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bikes canada general trip reports

Singletrack6 – Day 1 & 2

Back in the middle of winter, I entered into a competition by Tourism Golden, to win entry into the Singletrack6 MTB stage race. It was going to be the replacement for the old epic Transrockies bike race from Fernie to Canmore. Just with a lot more sleeping in town, a lot less mud, shorter days, and much much more singletrack. But still six days of bike racing.

Then when we were on holiday down in Bend, I found out I’d won it. And I was a little bit scared, but quite a lot excited.

Day One – West Bragg Creek. 42km, 1500m gain
The event started over on the West Bragg trails. We arrived super early, so I’d have plenty of time to check in. Checking in took 30 seconds. So we spent some time throwing rocks in a creek, and messed around, until all of a sudden it was time to be getting into the starting corale, and I had left it a little late, and crammed in somewhere towards the back of the mid-pack.

The customary ACDC Highway to Hell played over the speakers, and then I spent a lot of the first ten minutes trying to overtake as many people as I could before we hit the singletrack. Where I was stuck. In a slooow slooow singletrack train. It did eventually thin out though – especially once we started climbing up Pneuma!

Things were going pretty smoothly, except I’d started to lose my lower gears – the chain just wouldn’t want to sit in granny gear. I wondered what could be wrong, and whether I’d be able to get my bike seen by a mechanic that afternoon, until somewhere along Strange Brew, my back wheel fell off. Ah. So apparently that’s a thing with the new hollow axles – they can be too dry, and they’ll work their way out, until your wheel will drop out. Fitting my wheel back on fixed the issue with the gears though – hurrah!

I’d lost some time messing around though, and was overtaken by another solo female – although I could out-climb her, she totally outclassed me on the descents, and so as we dropped back down towards the finish line, I didn’t have a hope of catching her. Especially after I ran into a tree with one kilometre to go. Well, the end of my right handlebar ran into a tree. My bike took this as a sign that I wanted to hug the tree. So I did, before picking us both up and continuing.

Day 1 down – that wasn’t so bad! I’d tried to take it as easy as I could – my first real multi-day event, who knows how it would go.

Day Two – Nipika. 42km, 800m gain
Ah, Nipika, my old nemesis. Actually I’d only ridden here once before. Although my memories of it were vague, I was haunted by a sense of not wishing to return. Once we started racing it all came flooding back to me. Nipika is rough! If it’s not rooty it’s rocky. And if there are no roots or rocks, there is constantly uneven ground, so you can never just easily sit and spin to cover distance – you have to fight for Every Single Metre. And for my spinners legs, it’s a challenge. They’re not great at pushing over that kind of terrain.

On the plus side, it is beautiful though.

We started this day in waves of 10, based on the results of the previous day. I was in around the ninth wave, so got to watch some of the fast kids taking off before I set off – and met someone who rode the same awesome bike that I do! She was riding in a mixed pair, and they were the beginning of a collection of riders I ended up getting to know, just because we kept a pretty similar pace each day.

Things got warm, legs kept spinning. I spent most of the last 20km just dreaming of the nice cool pond back at the finish line.

Once I hit the finish line, it was straight to the pond, feeling a little in need of a hug. I’d caught the ST6 bus out to Nipika that morning – just me, my bike and my duffle bag, out to take on the world on our own, while my menfolk stayed home. But it’s a little lonely, doing a big multi-day race on your own. Although I ended up meeting a whole lot of awesome people, it would be really fun to do a race like this with some friends you knew beforehand too.

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bikes canada general

24 Hours of Adrenalin 2014

Another year of riding with one of the teams from work – Go Team!

After all the setting up, and excitement, and hoards of lycra-clad fools running in bike shoes, it was back to the same old rhythm of sit and wait. And cheer. And eat food. And catch up with people. And get ready.

I was up third in the team order this time round. The weather was ok. A bit warm and dusty during the day, but a little rain late in the night and early in the morning settled the dust down.

By the time each of us had done one lap, we had settled into second place in our category. By the end of the night we had even more definitely settled into second place. First was out of reach, with quite a few riders who could put down faster times than us. We were equally comfortably ahead of the third place team though. As a result, the whole thing was a lot less tense than last year, where we were hanging onto first place by just minutes. It also helped that the race hadn’t come on the back of one month of fairly intense flood disaster and recovery.

