially considering how much time I spend on the Island.
I like to ride with friends but a solo exploratory can be fun too. I woke up at 5am on thursday to take the ferry to departure bay. I got to the hill plenty early to get my lift ticket sorted out.
The weather was mixed bag. Usually cold, sometimes sunny and Raining hard for a while towards the end.

I have no action shots. Just a few trail pics and opinions.
Trail Log:

1. Big Brother
2. Big Brother
3. MMT
4. Hustler
5. Time Warp
6. MMT into lower Helter Skelter
7. MMT into Crusher
8. Time Warp into MHC
9. Big Brother
10. Wizard into Evil Eye
    
11. Helter Skelter
12. Hustler
13. Scratch n' Sniff (Eagle Hill)

It's good to get out and try new hills. Mt Washington has 2 chair lifts running. One up to Hark and the other is Eagle. The Eagle hill goes higher up but only has 2 marked trails on it. Most of the riding is on Hawk and most trails take less than 10 minutes to get down. I guess I could compare the hill to a gnarlier version of the Cypress bike park, for those of us who got to ride it.
It took me around 5 hours of saddle time to log the first 12 laps. After you eliminate the green trails which are too easy and the 2 trails that may be too difficult, you can really find yourself repeating the same laps quite a few times in a day. Normally thats not a problem.
But a few of the trails on the hill seem to clone each other, or at least give off the same vibe. A few times I found myself thinking, "well this trail is a lot like Crank it up with a little B-line and Devils Club mixed in."
These peer drops on Evil Eye are about as close the Schleyer goodness as I found on the Hawk hill.
I decided to take my bike over to the Eagle lift for the last rip of the day. A trail called Scratch n' Sniff is a fair bit similiar to Angry Pirate. If you stop in the right place, a hand full of Whiskey Jacks come right up to you to see if you have any food.

The Eagle hill is still mainly for hikers, which is too bad because the Eagle hill has the right amount of distance on it for trails that you cant get bored of by ripping over and over again in a day. If they take some of what they are doing on the little hill and move it over to the big hill, it would make for a bit improvement to the bike park.
I'm still looking for riding on the Island that makes me want to move there. So far, the mainland has a better version of everything over there. And I haven't even ridden Squamish or Pemberton yet.
Camping was on the agenda for Friday and Saturday night. A nice, family oriented park at Rathtrevor beech. Pat makes it to 50. Seems like not so long ago, she was my big sis and Natalie, Ian and I were all kids being mean to each other.

The Chilcotins Trip, 2010

Ina planned our trip for the August long weekend. Craig did his usual excellent job of guiding his friends through a few choice trails in the South Chilcotins. On the Map, Pemberton shows up as being about half way to Gold Bridge, near where we were staying. Not actually the case. I was foolish to think 2 hours and I was mostly done.

I found Kevin at a Pizza place up in Pemby around 4:30. I followed him through Lillooet and arrived at our Cabin around 9:30 friday night. It was a drive over gravel roads, and high places with high prices of failure for missing a turn. But it got us to Tyoughton Lake on Mt Tyax. The group, 9 of us in all would spend a lot of time on that deck, drinking bevies and recovering from a few tough days of riding.
Craig is a big fan of "Acclimatization Rides". 1 day to get your lungs to capacity for the trip. Day one would be an epic trek over Camel pass.
Yes, thats Marylin on the left. Not originally part of the plan, but her fam has a cabin in the area and she just happened to be around. Turns out, Patti, Dale and Bryan came up to celebrate Bryans 40th. Marylin went with us on this trip so she could lead her group on it again the next day. And then they had the Warner Lake trip on Monday. Marylin was at the head of our group the whole way, and prolly the other 2 trips as well.
We all rode as much as we could. My XC bike is out of commission so I borrowed a G-Spot proto from the bike shop. I was kinda glad to have an excuse not to ride up the whole thing.
We found our way to the Cabin at the half way mark and stopped for lunch. Then we started soldiering on towards the pass.
Snow on the last day of July.
And a tough push up a hill as grey clouds glowered over us.

Craig had originally planned a different day one for us. But forest fires in the area put a kybosh on that so he had to think quick to come up with this one.

We made it to the saddle and started down. Unfortunatly, the trail had a lot of dead fall and trees on it. After a tough push up the hill we had a low flow, and short ride back down to the vehicles.

Im not complaining though. The views were Epic.
The Jewel of the trip was a Float plane ride up to Warner lake and a 40k trek back. The weather could not have been better. Warm with cool breeze. We had rain at the cabin the day after(Thinking of team Marylin) and figured we must have done the trip on 'the' day of the year to do it.

This is us taking off from Lake Tyoughton.

Thats the plane at the 'dock' on warner lake. Our Pilot, Dale, was a man of few words and less sense of humor. But he touched us down on that lake just like a baby.
We started the ride. Some pushing up but a net loss of altitude of around 2700 ft. Maybe the best ride I have been on this year, and that includes porcupine rim in Utah.
I didn't get as many pics as I'd like. I'm waiting for Craig, Kevin and Bob to post up theirs so I can add em.





The ride ended around 10k after this shot of the river was taken. I had brought a beer with me and kept it to myself. I made the mistake of telling Lee I had it and towards the end of the ride he ratted me out. I ended the trip with a 6k mad dash to the end like a mother protecting its young. I made it in and cracked it open. I shared with the first few riders to get in. Tracy missed out though. Not sure I'll ever get back in her good books. Hehe.
Monday was a rest day for most of us. Craig and Kevin went out for a 6 hour exploratory of some ridge line about an hour away. They returned to report they had managed 14 minutes of saddle time in that. I was glad to have the day off.

We had our last day of riding in Bralorne, about 45 minutes up the road. A trail called Alphagetti. It was a hard push up for most of it. But a respectable 45 minute decent on loam.
I had the feeling these trails had seldom been ridden on. And will the number of people in the area, how difficult it must be to forge trails like this in this environment.
I saw my first bear on this ride too. A small black bear. Then a second on the way home with Tracey and Lee.
I wouldn't hesitate to do this trip again. Warner lake was epic and fun riding. Alphagetti would make a good primer too.

Edit: I dug out a few more shots. Here in no order:

Day 2: Warner Lake

Day 1: Camel Pass