New Favorite Critter

Short Version:
The road to the sky ends in a mud puddle, we ride to the rescue, then ride some more.

Long Version:
We were in two minds about the Keystone/Standard Basin ride: high sub-alpine back-country expedition rides are great, but the weather in Rossland was pretty grim. We decided to believe that the sun we'd had at Frog Falls meant the Revelstoke cloud was localised and/or low-lying, and that either way the Keystone ride would be in the sun. And we were right.

We drove past the Mica Dam, which is big and looks cool, and then up the eastern side of Kinbasket Lake to the Keystone Forest Service Road. We'd been warned by the Kiwi in the Revelstoke bike shop that the road was impassable from about the 11km mark, but still managed to get the Reaper near-stuck in the big mud-wallow: we got a hundred or so metres into the wet stuff before we started to lose traction, but once we did we thought we were going to be stuck in place for the rest of the weekend. In the end we backed out without too many issues, parked at the roadside and set off on the bikes.

The road was a muddy mess for about 400m. It was sticky, tyre-hugging stuff, and it took far longer to negotiate that section than we'd expected. Once we did, though, it was a quick and breezy 5km haul up the dirt road to the trailhead parking area...
...where we found a bunch of vehicles, only one of which was a high-clearance 4WD. In fact, there was a tiny red VW Golf up there, which made us feel like maybe we should have tried harder to get the Reaper through the bog. Still, no sense investing valuable energies into regretting, so we paused briefly to sign the Forest Service register and avail ourselves of the facilities before heading on up the trail.

The facilities at the trailhead were fairly new-looking, but Lovely Wife was in the outhouse for not-very-long before she hustled out of there, saying: "There's something in there. It's the size of a small cat." I would have been freaking out a bit about that, had I been the one to make that discovery, but by the time I'd registered what she'd said she'd grabbed the high-powered night-ride light and was back inside, directing the super-bright beam down into the vault to see what she could see. I joined her in there and peered down into the hole. I was expecting something truly horrific; most likely a combination of an enormous mound of rotting waste matter and rats as big as terriers. What we saw, though, was vastly different: a near-empty vault containing a really cute and very much bedraggled and worse-for-wear critter, wandering forlornly in circles and scrabbling at the unyielding and unclimbable sides of the cavernous collection chamber. Further study led us to identify the wee beastie as a pine marten, which meant that if we were in NZ we'd have had quite the dilemma: Can we, in good conscience, leave this (very cute!) critter to starve to death in a toilet, despite the fact that rescuing it means native birds and their eggs get chomped by the introduced predator?

Lucky, then, that we're here in western Canada, where the marten is indigenous. It's both predator and prey, and it's a natural and necessary part of the ecosystem. And it's very cute. So we found a long branch and stuck it down into the toilet, allowing the marten to climb out of the vault and make its way, weary and bedraggled, into the woods. It stopped and looked back over its shoulder at us several times, as if trying to figure out why we'd freed it or whether we were either a threat or edible, then it disappeared into what we figure was its den, in a hollow tree-stump. We had a warm glow on, despite the chill wind, and when the critter popped its head out and stared at us for a while before popping back into its hidey-hole we felt pretty good about our wildlife rescue activity. He was certainly not in tip-top health - who knows how long he'd been in there for - but being free to pursue birds and small beasts in the woods has to be better than being incarcerated in a toilet vault, no matter how recently-dug and devoid of solid waste.

Our warm glow was in danger of being eroded by lengthy exposure to chill wind, so we got back on the bikes and started off uphill, along what we'd been warned was a very tough, very steep and technical first 2.5km of trail. It wasn't as bad as we'd expected, which was kind of nice, but it also didn't get any easier after the first section; I found it hard slog the entire 11.3km to the cabin at the end. Nene not so much. In fact, she was loving it. It wasn't that we were climbing the whole way, after all. The downhill sections were there, but they were the kind of downhill that makes you work: nothing flowed; nothing was easy; there was no opportunity to relax while riding. Trying to take in the spectacular views whilst in motion almost proved disastrous for each of us at various points, so we learned not to look until we were stopped at one of the many vantage points along the way. In the end, the views, of snowy mountains, alpine meadows, and high-country lakes were what it was all about - that and the silence. It was incredibly quiet up on the tops, which gave the place a splendid feeling of isolation and of being far from civilization.