Thanks to the quirks of fate (involving peanut butter cookies, and perhaps insufficient peanut butter cookies) I ended up riding five of the 22 laps our team finished with. But thanks to the lack of immediate competition, I got to slack off a little on my last lap, so this year I was able to walk around and function like a normal person-coloured human being when I was finally done.

No tragedy, no drama, just a fun bike race. And I didn’t win the slowest lap award this year!

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Mount Assiniboine Redux: Day Four

Day Four dawned, another clear day with warm weather. Marvel Lake campground is a little dark and claustrophobic, so I didn’t mind escaping it. The boy was very unimpressed with the fact he had to leave his friend behind though.

He did cheer up a little when he discovered all trail signs had a chocolate button at the top though. You get someone (Lincoln) to lift you up so you can push the button, and then you get chocolate! Hurrah!

The trail widened to double track in to time, and we started working the child entertainment mojo. With some good trail breaks in there to keep everyone happy. It was blissfully cloudy for some time, for which we were all thankful, but still pretty warm.

At one point, the boy discovered that my backpack had a turbo button. Press it, and I had to (reluctantly, and with flailing arms) run for 10 – 15 metres. He took to this with great relish. Everyone else seemed to have some sort of turbo button as well – although they worked with varying degrees of effectiveness.

The boy stole a flower flicker and claimed it as his own though, beginning to pore over it with great interest.

When you’re hiking in this sort of weather, every lake is for swimming. We discovered just how shallow Watridge Lake is though, it’s possible to walk across the entire thing. And there’s so little current that footprints of others remain for some time.

It was at Watridge Lake that we were finally caught by the boy’s friend, and he enthusiastically joined her in identifying flowers for the final walk out to the car park – hurrah!

The final section was, as always, a bit of a slog. And, as always, raised many questions as to why the signage does nothing more than tell you that you’re on a road. We know that we’re on a road! It’s a large straight road! It’s blindingly obvious! What we would quite like to know, is how far it is to the carpark. Or the lake. Or both.

But we did it! And the boy did it! And none of us went mad and strangled any of the others after the three hundredth rendition of the bear hunt song! The weather and views and company were wonderful, even if the mosquitos were not. And although I wouldn’t recommend a 3.5 year old as a hiking partner to anyone planning to cover long distances, I was pretty pleased we managed to cover our 15 kilometres a day. Next time, I won’t underestimate just how much tasty bribery food would be ideal though.

Hiking distance: 14.5km
Distance covered by small child: 14.5km plus additional running to and fro and general gallivanting metres
Flowers species identified: 23
The 2010 version: Here

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Mount Assiniboine Redux: Day Three

Alex got up early this morning, and headed out to hike up the Nublet with a couple of others. I bravely guarded our tent from intruders in his absence.

This is the photo you can get if you hike up the Nublet for sunrise though:

We got going in a semi-organised kind of way, although the boy’s enthusiasm wasn’t high first thing in the morning.

He spent plenty of time sitting on the ground and complaining about tired legs for the first kilometre – we weren’t too concerned though, as they promptly got better and were good for running as soon as anything interesting happened.

We ended up taking it pretty easy that morning though. First there was a prolonged break to throw rocks at the majestic scenery.

Which turned into wandering around naked in the lake for those of us under the age of five.

That was followed by lots of running along boardwalks, and then watching fish swim up a stream. Alex tried going trout tickling, but failed to catch us one for dinner, despite some fairly amusing fish stalking attempts.

We were amazed by how beautiful the Wonder Pass trail was though, especially in comparison to Assiniboine Pass which we’d hiked over last time. We had gone that way because we thought it was shorter, but I’m not even sure it is shorter! And even if it is, a trail is much easier to hike along if you have wonderful things to stare at.

Speaking of wonderful things to stare at, a helicopter flew overhead at one point. The picture below captures the boy going “Wow! Coool!” as the helicopter went by. His excitement quickly transformed into terror as the helicopter kept flying back and forth, getting closer and closer to us. After that close call, we armed ourselves with sticks, just in case any other helicopters tried to get us.

The awesome scenery continued, as did the slow pace. But we had Lincoln with us this time, which helped keep the small person a little more entertained.

