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.