All the downhill bits on the way out to the cabin at the end of the trail were uphills on the way back, which kind of sucked. None of the rock garden crossings were any easier when ridden (or walked!) back the other way, and it wasn't until we arrived back at the trailhead, failed to find our marten, and set off down the dirt road at incredible speeds that we got any easy riding. Even then the speeds we were doing made it kind of scary - it took us less than ten minutes to ride down the road that it took forty-five minutes to climb. The mud pit was still a tough slog, even with the gradient on our side, and we were pretty tired by the time we made it back to the van, almost five hours after we set off.

Only ten or so minutes of those hours were spent on the rescue operation, but it loomed largest by far in our dinner-time recap of the highlights of the day. New favorite critter, although for cuddling purposes maybe one with less wees on it might be a good idea.

Fish, Fish, Fish, Fish, Fish

Short Version:
A boat trip, grizzlies, fish. More fish. Fish. A hard night's drive and a spooky forest.

Long Version:
Having lived on Waiheke Island, and having travelled between NZ's North and South Islands, we're quite accustomed to ferry travel. Even so, British Columbia's government-run BC Ferries keep hitting us with unexpected twists: first there was the sheer size and the number of passengers and vehicles on the Vancouver Island ferries, not to mention the spectacular environment through which the boats travel. Now we're hitting the inland ferries - this time the run from Galena Bay to Shelter Bay - and the bit that had us slightly confused was that it was free.
Cars, trucks, RV's: free.
Motorcycles, people: free.
Seems that instead of building bridges across the lakes formed by the hydro dams scattered about the place, the provincial government decided to run ferry services instead. We were happy with that - riding the boat across the water was pretty, and it was kind of relaxing. And it was free.

And then the enormous grizzly bear statues at the gates to Revelstoke were upon us, and then the enormous grizzly bear statues at the gates to Grizzly Plaza. And then the Grizzly Auto Repair sign, then the bike shop and the thrift store and some stolen internets and then we were off again, through Sicamous and Salmon Arm and Three Valley Gap, and eventually to the Adams River, to see some fish.

There were a LOT of fish there. Quite a few people, too, but not as many as the place was set up to receive over then next few days, when the Festival of the Salmon kicked into high gear. The Festival runs every year, on the weekend closest to the start of the main run of the sockeye salmon up the Adams River. Bucketloads of people come from far and wide to purchase overpriced t-shirts and nutritionally-bereft foodstuffs, to queue for overloaded portable toilets, and to look at the fish, of which there are many. We snuck in on the Friday evening, after the infrastructure had been set up but before the crowds. They'd already started charging admission fees at the gate, but the attendant had gone home, or was off having a sneaky fag break, so we didn't bother slowing down - just breezed on through the choke-point and into the parking area, then meandered across to the helpful informational signage.

WARNING: FACTS.
The fish travel a LONG way during their lifetime: spawned in the river, they swim with the current as juveniles, hundreds of kilometres downriver to the Atlantic Ocean. They travel vast distances in the sea as they grow, and then, as near-metre-long adults, they somehow find the river from whence they came, swim back up it all those kilometres they once swam down, to the spawning grounds, where they hang out, and mate, and then die. Every fourth year is what's known as a dominant year, where the fish numbers are far larger than those of other years, and every so often a dominant year goes a little bit haywire and provides extra-vast numbers of the beasties.
[END FACTS]

This year has turned out to be one of those super-dominant years, with fish numbers higher than any other year in the last century. We were there before the run hit its peak - at its height apparently you can walk across the river on the backs of the fish and not get your feet wet - but it was still pretty blimmin impressive. Being kind of color-blind, I'm not sure whether I should be describing their hue as crimson, or scarlet, or as a bright, deep red. Whatever the name, it was similar to the color of a glass of pinot noir with the sun shining through it. Their heads were a green that defies decription, and you could tell the sexes apart because - not unlike humans - the females looked like fish, and the males were ugly; sometimes spectacularly so.

And there were thousands of them.

Swimming upstream had left many of them battered and scarred, and some of the earliest arrivals had already spawned and were in various stages of dying. Corpses littered the stony beaches wherever the current was favorable for casting inert objects ashore. It's hard to imagine what the place will look like in a few weeks, when all of the millions of fish that have made it back have spawned, and died, and been washed up, and are starting to decay. When we were there, though, the living far outnumbered the dead, although it was possible to see at a glance which ones were getting close to that edge; they fade before they die, from the robust, bright red they go at the start of their 21-day odyssey to and up the river, to a pale, pinkish... actually we'd probably call the color "salmon pink." The living thronged in the river, clustered in groups in the shallows ("What's that Jimmy? Oh, they're... ummmm... fighting!") and hung in the main current like a crimson ribbon, looking a lot like a significant amount of blood that had spilled into the water; a liquid thread of scarlet within the river. We got extremely close-up vews in a number of spots, including the official viewing platforms and some precariously-balanced fallen trees we edged our way out on. Awesome spectacle.

