Nipples Lubed, Ready For Action

Short Version:
We ride up a mountain, play in the snow, and eventually reward ourselves with beer

Long Version:
Tim's an engineer. Based on other engineers we know (Hi Robin! Hola Craig!), that meant we felt we should be ready to roll when he arrived. So we got up early and got our gear packed, and prepped the bikes for a day-long adventure* up and over Windy Pass to Spruce Lake. First, though, we had a vehicle-drop to execute, beer to stash in the river nearby, and miles and miles of gravel road to drive to get to the trailhead.

Eventually, though, we were underway, and - surprise, surprise - riding up a hill. Bah humbug.

Still, the trail was wide and mainly flat, but held enough occasional technical challenges to keep us interested for the whole two hours it took us to get to Taylor's Cabin, which is in Taylor's Basin, high on the shoulder of a snow-capped orangey-red mountain. We'd have been there sooner, but I'd stopped to chat to the chap in the All Blacks jersey riding back the other way (Hi Marty!), and gas-bagged for so long that Lovely Wife found it necessary to ride back down the hill to fetch me. Unimpressed Wife. Even the fact that Marty was wrapping up his Canadian trip and therefore had no further need for his Mountain-Biking in BC guidebook, which he generously donated to the Nene and Puppet Tour, didn't put me back in the good books.

Taylor's Cabin is in good condition, and looks like it has regular occupants - certainly there were a couple of groups of bikers eating lunch there when we passed by. The basin in which it sits is beautiful: forested areas interspersed with wildflower-festooned meadows; clear, cold streams; spectacular sheer-sided mountains on all sides. The only drawback was that to get out of the basin we were going to have to ride up and over something tall. Rats. Twenty minutes later I thought we'd cracked it, and was doing a little victory dance atop what I thought must be Windy Pass, which was quite windy. Forty minutes later we were atop the real Windy Pass, which was much windier and colder, and had had a much longer and steeper approach. No dance this time - too cold. Not as cold as Nene, though, who'd fallen off her bike into a snowdrift. The climb to the pass had been steep enough that we'd all - even Janine - hiked some parts, and it had taken us across an area where the hill face had had a crack at sliding off its rock base and down the slope. We heard some incredibly loud, piercing cries, which I initially thought were originating with the wheeling predator birds but which turned out to be coming from marmots, which seemed largely unconcerned by our presence, meandering away from us and into their burrows with no real haste.

The run down from Windy Pass to Spruce Lake was fantastic - a fast blast down a steep (but not too steep) path so deeply worn that it was a foot-deep trench in places. The corners were great fun, with minimal braking required, and as we descended down past the tree-line and into the woods the trail became generally less steep and more technical, giving us a new set of challenges to keep us charged all the way to the lake shore, where we stopped for a snack and watched the float-plane land to drop gear to one of the groups of riders we'd passed on the way in - they were planning to camp at Spruce Lake for the night and then ride out the next day. We still had a ways to go, though, so checked out some dilapidated cabins and then hit the trail down through the Gun Creek Meadows, which looked like it must have been wall-to-wall wildflowers a week or so earlier and which was an excellent downhill run, marred only by the dust we were kicking up as we sped through. Variable gradients and trail widths, with some steep technical sections and stream crossings, especially once we left the meadow and entered the woods. During one steep, rooty downhill my handlebars twisted through 90 degrees, which made riding rather interesting. Which idiot didn't tighten bolts properly when replacing the fork?

The next hour saw us flying along flattish trails through forest like a smaller version of Endor, dropping sharply to bridged river-crossings, then climbing back to flat sections on the other side. Occasional rock gardens provided serious tests of technical ability, as did some of the tight turns between close-set trees. We reached the trailhead where we'd left the Reaper (and the beer!) six or so hours after we'd set off, and with a now-familiar mix of elation (Yay! Beer!) and disappointment (Boo! No more trail!), and sat and chatted about bears and other trails in the area while enjoying delicious nutritious beverages. Then we hit the road back to where we'd left Tim's truck via the Goldbridge Hotel for delicious foods. It was closed. At 7pm. On a Friday night. So we collected the truck and convoyed to Gun Creek, where we cooked and ate delicious foods. Tim set off to drive to Whistler, ready to ride the Bike Park in the morning, and we hit the hay. No pink moon action this time - I was too tired to take up the physical comedy opportunity.








* = This included putting lubricant inside the spoke-nipples on the Stumpjumper in an attempt to forestall further broken spokes.