Today was a day for fun with ridding buddys on a different hill than I usually ride. A group of us (Tim, Dave, John and I) rode Burke Mountain. We decided to meet early in the AM, 7 to be exact at the Tim Horton's down from the Mtn. We then left some cars at the bottom of the hill and sort of shuttled ourselves to the gate where the real climb begins.
Our route was simple....go up to the top of the hill and ride as many trails as possible. So onward and upward we went. I was on my Bullit, Tim on his VPS, Dave on his Team Shore and John on a Bullit that was very similar to mine except that he had Boxxers as forks.
Our first trail was Wellgood. Nobody in our group had ridden that trail in quite some time, so we were anxious to see its condition and the quality of building since some younger guys had been building on the trail. It was not in the greatest of condition when we finally hiked up to it, but it wasn't all that bad. When we got to an area that we knew had new building on it, we were surprised to see that it had all been demolished by a Parks Crew. Due to a very naive rider on the hill and his not so smart move in telling and showing Parks most of the advanced trails that have structures built on them, we are now seeing parks deconstruct several trails that are seen as potential liability problems. So we all continued along Wellgood knowing that what remaining stunts we were riding on may not be around for much longer. I will admit that it is not a great trail, but it was on it's way to being pretty good if the kids were allowed to continue building and learning how to build on this seldomly ridden trail.
So once we were back on the road up, we started to ride Triple Crown. This trail is a real blast to ride. All the natural lines, a few hits here and there. I always have a good time on this trail.
We then all made it down to the powerline area and rode the log sections that lead down to the Abyss. On one of the log rides, John fell and hurt is shoulder. He hit it so hard that he partly dislocated it, so Tim had to pull it back into place.
We then found a few drops that were perfect for photos, so the other 3 took turns doing drops and I took pictures.
Our route was simple....go up to the top of the hill and ride as many trails as possible. So onward and upward we went. I was on my Bullit, Tim on his VPS, Dave on his Team Shore and John on a Bullit that was very similar to mine except that he had Boxxers as forks.
Our first trail was Wellgood. Nobody in our group had ridden that trail in quite some time, so we were anxious to see its condition and the quality of building since some younger guys had been building on the trail. It was not in the greatest of condition when we finally hiked up to it, but it wasn't all that bad. When we got to an area that we knew had new building on it, we were surprised to see that it had all been demolished by a Parks Crew. Due to a very naive rider on the hill and his not so smart move in telling and showing Parks most of the advanced trails that have structures built on them, we are now seeing parks deconstruct several trails that are seen as potential liability problems. So we all continued along Wellgood knowing that what remaining stunts we were riding on may not be around for much longer. I will admit that it is not a great trail, but it was on it's way to being pretty good if the kids were allowed to continue building and learning how to build on this seldomly ridden trail.
So once we were back on the road up, we started to ride Triple Crown. This trail is a real blast to ride. All the natural lines, a few hits here and there. I always have a good time on this trail.
We then all made it down to the powerline area and rode the log sections that lead down to the Abyss. On one of the log rides, John fell and hurt is shoulder. He hit it so hard that he partly dislocated it, so Tim had to pull it back into place.
We then found a few drops that were perfect for photos, so the other 3 took turns doing drops and I took pictures.
John
John
John
Dave
Dave
Once on the Abyss, we all rode the cool woodwork that Tim and Dave had built. I really liked the whole trail and it is really sad to think that it is going to get torn down some time this year by parks.
We then made our way to Big Boy Time. I had never ridden this trail and it sure was cool set of stunts. The big roller to up ramp was tricky for all of us and I don't believe that anyone actually cleaned it.
Once out of Big Boy time, we said farewell to John who was kind of suffering due to his shoulder. He just rode down the road and the remaining 3 of us rode back up the hill to the famous Sawblade trail. Sawblade and the whole BC style of riding was brought to forefront many years ago when Mountain Bike Action, the premier bike mag at the time did a feature on the trail. So we rode Sawblade on big full suspension bikes.......holy crap I could not imagine doing that on a hardtail with no suspension forks and cantilever brakes back in the day. We then rode this really cool open flowy trail that you could tell gets VERY little traffic being that it is in the middle of nowhere, but it really was fun. This was when we kind of got lost. Tim thought that he could remember where to hook up with another trail in order to ride down along the Coquitlam river. Well he just couldn't remember where the trail was as it had been years since he rode the trail. So we went one way, then we went another, then we went back up a trail to finally find a trail that took us out to the parking area gate.
From the gate, Dave and I rode our bikes down the hill to our cars and Tim drove his car to where we originally set off. It was a really long really hot day (I actually ran out of water) but I had a blast riding trails that I had never seen before but had heard about them. Riding Sawblade was like riding a piece of history.