In the end, it started getting dark, so we left the fish to do whatever it is that fish do at night and set off in the Reaper for the Frog Falls Recreation Site, miles and miles and miles away. The Reaper is absolutely appalling to drive at night; the headlights are feeble and misaligned, and the harvested bugs and birds and beasties which encrust the windscreen turn the headlights of oncoming traffic into a diffuse, blinding glare. The best views of the night were of a burning silo, which lit up the night like some pagan ceremony. Later research indicates it was probably a sawmill waste burner, although at the time it just seemed weird and a bit spooky, leaving us perfectly mood-enhanced for the Frog Falls area, which was in heavy forest, pitch-dark except where mildly illuminated by the Reaper's running lights, and full of enormous tree stumps which had faces carved into them. Spooky faces at that. And then we got lost in the woods, and found a creepy underground bunker before we found the campground, and there were more faces on the trees, and there were huge cascades of fungi of all shapes and sizes.

We slept well though, and woke to gorgeous sunlight filtering through the trees. The trees looked much friendlier in daylight, so we explored the river and the falls and had a leisurely breakfast before hitting the road back past Revelstoke, east and north to the Keystone/Standard Basin Trail.

One Plain Bagel, and One Cup of Raspberry Tea

Short Version:
We ride the rails and a cable

Long Version:
Like the Otago Central Rail Trail in New Zealand's South Island, the Galena Trail is an old railbed. It runs from the town of Rosebery* through New Denver and on to Three Forks, near the ghostish town of Sandon**. We were still feeling sub-par***, and the idea of a gentle grade appealled greatly, as did the opportunity to turn and ride back down, gently, at any stage.

We set off from Rosebery, up a pretty lakeside trail with rusting old rail equipment scattered at intervals. We crossed and recrossed the highway, then up through a winding canyon with the river churning through its narrow passage far below us.

An hour or so after setting off, we reached the cable car, which was very, very cool. It was a rectangular metal frame with a steel-mesh-covered plywood floor and steel-mesh sides, suspended by two pulleys from a wire rope that spanned the river at somewhere around four metres when empty - three when full of heavy NZer + bike. When at rest, the cage swings near the middle of the span. From there it is hauled to either bank by means of a rope, which runs in a loop from the frame of the cage, through pulleys on each landward support tower, and back to the cage. This same rope is the means of propulsion for the cage from one bank to the other: some serious hand-over-hand effort is required to make it up the last few metres. But make it we did, first Lovely Wife, then humble puppet servant, and then we had a snack in the sun, perched on the remains of an old rail bridge, before hauling ourselves back across the river in the cable car and setting off back down the trail. It had taken us an hour to ride up, which is not a lot compared to some of the rides we've done but was a lot in the context of being temporarily weak and feeble. Still only took us half an hour to ride back down though - even a little bit of downhill grade goes a long way!







* = There is a trail connecting Rosebery to the next town northwards, but it was labelled "Hills," so we didn't go there. Later, we drove through the next town. Its name: Hills. There was a barn there which no longer had walls - they'd disintegrated at some point. The frame and the roof were still intact, though, and over the years a mass of red ivy had grown over the framework, providing a new - and appropriately colored! - set of walls

** = There are still a few people living there, and they maintain a small museum, some historic cottages, and a still-functioning, still-running power-generation plant

*** = Lovely Wife's food intake for the previous three days stood at one plain bagel, and one cup of raspberry tea

Hot Water and Hookers

Short Version:
Seats for sale, we're told to go to someone else's town, Dunster School rides again. We end up in hot water and on shaky ground, then flawlessly execute a stealth mission. Hookers.

Long Version:
Nelson, BC seems like a pretty cool town. The local cinema was selling their seats at $1 each, and we saw several pairs of young people staggering out of the theatre carrying a row between them. The leftover pesos from the Mexico trip were finally swapped for real moneys*, which we then promptly spent at the bike store on replacement tyres and gear cables and other necessities. The staff there invited us to come ride with them in a couple of days, but went on to say that if they were us they'd be off to ride at New Denver and Revelstoke and Salmon Arm instead.

So we left, right after we ate delicious foods at the wifi-enabled Hare Krisna restaurant, and washed our clothes at the laundromat with the enormous television and the broken toilet.

