The biggest DirtChix ride of the season, so far. Thanks for the invite and thanks to Phil for putting on his skirt and joining the DirtChix to take some pictures. 16 fine girls and 1 photographer were out for the ride, which slowly broke into a few groups so the faster girls could ride ahead. Only one really good tumble not sure who won the dirtiest girl award but I tried rolling around in the dirt but that didn’t work. Thanks to Dana for organizing a great ride. Check out some of the pictures below from the ride.
Here is the latest video angle we are trying with the hero camera. It’s pretty good it gives you a new look on the trails. We shot this video up in the Juniper area of Kamloops late in the evening. Super fun riding up there. Enjoy.
Do you want to go riding in Salmon Arm? Hell’s ya!! It’s hard to believe it’s mid April for the past how many years riding in April meant wearing lots of layers and piece mealing a trail together. NOT NOW, for Phil and Grace it means great climbs, awesome trails and lots of sunshine.
There were 12 of us riding; the climbing was awesome as we pounded our way up to the top of the hill where we rested so the group could catch up. Cruising down the other side with some dips, berms and gates. At the bottom was a bike trials and jump park. Time for some pics and a snack and the dreaded climb awaits. Watch out for Phil the creepy guy along the trail taking pics of everyone else riding, well not really creepy.
Reaching the top again and awaiting the arrival of the rest of the group was a great time to work on our tan. Did someone say DOWN, WOW that was amazing the down was filled with tight corners fast descents, more corners, trees, rocks and GATES!!! what a rush we loved it. Just another day in paradise. Thanks to everyone for letting us tag along can’t wait for next week.
A perfect day for a run in the mountains, Grace and I got up early and got out for an early start on Ribbon Creek Trail before all of the walkers got going. We ran the 8.4km trail into the falls campground, where we stopped for a quick bite to eat and some pictures of the falls. The weather was starting to turn for the worse so we decided to turn around and run out instead of continuing onto the Lake. On our way back out we stopped at all of the beautiful areas on the trail where you could get good shots of the river and the falls. In all we couldn’t have asked for a better day for running and taking pictures in the mountains. Check out the photo album to see all of the pics from the run. Click here to see all of the picture or click on either of these image.
Grace and I decided it was time to get out and do some hiking and camping. After months of only biking we needed out and we wanted it to be remote. We didn’t have a lot of time so we decided camping on top of Jumping Pound Summit would cover everything we needed. 2.5 km hike, you get to camp above treeline, and almost guaranteed not to have any company.
Here is a stop motion video of us setting up our tent.
We quickly realized that night why we should not camp on the very top of a baren rocky mountain. The thunder and lightening storm was amazing. Lying in the tent it was not amazing it instead induced panic. We had no other option other than to lie there and count how many seconds between the flash and the bang. As it got closer I felt my panic level increase. At some point it must have stopped because I woke up early in the morning to one of the most amazing windstorms I have ever been in.
The wind made it very cold on the top of the mountain however we were toasty warm since we had taken our Mountain Hardwear Phantom Jackets to keep us warm. We ate our breakfast and packed all of our gear and got ourselves out of there.
Another training night for Intermontane Challenge – Tonight was the perfect night we arrived at the trail about 7:30pm and did a few trail running photo shots for Ann Corbett from Defeet so we ran up and down Elbow Valley hill into Canyon Creek Trail. As Phil was running up the last time some mountain bikers were coming down so he jumped out of the way as it were we knew the riders so we took some great pics of them as well.
Now on to our mountain bike hill repeats of the gravel road upto ‘You Shoulda’ then a sweet fast ride down. We started riding at about 8pm the sun perfectly in our eyes for the first hill repeats as we climbed up the hill which is pretty steep our sunglasses were fogging up with the heat and working pretty hard putting on a good pace to the top trying to get in 2 hill repeats before dark. Finally at the top ready for the fun part Phil attaches the Go Hero camera to his handle bars and I go first down the trail as he follows I try to keep my glasses clear on the way down so I didn’t have to stop and so I don’t crash. What a rush we make it to the bottom pretty fast with a burn in the legs and arms we come to the end of the down so it’s time to go back up again.
One more hill repeat this time we come across a deer and take a quick stop to say hi and then back on our pound up the hill also a fast ride trying to beat the sun going down. Reaching the top is always the best part until you go down and down once again a great trail and a great rush just watch those tight corners.
We finished the ride at 9:10 so a great night for a ride and for hill repeats – just as we got home the lightning and thunder started and the rain and hail was pretty crazy.
An awesome weekend of riding. Saturday we rode 65 kms. We started out on Little Elbow Trail, after a 20 km gradual climb we got to the summit elbow pass. We were surprised to see how much snow was still in the backcountry. We had planned on riding over Misty Range however with all of the high water and snow around we decided we would be best to just ride to to Elbow Lake and back on Big Elbow Trail. We got to Elbow lake and had some food to refuel before turning around and heading back towards Big Elbow Trail. The second half of this ride was a lot more fun. Lots of fun rolling hills and some fun tight single track. We got back to the car after 5 hours of riding. We then jumped into the Elbow River to cool down our legs.
On sunday we decided we would go out and ride the new trail we just recently found called You Shoulda. The trail is a perfectly flowing trail. To get onto this trail it requires a 2.5 kilometer climb up a gravel road. The trail is so worth the climb up the gravel road. We took some photos of shots of us on the burms on the trail. We rode the trail twice. The second time we didn’t stop for photos we just rode the trail nice and fast hitting all the burms and killing the single track sections in between. I am so happy and thankful to the people who built this trail. I am very happy to see good fun trails being built out in Bragg Creek area.
