Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park is like a fine wine. It gets better with age.
The unique indoor cycling facility located inside an old parachute warehouse in Cleveland, Ohio celebrated its three-year anniversary over the weekend with a grand re-opening.
Dean sends us some helmet cam footage of one of the North Shore’s classic trails: Upper Oilcan. The rub with this one is that the footage was shot at night. For any of you who’ve ridden this trail in the daylight, you’ll understand that riding it in the dark is an acquired talent.
Went out for a quick rip yesterday morning on the Red Mountain cross country course in Mission, BC. The trail conditions on the mountain are really influenced by the weather, but since it’s been sunny and cool for the past five or six days, the trail is really dialled.
The xc course on Red isn’t that demanding, but it does have a couple of spots that keep you on your toes.
Sorry for the relative lack of photos, but we didn’t spend a whole lot of time snoozing on the side of the trail.
I don’t spend too much ride time on Vancouver’s North Shore but, a couple of times per year, I throw my bike on my car and make the 45 minute drive to one of the Shore’s main mountain bike destinations (Seymour, Fromme, or Cypress). On a whim, I headed out to Fromme this morning to ride Seventh Secret, a technical singletrack line that winds its way through some pretty steep, rooty terrain.
The day was blessed with classic Shore weather — light rain and low cloud — and I passed a bunch of riders on the way up who were looking for the same type of day as me. After I got over the fact that my Crank Bros. Egg Beaters and my shoes didn’t get along, and there wasn’t much I could do about it (the wet rubber on the soles of my shoes squeaked every which way but loose whenever they were in contact with the spindles on the Egg Beaters), I settled into the 35ish minute climb up to Seventh. Read the rest of this entry »
Located inside Golden Ears Provincial Park in Maple Ridge, I’ve been doing this ride for years and it never seems to get old. It starts out with about 12km of single- and doubletrack climbing and finishes with a mixed-bag descent that is close to 5km long. Depending on the pace for the day, it’ll take between 1.5 and 2 hours for the loop.
The biking trails at Mike Lake are moderately technical for this area and are not maintained by the company in charge of park management (and that’s a story for another day). That means there are some pretty chundery areas and there are a number of loose areas that could cause problems at any point during the year.
One more pic after the jump. Sorry for the lousy exposures. Snapshots and sunny days don’t usually go well together under the canopy. Read the rest of this entry »
The start of the climb. This section only lasts about 200 meters but it’s pretty challenging and most riders walk it.
When I tell non-locals that I’m from southwest BC, the first thing I’m usually asked about is the gnarly stunts and steep ladder bridges that populate many of the trails in the area. And, while that’s a core component to many of popular ‘North Shore’ rides, trails in the Greater Vancouver area are more varied than the photos in popular magazines make them out to be.
After the jump you can check out some shots that I snapped during the climb at a local riding spot. Depending on your level of fitness and the route you take, it takes between 25 and 45 minutes to get to the top. An average loop (parking lot to parking lot) takes anywhere from one hour to three hours, depending on skill level.
Most of these snaps were brightened up — if I’d left them as the camera grabbed them, you wouldn’t see too much because it’s pretty dark in these here woods. Read the rest of this entry »
Nick sent me the following pics, taken during a ride through the Southern Namib desert, near Rosh Pinah in Namibia. He writes, “Lots of sandy dirt roads and rocky double-track make for a fast exciting route that keeps you on your toes. We’ve had alot of rain recently, so its a lot greener than normal!”
Desert flowers
After my bail the other day, I’ve been taking it easy on the bike and going for longer, less technical rides. Last night, I went for a rip down a piece of flat singletrack that I haven’t really ridden for years. It was so nice, I got up early this morning and went for another ride on the same stretch of path. More pictures after the jump.
Nice doubletrack ride along the Alouetter River in Pitt Meadows, BC.