On the way north up the western shore of Kootenay Lake we cheered the radio-borne news that the Dunster community had been successful in their battle to save the local school from closure, and it was a happy pair that meandered into the Ainsworth Hot Springs and soaked away several hours in the hot and not-so-hot pools. The complex has a really cool (hot!) cave system in behind a pair of tiled arches. The tiling soon gives way to natural-looking rock walls which look like they're made of melted wax. Stalagmites and stalactites are everywhere, and the waist-deep water gets hotter the deeper one penetrates. Just when it's about as hot as you want it to get, the cave turns through ninety degrees, and runs parallel to the outside wall for a ways before executing another right-angle turn and heading towards the outside again. Very awesome, as were the views out over Kootenay Lake.

We cut short our conversation with the round couple from Ohio to go find a place to sleep. We drove past it, twice, then found the turnoff only to discover that since our guidebook had been published access to the site had been gated and locked. We walked down for a look at the falls anyway, and from each of the many viewpoints along the way we were really rather impressed by the scale of the falls, and the way the whitewater seemed to glow in the light of our high-powered riding lights. We didn't realise until we reached the bottom that most of the ground we'd been walking on was fairly precariously balanced atop a serious overhang above a decent drop to the rocks below. We walked back up a different path.

Camping that night ended up being a stealth mission: we snuck into the Lost Ledge Provincial Park late, set up and ate quickly and quietly, and were up early to go have breakfast in the day use area, so no BC Parks official would catch us in the campground and make us pay the $21 fee.

Getting the Reaper stuck while executing a ladylike three-point turn was NOT part of the plan.

Eventually we were free, and up the hill to the picnic area where we... wait, where's the picnic area? Oh.

Back into the campground, down to a lakeshore site with a wonderful view, where we parked in one spot and breakfasted in another before setting off back down the road towards Kaslo, home of the Sufferfest. On the way we passed the remains of a truck, which had run head-first into the cliff. We tried to figure out how he'd managed it, and when, because it wasn't there when we'd come through around nine the previous night and we didn't hear what must have been an almighty bang. There were no body parts strewn about the place, though, so we carried on our way.

Kaslo was cute, basking in the sun, as was one-time boom town Sandon, which apparently at one point had over eighty brothels operating. This in a town of 5000 people. Kind of topical, given that Canada's currently having conniptions over whether to legalise prostitution or not. From what we've heard on the radio, opinions are split on the matter, although it sounds like the factions are talking about different things: those in favor of legalising say: "What two (or more) consenting adults get up to is their business - why should paying for it be an issue?" whereas the anti-legalisation lobby says: "All prostitutes are unwilling participants - in some case slaves - who have no other option. Children are forced to be prostitutes. Native peoples are forced to be prostitutes. Drug addicts are forced to be prostitutes."
The anti-legalisation folks then throw figurative stones at the pro-legalisation folks: "He's a buyer." Actually, it's probably unfair to select that particular, particularly rabid anti-child-prostitution ex-child-prostitute as representative of the whole faction; maybe the Conservative senator from somewhere back East... no, she was an ill-informed do-gooder primarily adept at reassuring blue-rinsers that someone in the corridors of power is just as reactionary and bigoted as they are.

Listening to the debate has been by turns interesting, boring, heart-breaking, and infuriating. Eventually we turned the radio off.







* = I asked someone in Revelstoke why on earth there was a currency exchange in Nelson that was prepared to accept pesos when there was no such facility in a number of larger communities we'd passed through. Apparently it's because so much pot is grown in the area that a full-fledged currency exchange is called for: "I just happen to have a backpack full of sequentially-numbered US dollars..."

Aged and Toothless and Bent Old Crones

Short Version:
Transformation, reduced services, one of us enjoys a beautiful day

Long Version:
We nipped into Rossland town to steal some internets before heading east, and discovered a frightening phenomenon: attractive young women enter the local Credit Union; aged and toothless and bent old crones come out. Creepy.

Over the hills and down to the lake, where we discovered that the water was off at the Texas Creek Provincial Park Campground. This was good thing, because it meant camping was free. Not so good in that it also meant all the flush toilets were boarded up, and even less so once we discovered that the vault toilets were all quite far away from our campsite.

Not ideal for people with a bout of food poisoning.

Still, by the time we arrived I was on the mend, and it was only Nene who had suffering still to do. Nene being Nene, though, she put everything she had into it, and suffered enough for the both of us. Poor wee poppet.