And there were lots of streams and bridges to stop at. Right towards the top of the pass we came across an enormously fat and content marmot. He hopped off one rock, then belly-flopped and wiggled his way onto another, before continuing to lazily sun himself. Marmots seem to have their life priorities sorted.

As we crested Wonder Pass, we found a nice breezy spot with a bit of shade to stop for lunch. Oops, we still had a long way to go, better pick up the pace!

Setting off after lunch, we realised that the others had lunched just a few hundred metres ahead of us. But we quickly lost them as we hiked down towards Marvel Lake.

There were some exciting snow patches to cross, and snow balls to be thrown.

But then the switchbacks began. Back and forth, back and forth, singing the Bear Hunt song again and again and again (“Uh oh, chocolate!… We can’t go round it. We can’t go under it. We’ll have to eat our way through it!”) The day got warmer, and the lake got tantilisingly closer.

Eventually the path stopped descending, and instead traversed along above the lake, taunting us with its glittering blue presence, so close yet so far.

Every stream crossing the trail became an opportunity for a break, and occasionally, for re-filling water containers.

But then we finally caught the others! And their tasty, tasty goldfish crackers.

From then on we hiked mostly as a group until we reached Marvel Lake.

The boy was thrilled to find a friend at this point, in the shape of a very sweet 9 year old girl who was out hiking with her parents. She very patiently listened to him enthuse about trains, and kept pace with him as we walked to the shores of Marvel Lake.

There we stopped to cook dinner, while the new friend kept going. There was much despair for some time, but food heals many issues in life.

Eventually we got up and hiked the final kilometre to the campground, and there was much joy as we set up our tent in the campsite next to the new friend, and went and visited her before going to bed for the night.

Hiking distance: 15.5km
Distance covered by small child: 15.5km plus additional running to and fro and general gallivanting metres
Free cookies: None :(
New friends for the small child: One very sweet nine year old girl from Calgary
The 2010 version: Here

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Mount Assiniboine Redux: Day Two

We emerged from our mosquito-proof shelters into the bug-filled utopia outside.

The day started slowly, as we pretended to be freight cars being towed by various different engines. It’s tricky to walk very quickly when on a narrow trail holding hands.

Golden Valley and Valley of the Rocks were as hot and dry as I remembered them, and took just as long, if not longer, than I remembered them taking to walk through.

Breaks were frequent though – to climb on rocks, to steal goldfish, to give mosquitos a tasty, tasty dinner….

Finally though, the valley started to open up. We were no longer under imminent threat of ambush.

And was that? Could it possibly be? It was Lake Og!

The distance is much easier to cover when there’s a nice cool lake in sight. There may have even been a little galloping along the trail so we could hurry up and jump in for a swim.

The water was perfect.

And the breeze by the lake wasn’t too bad either.

After Lake Og the Evilmoose Family were on their own until we reached Assiniboine Lodge. This created some challenges in child motivation, as we’d run through most of the entertainment options we could think of by now.

Necessity is the mother of invention though – or something like that. And so we were trains, and planes, and helicopters, and animals, and we spent much time discussing cakes and birthdays.

There was a stop to climb onto The Rock in the meadow, and then the boy attempted to carry Mama’s pack. “Too heavy!”

This trail keeps seeming like it will be over, and then isn’t. But that’s always more likely to happen when you’re travelling at 2km/hr.

But then we reached Assiniboine Lodge! They had a telescope, and cookies, and cold drinks, and everyone else was there, and we were nearly at the campsite! And Lake Magog was JUST THERE! And Mount Assiniboine was JUST THERE!

The final walk to the campsite wasn’t too bad – it involved a lot of sticks and bridges, and then once we arrived at camp, the two small people went to play in their mosquito-free haven while we all set up camp again.

A few of us headed down to the lake to cook dinner. The boy threw rocks…. and then tried to help filter some water for us. It was a bit tricky for a small boy with small hands. The view from the lake was as gorgeous as ever though, and like last time, we had perfect weather.

Hiking distance: 16km
Distance covered by small child: 16km plus additional running to and fro and general gallivanting metres
Free cookies: One for each of us, courtesy of the lovely people at Assiniboine Lodge who were very impressed by a small boy with big strong legs.
The 2010 version: Here