Squamish and Whistler

Thanks to Jim and Claire Harvey for sharing your awesome place with us!

Sarah catching a wee-bit of air on Crank it Up a scary-not-too scary trail.

Since early spring we've had a trip to Whistler BC planned with our biking friends, Joe and Marie Klemmer. The Whistler area is one of the biking meccas of the Northwest and Joe and Marie could not say enough good things about the place. We rented a condo in Whistler village for the week and planned to do some rides in Squamish on the way up. With riding lifts uphill and a Whistler village condo in my mind, I have to admit I didn't expect a trip of character building rides and continuous challenge. After riding in Rossland, I knew the riding in Canada would be challenging but I don't think I was prepared for the continuous technical riding favored by masochistic Canadians. Even the cross country trails were hard. So was the route finding. We were lucky enough to meet a couple from Squamish while in Rossland and they invited us to stay in their bunk house on their awesome property on our way up to Whistler. I have to admit, I could have spent the week in Squamish. With biking trails right out our door, bears wandering through the yard and a great pool, it was hard to leave. It was also nice to have Jim and Claire as guides as we were quickly learning that route finding in Canada wasn't always easy, it seemed that the trail builders were faster than the map makers.

After two days in Squamish (and a trip back down to the Bellingham ER for Marie and Joe, as Marie took a serious fall and needed stitches and x-rays which were much cheaper in the US) we headed up to Whistler. This is where the gnar began and this is where I quit having fun every day and had to remind myself that I was on vacation and not all vacations were easy. Here are a couple of things you need to know about Whistler:

1. Whistler hosts one of the first lift access bike parks. This means we stick our bikes on the lift (after paying resort type prices), follow them up and then ride down trails build specifically for going downhill. I'll get into what this really means in a bit.

2. People from all over the world come to the Whistler bike park. Actually, I shouldn't say people, I should say young men (and a few girls) who need the adrenaline rush to make their lives worth living.

3. The Whistler bike park is like no other place I've been. There are train cars to jump. Everything is BIG and STEEP and everyone jumps high and flails their legs about while in the air expect the flailing is planned and they look cool.

4. This is not a place to fall. I slid down a berm the first day and that hurt. I slid down the berm because I was going too slow. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to fall going fast. As you can see we do have pads on and gnarly full faced helmets, but there's only so much a pad can do.

5. The girls are really amazon men-women. Not only do they look bigger because they're wearing pads but the ride some big shit. I think they all also play hockey. I fell somewhere in between these amazon men-women and the girls in short shorts on rentals or the girls who just followed their boyfriends up to please them but realized they were in way to deep and went REALLY SLOW (I'm not in this category, if I wanted to please Jarred I would have been hucking myself off of big jumps, he's not easily pleased.)
6. The cross country trails are much like the park trails, but with uphill options. We spent one morning doing a hike-a-bike to a good trail via a double black diamond trail that no human should ever ride. By the time we got to the good trail we were all so grumbly about having to walk, I'm not sure we even had fun. We did find some great trails, we just had to be ready to ride technical terrain ALL THE TIME.

7. Adventure Maps have not caught on in Canada. Adventure Maps are the bikers savior in the United States. They're waterproof and accurate and only $11. In Canada we got overpriced paper maps, maps that looked like place mats at a cheap restaurant and had only highlighted trails, guidebooks that never really gave any information on the actually trail or route finding, maps with missing roads or trails. The map issue combined with the fact that we didn't really know our way around made for some interesting discussions. At one point Joe had a guide book, the place mat map and a purchased map out and none showed the trail in the same manner.

While I'm now able to be reflective and realize I learned a lot and am a better rider, there was many an hour that I cursed Whistler and it's hard trails. I learned that I don't want to be a downhill biker with a 40 lb bike that I have to push up a hill and gear that makes me look like I play a contact sport. I like technical cross country riding much better.

Jarred and the freight car step up.

The bikes and some stunts from Crankworks.

Joe in the mist.

Rossland, Winthrop and Twisp

While Aaron and I hiked backcountry this last winter, he kept telling me, "You really need to visit Rossland BC, the biking is awesome." After Jarred and I decided not to go to Sun Valley, a Rossland trip was in the making. Of course Aaron had to come (even though he had not been on his bike since Feb) to show us the goods. And goods they were. Rossland is a small ski town about 2 hours north of Spokane. While the skiing looked good, the biking was even better. The first great part of the trip was that the camping was literally in town and we had showers. I'm not normally obsessed with showering but after sweating on the bike all day, there's nothing worse than getting into a stewey sleeping bag. Our first ride in Rossland was Whiskey. Not once as we climbed up to the ride did Aaron say,"This trail is tough, you better be ready for some seious downhill." This is what he really needed to say because as we took off down the trail, I realized two things: 1) I wasn't ready for some serious downhill and 2) Canadians are serious about their biking trails. In Washington, we ride trails made for hiking with biking as a second thought. There are some places with quality trails, but every trail in Canada seemed to be made with a biker in mind, good flow, nice turns and lots of rocks.
Our second day we rode the infamous Seven Summits trail (pictured above). The Canadians are also serious about hard rides. Most trails are rated, just like ski runs and I consider myself a decent biker, one who could ride a black diamond trail. I was humbled in Canada...like I said, they're serious about their hard trails. This was the hardest 20 miles I've ever biked. Seven Summits was hard but every corner packed some great riding and it helped that the last five miles was downhill. After three days in Rossland, we decided another trip was needed.

After leaving Rossland, we headed over to Winthrop. Winthrop is beautiful but after spending four days riding trails built for mountain bikers, we were a bit dissapointed in the trail quality as well as the map quality. This would be the start of our quest for a really good map.....of anywhere. After convincing Jarred that I didn't want to ride 5 miles of fire road to maybe get some good single track, we left Winthrop and headed down to Twisp. Here, we found the best alpine trail ever. Washington has pretty strict rules about bikers on high alpine trails. We all dream of poaching trails, or we just go to Idaho or Canada to ride alpine trails, so it was amazing to ride our bikes up to an alpine lake AND get six miles of screaming single track back down to our truck.

Somewhere between Milky Way and another trail. I don't know if we really knew where we were here. Great flowers.

The Milky Way trail....just minutes from downtown Rossland.

Rossland Rocks.

No, We don't Wear These Clothes Every Day

A little camping, a little biking and a little wood gettin'.

This is what 21/2 miles of hike a bike in the snow will do to the running gear.

Sign up at Mt. Hood after climbing Gumjawak. Yes, your tax dollars paid for this sign.

In looking at all of our summer photos, I realized that Jarred and I are wearing the same clothes in nearly all of them. One would also think we go everywhere with our bike helmets on. We really don't but after looking back on summer so far (and smelling my helmet the other day), I think we spend a fair amount of time on our bikes. Here's a quck re-cap of the summer so far. By the way, this was the first summer in nearly 8 years that we've not been in Sun Valley, yes, we miss it but it was fun to explore the Northwest and to get some much needed house work done (more on that in later posts).

Trip #1- Mt. Hood to escape the craze of fireworks and to chop some wood and to ride bikes. I just don't get why people think they need to let of fireworks for the two weeks before and the week after the 4th. And it always seems to be people who really shouldn't be spending money on fireworks because they're on WIC or something. Back to the trip....

Rode in snow for 2 1/2 miles...reminded us that summer wasn't really here even though this was the first hot weekend. Collected wood and after Jarred tried to fell a tree that didn't want to fall and his chainsaw got stuck in the tree and he swore and threw things and finally got the chainsaw off, we rode bikes again.