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, cheeky chipmunks scurried hither and yon, squirrels frolicked in the trees, and I swam in Canada's warmest lake several times while Nene carried on executing her sufferment programme. Cups of tea, backrubs, peanut butter sandwiches - all my healing powers were put forward on her behalf. The most effective strategy turned out to be going elsewhere and leaving her to it, and a run out and back on the Deer Point trail was just the ticket.

The mad camp host guy had told me before he left that it was a 2.5 hour hike to the summit, and then a long, less-steep hill to the end of the trail, at the north end of the lake. I don't run fast - especially when Lovely Wife's not there to whip me along - so it was a bit of a surprise to find myself on the downslope a mere eighteen minutes after setting off. Beautiful trail. Beautiful sunlight filtering down through beautiful green and golden leaves. Beautiful views out over the beautiful lake. Beautiful swim afterwards.
Found out later that it's a renowned biking trail, with multiple magazine cover shots snapped along its length. I can see why.

Asparagus Soup

Short Version:
Disc golf, a ride with issues, disc golf, disc golf, toxic badness

Long Version:
We'd planned to go ride early in the morning, but were weary and slept in. When we did arise, we hit the disc golf course instead of the trail, and had such a grand time that we played again later in the afternoon, and then again the following morning. Nene improved her score every round. I got worse.

In between the morning and afternoon rounds, though, we went and rode up a mountain, just for a change. Three hours total time on the trail, although half an hour of that was gas-bagging to various folks we met - including a Kiwi doctor we met at the top* - and half an hour was spent carrying out emergency sidewall-tear puncture repairs a quarter of the way up. The rest of the time was, as usual, mainly spent riding up the hill. Switchbacks, rocks, steep bits, not-steep bits: it was a good climb. On the way back down we skipped the trail with the person-attacking bear advisory and rode down a trail that reminded both of us of the best that Rotorua has to offer. It was far too good to be that short, or possibly the other way around. Both of us had tired legs and arms from the Seven Summits ride, though, so maybe it was a good thing that it was over quite quick.

Nene had been threatening asparagus soup for a day or two, and finally went through with it, despite my protestations. I'm choosing to believe that was what poisoned us.







* = He told us that you ARE allowed to raise kids wherever you like in Trail; you're just not allowed a vege garden

The Seven Summits

Short Version:
We ride the Seven Summits trail with a bunch of interesting people. It's awesome. Afterwards, beer is cold, food and house and company are warm.

Long Version:
The Seven Summits trail in Rossland is an IMBA Epic, like the North Umpqua River Trail in Oregon and the Plains of Abraham at Mt St Helens*. And, like the North Umpqua, you should go ride it.

We dumped the Reaper and another vehicle at the lower trailhead and drove to the top, where we geared up and set off just after 9am on a sunny but cool morning. In direct contrast to pretty much all the riding we've been doing, we were in a big group for this one: ten of us in all, most from Invermere but with an Albertan Fire Chief (Hi Paul!) in the mix to keep us on our toes.

The upper trailhead is 1500 metres higher than the bottom, which sounds like ample downwards riding in the making, no?

Not on your Nellie.

We rode up. And up. And up. There was a stop, for a while, while one of the Steves (Hi Steve O! Hi Steve 19!) fixed a puncture that had arisen from a ripped sidewall, and then we got back on the bikes and rode up some more. That first climb took us up another 600 metres before we dropped into a saddle, and then it was climb/descend all the way along the ridgeline to the Rock Knob, the seventh and last summit of the journey, from where we dropped, down 1300 metres over 8 kilometres in what Well Mark accurately described as "A really really good dessert after a really excellent meal."

Even describing it like that really doesn't do it justice though - some of the climbs along the ridgeline were killer, as were a couple of the descents. The trail was beautifully maintained, especially in light of how remote and how exposed it is, and it had not just a bit of everything, but a lot: steep ups and downs; flowing sections of screamingly fast trail; scarily-pitched descents through boulder fields; rivers of rock where crossings had been paved with big flat slabs**; switchbacks of all shapes, sizes, and gradients both up- and downwards. Everything you want in an epic ride, except for the hot pool at the end.

Both Nene and I were having a great ride day: strong on the climbs, and ripping hell out of the trail on the descents. We loved every minute of the 7.5 hours we were out there: the riding was amazing, and the breaks were all filled with the kind of conversations you only get when you're doing something difficult but achievable with an assortment of people you don't really know who are both individually and collectively interesting.