Once again Chuck from Intermontane was nice enough to take us out for another ride on another section of the Intermontane Challenge course. We went out early Tuesday morning, we met at Chucks place and carpooled over to the trail head. Once again another smoking hot day in Kamloops. We started off with about 10 – 15 minutes of road riding from the parking lot over to the trailhead.
Once we started up the trail there was no rest from the relentless climb to the top. We climbed for about an hour on a completely exposed doubletrack road. I think Chuck was trying to wear us down by putting us in the heat. It worked, we could barely keep up and could not keep the sweat out of our eyes. We finally reached the singletrack trail, we thought that we must be close to the top at this point. Not a chance we climbed for another hour in the heat on a singletrack trail to the very top of the mountain. The views of Kamloops and the surrounding areas was amazing. We attempted to climb the wall but only I was able to make the climb, but Grace and Chuck put in a tremedous effort.
We stopped and took lots of photos, I used photography as an excuse to not continue riding and so I could get a rest. We started our descent down a fun piece of singletrack with some steeper sections Grace whimped out and walked a few as she’s not quite used to this kind of riding yet. The rest of the singletrack was among small brush and rocks where Chuck took photos of Grace and I going down the rock garden. At the bottom of the rock garden the trail turned into double track which was fast, fun and very dusty. There was more singletrack awaiting which was a fun swooping trail.
Back to the road to end our ride with a few minutes of road we were back at the truck. A great day and a great ride guided by Chuck from www.Intermontanechallenge.com. This race is going to be hot that’s why they call it the challenge it’s not just the riding. It’s Everything.
We were to meet Mike L’s group at 8:30 am to start the ride so the alarm went off at 5:30 am that was the worst part of the day but we needed to have our green shake before we left for the ride. It took a while to wake up but after packing all are our stuff and Phil made some energy drinks for the ride we were on our way by 7:20am.
We arrived early to Sulphur Springs trailhead and Steve K happened to be riding today as well although he had his own group and they left before us but that won’t be the last time we’d hear from him. Everyone else started to arrive for Mike L’s group and altogether there was 8 of us.(AJ, Deano, Mike, Aldo, Cal, Michelle and us) The morning was cool as the sun was not shining through the clouds yet so we put on our leg and arm warmers but we warmed up very quickly.
The ride started the same as yesterday with a quick ride to the snow and then a long walk in knee deep snow as we slowly started to climb the snow went away and the trail was drier. The first of the killer climbs took most riders by surprise and there was a bit of walking but everyone made it to the top. Phil once in awhile would speed on ahead and setup to take pictures of all of us. Click on the link at the bottom to see the album of pictures.
Our group soon caught up to another group and now there was 12. We reached the switchbacks and had a fast ride down with brakes squeeling and dust flying. At the bottom of the switchbacks there was Steve K’s group. Now there were 15 our group was growing as the day went on. As we cruised to a finish of the first lap it was decided that we do the lap in reverse and take Moose Mtn Road upto the the turn to the switchbacks and at the bottom of the switchbacks we went straight which took us flying down to the main road where we finished the ride out on Riverview trail and hammered back to the parking lot.
This was an amazing day for a ride it’s the first day of warm weather. Thanks to Mike L’s group for a great ride it was nice to ride with some other people as we train for our race next weekend. Hopefully we will have SPOT with us so you can follow us online for our race.
Well our weekend started out perfectly. Saturday afternoon bikes loaded, bags packed with energy balls and our new homemade energy drink (recipe coming soon). We drove out to Bragg Creek admiring the fresh painting of snow on the mountains. When we got to Station flats parking lot we found a few people and cars there but not too many. We quickly got geared up and got out onto the trail. Within ten minutes we hit snow and alot of it. We started the death march through the snow heading up towards the big climb. Once we started into the big climb the snow quickly disappeared and left us with a nice dry dusty track. We hammered up the hill passing a few recreational bikers on the trail. We quickly got to the top of Sulpher Springs, we ate one of the new lemon cranberry energy balls and took off over the edge down into the switchbacks. At the bottom we turned left and headed towards some more climbing. We passed some more bikers on the climbs again and then got to the top of the final decent, one last look at the mountains and it was all downhill from there. We finished off our first lap in 1.5 hours which wasn’t bad concidering the snow we had walked through. We decided another loop was in order.
This time we thought it would be fun to mix it up a bit and take the Riverview trail to finish. We hauled along the riverview trail bouncing off the boulders like we were in a pinball machine. We quickly finished Riverview trail and popped out into Paddys Flat’s Campground. Being May long weekend you could smell the campfires and bbq’s as we rode out of the campground and back onto the trails. We quickly got back to the parking lot and had some food while we contemplated getting up early Sunday morning to do the same thing over again with Mike L. bike group.
The biggest DirtChix ride of the season, so far. Thanks for the invite and thanks to Phil for putting on his skirt and joining the DirtChix to take some pictures. 16 fine girls and 1 photographer were out for the ride, which slowly broke into a few groups so the faster girls could ride ahead. Only one really good tumble not sure who won the dirtiest girl award but I tried rolling around in the dirt but that didn’t work. Thanks to Dana for organizing a great ride. Check out some of the pictures below from the ride.
