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| Day 1, England -> Calgary |
| Day 2, Jumping Pound to Cox Ridge MTB ride (Canmore) |
| Day 3, Lake Minnewanka MTB ride (Canmore) |
Day 4, Canmore -> Golden (Canyon Creek MTB ride) |
| Day 5, Golden -> Revelstoke |
| Day 6, Key Stone Standard Basin MTB ride (Revelstoke) |
| Day 7, Revelstoke -> New Denver (Wakefield trail MTB ride) |
| Day 8, New Denver (Various MTB trails) |
| Day 9, New Denver -> Rossland (Wilson Creek MTB ride) |
| Day 10, Rossland (7 summits MTB ride) |
| Day 11, Rossland - > Kelowna (Doukhobor draw MTB ride) |
| Day 12, McDougall Rim MTB ride (Kelowna) |
| Day 13, Kelowna -> Vancouver |
| Day 14, Vancouver -> Pemberton |
| Day 15, Pemberton -> Tyax Lake (High trail MTB ride) |
| Day 16, Warner Lake MTB ride (Tyax Lake) |
| Day 17, Tyax Lake -> Whistler (Taylor Basin MTB ride) |
| Day 18, River runs through it MTB ride (Whistler) |
| Day 19, Comfortably Numb MTB ride (Whistler) |
| Day 20, Thrill me Kill Me & Lost Lake MTB trails (Whistler) |
| Day 21, Ring Creek Rip & Lost Lake MTB ride (Squamish & Whistler) |
| Day 22, Whistler -> Vancouver -> London |
| Holiday Links |
| Canada Holidays |
| Guest Book |
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| I woke up and finished off the last of my cream puffs and east some other stuff for breakfast. As it was the weekend I thought today would be a good day to do the Warner lake ride as more people would be out on the trail. So I went and asked about doing the Warner Lake float plane trip, there was still no flight's going with any spare space, so I had to charter the plane form Tyax Air for just myself. |
I had to wait for two other groups of mountain bikers to be taken up to Warner Lake, and my flight left at 9.20am. |
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It was a fantastic sunny clear day, I'd never been on a float plane before, the take off and landing was very smooth you couldn't tell when the plane left or landed on the water. |
| As we flew up to the Lake, the pilot pointed out the trail, and told me to watch out for one part of the trail where you shouldn't go down. After we'd unloaded my bike the plane fly off leaving me alone by the lake. It was nice and sunny but the airy was still quite cold, I started to ride off along the lake shore trail, being very careful with my riding as i did not want to fall off and injure myself this far out from civilization. |
There were numerous little streams to cross along the trail.
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Warner pass trail SingleTrack
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This was no down hill ride as well as going down there were quite a few up's, as you can see in picture above looking back at Warner lake below me. |
In some places there were quite deep streams to cross, but they usually had log crossings.
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Almost every part of the ride had a kodak moment !!
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| The valley floor dropped away to the right and the trail contoured along several large screen slopes, which were mostly rideable apart from a couple of sections where i pushed rather than risking a tumble on my own. |
In one patch of mud i saw a great big bear footprint, I redoubled my efforts at shouting out loud as I rode along. |
Nice rocky sections of Trail
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From Humming bird Lake the trail entered alpine meadows , it was good to be riding in the open areas as I didn't have to worry about suprise bear encounters so much as it was nice and open. |
I stopped and had some food at the cowboy camp, before heading along the trail towards Spruce lake. |
The riding through the meadows was excellent |
This was the last of my video footage as a combination of altitude and cold temperatures had caused my batteries to run out. This section of singletrack was great smooth and fast through the meadows with super views
Great Alpine singletrack - Video (37 MB)
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I rode up the Spruce Lake main trail to Spruce lake, it was extremely muddy in places where the pack horses had churned up the trail. |
I rode round the lake anti clock wise it was very muddy on the first half of the lake circuit but was much dryer as I came back round. |
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As I came back from the lop of spruce lake, I read my map and headed back the way i had ridden up instead of taking the windy gap trail , and plunged down a hill very steeply before realizing i had gone the wrong way, and had to push my bike back up the hill to take the right turning. |
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| Back at the camp site I took the right turning towards windy gap, before heading down through Gun Creek Meadows, I was very glad I'd realised my mistake and back tracked as the Gun Creek Meadows section of the trail was the best part. Very fast swooping smooth singletrack heading down hill, and dropping through aspen groves. |
| After dropping down through some aspen groves the Gun Creek trail headed down closer to gun creek, and the trees started to get quite big. |
| The vegetation was more dense closer to the river, where I crossed the creek. At this point in the ride the trees closed in and there weren't so many views, and the climbing didn't relent as the trail climbed up away from the creek again. I passed one of the earlier groups of riders as I rode along this part of the trail. As the sun was beginning to dip down behind the mountains I put more effort into my pedaling as I didn't want to be out here in the dark. |
| After riding along the other bank of the creek with various ups and downs the trail went back across the creek, I caught up with another group of riders who had caught an earlier float plane around this point. Who said they had seen a big bear just 10 minutes back along the trail, which I didn't see. |
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| The Gun Creek trail eventually turned into a wide double track which was quite wet in places before it joined onto the Gun Creek Road. |
| I just rode back along the road and up Tyaughton lake road, rather than trying to find other trails as I was pretty knackered at this point in the ride. And the ride up lake rd was pretty slow. I caught up with a couple who had ridden down from spruce lake along here and chatted with them as we rode up the road. They lived in Whistler, I bumped into him again in supermarket in Whistler a few days later. |
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My cycle computer said i'd ridden 38 miles in total, I had left on the plane at 9.20 and got back to the resort at 6.40pm. I'd enjoyed the ride, the view had been great and the weather had been brilliant. It would have better if the trail had been dryer as the mud had slowed me down in places. Only thing as usual that really spoiled it for me was having to keep on shouting to avoid ear encounters, as being eaten by a bear was always in the back of my mind. Back at the resort I washed my bike and then used the Hot Tub and had a chat with some other bikers. |
| As I was very hungry and was going to do another long ride the following day I decided to have dinner at the resort, the food was good but quite pricey at $54.40 for 3 courses. After dinner I went to the bar and shared GPX trails with some bikers from Vancouver. |
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DAY 17
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