Highlights of the day included:
- Rudeword Dave (Hi, Rudeword Dave!) falling off his bike sideways while attempting to describe the joys of whitewater kayaking in the extreme wilderness of Canada's Northwest Territory
- Steve 19, unable to stop in time, colliding with a girl half his size who'd stopped dead unexpectedly in the middle of the trail while failing to negotiate a big rock
- Steve 19, unwilling to stop in time, scaring Rudeword Dave off the trail and out of his way by sounding like the Galloping Tyres of the Apocalypse bearing down imminently and unstoppably
- Well Mark hauling his bike onto his shoulder and leading the entire party up an unrideable non-mandatory trail to the peak of Summit #3, then riding down the (sketchy, borderline-rideable) other side before the potential recriminations caught up
- Tales of Steve O's epic crash, with accompanying pantomime demonstration and smashed helmet evidence presentation
- An Anne and Bruce combo, for the first time in far too long, although this one's actually a Bruce and Anne combo, and one of them's Australian (Hi Bruce and Anne!).
- Fire Chief Paul's birdcalls atop summit #6
- The look on Lori's face as she held her bike over her head in triumph atop summit #7. Actually, now that I think about it, that expression may have indicated something other than triumph
- The weather. This ride would have been a nightmare in the cold, wet filth we'd been having, and we'd heard horror stories of how hot it gets mid-summer. We had a perfect fall day: bright sun with a cooling breeze. Not too cold, not too hot, not wet.

I also really liked lunch, although I have to admit that when we stopped, and sat down in a sunny, near-windless spot, and I pulled out the loaf of bread I'd hauled laboriously up the hill, I did expect Lovely Wife to pull some stuff out of her bag to go on it. Maybe some tomatoes, or cheese, or some jalapenos. Nope. Dry bread lunch. Having said that, it was a garlic/parmesan/olive foccaccia loaf, and it was delicious. Still, what happened to equal distribution of communal stuff between the packs? I felt hard done-by for the next four hours or so, right up to the point when she pulled an apple donut out of her pack and gave me half. Nice Wife.

The beer at the end was well-deserved and delicious, and then we got an extra treat: we got to go have dinner, which was delicious, in a house, which was warm, and well-lit, and full of interesting people who were clean. That last bit left us feeling mildly self-conscious, but it was neat to be part of a community again, no matter that it was fleeting.

Fleeting it was, though, and all-too-soon we were saying goodnight, and were out into the cold, into the Reaper, and heading out to the Black Jack XC ski area parking lot, where we slept appallingly. Stupid dogs. Stupid coyotes. Why can't we all just get along, or at least disagree quietly?







* = We won't mention the Buckhorn

** = In a couple of instances, this path was not immediately apparent to look at, and it was a blessed surprise to open one's eyes and find oneself still riding instead of about to land face-first on the rocks

Short

Short Version:
A short run west, then we meet some friends in Rossland. One of them is short. A short ride through fields of flame, a short term big dog, and a short sleep before a long ride

Long Version:
We listened to a Texan talk about energy on the radio, crossed bright orange and yellow bridges, and passed through some really cool towns, including Yahk (Two-Scoop Steve had closed for the season) and Creston. Eventually we found ourselves in Trail, which was surprisingly large. Apparently there are two major employers there: the massive smoke-belching smelter, and the hospital where they care for people injured or diseased from smelter activity*.

Just up the road from Trail is Rossland, which has no smelter or hospital, but does have lots of awesome mountain-biking trails. We'd arranged to meet the folks we rode with near Invermere (Hi Mark and Lori!) to ride the IMBA Epic Seven Summits trail on Saturday, but we and they were there a day early, so we met in the bike shop by accident after failing to meet on purpose and set off to ride some of the near-town trails: KC to Back of KC to Milky Way to the Old Wagon Road.
Combining our navigation expertise with theirs meant that we temporarily misplaced ourselves, and ran out of time to complete the planned loop. Nene and I got to do an extra trail or two, including the star of the day: the Milky Way. Fast as fast can be, we blasted down this swooping, diving trail, bypassing the bigger jumps and hucking off the smaller. It ran us through a forest and through a field full of bracken in various stages of changing color. The yellow, orange, and red fronds made it look very much like the whole meadow was on fire. Then back into forest and down and down some more. It was great fun.

And then we had to pay for it, by riding back up. A long way. With lostness. Eventually, though, we found the remains of the old Mining School, and then we found the town and the Reaper in relatively quick succession, although not so quick that we didn't acquire an enormous canine for a while - he trotted alongside Nene quite contentedly for fifteen minutes or so, ignoring blandishments, protestations, and commands alike. Eventually, though, he found something more interesting to do and abandoned us to our own devices.

We'd grabbed a couple of potential free camping locales from the mechanic at the local bike shop, and decided to check out the parking lot of the Black Jack cross-country ski club, on the grounds that it was closest to town and had a disc golf course. It also had a bunch of people with dogs, and some really bright lighting, so we found an out-of-the-way byway and hunkered down for a short sleep before an early start on the Seven Summits mission.









* = We were told at one point that there are suburbs of Trail that have been so comprehensively poisoned over the years that you're not allowed to live there if you have children. Scary. Of course, it was Rudeword Dave that told us that, and he's at least as likely to make stuff like that up as I am, so feel free to consider it a likely semi-truth, or a blend of fact and fiction**

** = A faction

Twitching Woman, Hidden Moose

Short Version:
A slow start inside a cloud. A new wheel. We ride and walk up a big, nasty hill, then ride back down an exceptionally good downhill run. Stolen showers, Happy Meat, Cryogenics.

Long Version:
An early ride had been mooted, but didn't eventuate. In fact, in the end it was quite the opposite, with a slow start to the day encouraged by the temperature (cold), the visibility (nil: a cloud had settled on the hill where we were camped), and our legs (feeling yesterday's climb). The hill's fog hat lifted then started to come and go in waves, which looked pretty neat as they boiled up from the valleys.

Eventually, we made it to town, where we purchased a replacement rear wheel. Grrrrrr.

We also got ride advice and directions from long-time Fernie mechanical wizard Al, and spent an age chatting to the Dobermann-owning Kiwi and his Ottawan girlfriend, whose names we finally learned (Hi Leigh and Vanessa!) before setting of in search of the Slunt.

The weather wasn't looking too flash, so we were raincoated when we set off from the Reaper through the Mt Fernie Provincial Park to the trailhead. A twitching woman stopped us on the way and told us she'd just seen a family of moose where the Stove trail entered the forest. Not sure if she was trying to warn us off or giving us an opportunity to go see them for ourselves, but we saw no sign of them and were soon far too occupied with the technical challenge of riding up Dem Bones to worry about whether or not we should be worried about their proximity. Wet, slippery, off-camber root systems and short steep climbs - and sometimes both at once - had us concentrating and working hard, and there was little respite when we crossed the powerlines into Mushroomhead. Things got steeper again when we turned up onto Lactic Ridge and then Moccasin, both of which were so steep as to be largely unrideable, although that may have been at least partly due to how far up we'd already ridden.

Finally, after an hour and a half of serious climb and sometimes-sketchy traverse, we reached the start of the Slunt.

Thirty minutes later, we were back at the van, having ridden down the Slunt and Brokeback Ridge and along a partially-submerged road-parallelling track to a tap where we rinsed the bikes, then on through the campground to the picnic area where the Reaper welcomed us with the now-traditional eye-watering grit shower during desecuring.

My notes on the Slunt/Brokeback Ridge descent say:
- awesome, down and down and down
- Great trail, steep, slick, FAST!
- Brokeback = flatter but also awesome. Even faster!
- Both: wet dirt
- Jumps, bermed corners, GREAT!

My ride notes also say:
- Best trail of trip? If fix Lactic + connector + Moccassin then maybe

Lovely Wife was almost indignant on the way up Lactic Ridge, saying "It would be SO EASY to make this an AWESOME uphill trail!" I could see where she was coming from - the trail went straight up a ridgeline, but could be made to wind back and forth at a far more pleasurable gradient. Not without a reasonable amount of effort though, and it's probably not going to be our sweat and pain that's used if and when the undertaking is undertaken, so we'll not complain too vociferously. Instead, we'll laud the awesomeness of the downhill trails, because they really were quite special.

We stole hot showers from the Provincial Park, and snuck into the dirtbag campground via the Suzie Road feeling fresh and clean and on top of the world. The Happy Meat burgers and extra-strong Tres Pistoles Beer were like icing on a cake, only more delicious, and the only downside was the cryogenically frozen fingers we both got when the stove decided to spray fuel everywhere during setup. The peril of machinery I've operated on, I guess.

Evil

Short Version:
Carcasses, Satan's eyeslits, Dobermann. Mildly lost on a nice ride up a hill and back down again. More lost on a nicer ride up a bigger hill and down the other side. Ghostrider.

Long Version:
Carcasses appeared in neighboring campsites with startling regularity the whole time we were at the Kikomun Creek campground*. They were hung, skinned, and dressed with impressive skill and efficiency, and we decided that guns and/or bows and a big chest freezer are on our shopping list for when we finally settle somewhere. Not so keen if the prey critters really have eyes like those of the goats on the Wildlife Alert! roadsigns though: bad enough that the crazy beasts eat gravel and run around on vertical cliff-faces without having scary satanic eyeslits which promise that some seriously evil deeds are imminent.

Luckily, we saw no goats on the Suzie road, nor on the highways that took us to Fernie. In fact, we were feeling totally unmenaced right up until we ran into the enormous Dobermann at the Fairy Creek trailhead. My first reaction was abject terror, my second was mild amusement - the result of having viewed The Omen** and Up, respectively. We pretty quickly got sick of the barking while we tried to talk to its owner, and we headed on up the hill to the Mad Cow and Swine Flu trails, as recommended by the bloke in the Guide's Hut, where we'd stopped to seek stove-repair capability the other day.

Someone had been up there making trails that weren't marked on our map, and we managed to miss the top section, but we had a lot of fun on the stuff we did ride, to the point where we rode the whole loop twice. We found some derelict log cabins overlooking a valley containing a facility I decided to believe was a secret military base, and rode some swooping downhill on hard-packed dirt with a layer of slippery fallen leaves on top. Not the best thing for traction at high speed, but a heck of a lot of fun, and neither of us came a cropper at any point during the ninety minutes we were out there... except, of course, on the very last, not very large hill, which saw each of us off our bike and on the ground to some extent***.

Ninety minutes had left us feeling underdone, so after a quick stop at the local Happy Meat store we hauled ourselves out to the other side of town and prepared to ride up the most famous of the local trail networks: the Root System. The Dobermann and its keepers appeared just as we watched a grader driver parking his machine before we headed off up the hill, and it wasn't long before we were glad they were there, as the tourist info map we were using to navigate proved hopelessly mislabelled. The bloke was a Kiwi who'd lived a spell in Fernie during his decade in Canada, so we put our trust in his local knowledge and followed them off the dirt road and down a trail, using the barking of the massive beast as our directional indicator at intersections. Turns out seven-year-old local knowledge is good for finding the trail but not so flash at riding the right way once you're on it, and we ended up at the lower trailhead we were supposed to have started at. No worries: we ride back up.

Steep, tricky sections showed us how the trail came to be called Roots, and I managed to break another spoke, this time riding uphill. In granny gear. If I'd needed some indication that there was an issue with the wheel above and beyond me being a fat bastard riding over rocks too fast, that would have been perfect. As it was, we clicked swiftly into a now-familiar sequence: tape the broken spoke to the one alongside and keep riding. The timing was pretty good, in a way: we turned soon after onto the trail called Hyperventilation, and the ire inspired by the spoke break was handily translated into motivation to ride up, and up, and up. Steep pokes, tight switchbacks, and eventual fantastic views out over the town and the mountains to the north and east. Always nice to reach the top of a climb like that one!

Except that we weren't at the top yet. In fact, not even close.

The views out to the south and east from the actual top were pretty awesome, with a big pile of rock called Castle Mountain dominating the vista, and then we were off, down the south-east face at a furious pace. It was steep and wet, with slippery roots and occasional puddles, and we had a blast! Flowing trails like that one are the reason we're doing this, and the combination of technical challenge (lots of near-misses!) and the speed-friendliness (lots of near-misses!) of a clean line had big grins on our faces by the time we reached the bottom. If only we had a teleportation device to get us back up to the top.

It was starting to get dark, so we drove up the road towards the trails we'd just ridden, to a spot we'd passed just before the spoke broke. Views of town and mountains by the light of the full moon, Scrabble with delicious performance-enhancing beer, and then to sleep, to dream of living in Fernie, in the suburb called Ghostrider****.







* = The free, dirtbag Forest Service one, not the ultra-flash Provincial Park one, with the flush toilets and the hot showers. Lovely Wife did ride her bike to the flash one after her run, though, to fill water bladders and have a sneaky shower.

** = Parents, no matter how good your eight-year-old is at sneaking out of bed to watch late-night television, please, for their sake, find a way to stop them watching The Omen. Having said that, it might not be such a bad thing for a small child to be at least wary of enormous, powerful, grumpy dogs.

*** = Of course, the phrase "on the ground" can mean many different things, from a foot and a knee stopping the carnage before it starts, to full-body mud coverage picked up during a five metre slide with both wheels in the air, including inadvertant negotiation of two hairpin corners and a rather large puddle. Can you guess which was whom?

**** = No idea what it's like, but how cool would it be to live in a place called Ghostrider?