A few days ago, a few friends and I went riding on Seymour. We decided to go check out where the big rockslide was that took out Twin Bridges earlier on and this is what we found. The picture does not do it justice. I couldn’t get back far enough to get all of the rocks that fell in the frame, so this is just a little taste. I would have liked to have been near it when it happened so I could feel the ground shake as the rocks fell. I must say, I live in a pretty interesting area.
A few days ago, I went out with a freelap tower and watch to record some times on a trail on Seymour. It was pretty neat to see how much little mistakes can take so much time off in the end. From my first to my fastest, I only took off 4 seconds, but on a 1 minute trail that’s actually not to bad. I will be doing this much more often as soon as my heal from my ankle sprain.
Here are my times:
1. 59.62
2. 58.80
3. 58.56
4. 58.63
5. 55.79
6. 55.48
7. 55.53
8. 57.20
I finally got a text from a fellow worker at Sportchek that my new bike was in, so I immediately headed over to the shop to build it up. With a little struggling with the dropper post, which I still haven’t perfected, I finally got it all together. Yesterday was the first day I got to ride it on Fromme. Here are my first impressions.
Climbing:
On the slower, less steep climbs, I didn’t feel like I had just as much power as I did on other bikes. This may have been because the Force X was long and had slacker geometry. This wasn’t a big deal to me and it wasn’t enough to make the 40 minute climb to get to 7th Secret even the least bit unbearable. I am surprised to say that on the steep technical climbs, I found myself staying on the bike way more as opposed to getting off and pushing. I was really impressed that I was able to climb through slippery rocks and roots much better than I have on previous bikes, even with the Fox Float X CTD in Descend mode.
Descending:
I generally ride all of my bikes like they’re downhill race bikes while descending, so this one was no different. Because it was so long, I thought It would be even better for going really fast downhill. I did have some trouble pushing this bike on the trails though, mostly because of the tires. It may have been because the bike is new and that I’m not used to it, but there were a few things that I didn’t like.
My first Impression of the Continental Mountain King tires is that they didn’t grip that well at all on the wet rocks and roots compared to the Schwalbe Hans Damf which I had been using on my dads all mountain bike. New tires generally don’t grip that well, so I’ll have to wear them in a bit to see if the grip improves.
Another thing that bothered me while descending was that the bike was so loud. The chain was constantly hitting the carbon chainstays on the bigger hits and it really felt like I was breaking the bike. That is an easy fix, however, there really should have been chainstay protectors already on the bike.
I will have to ride this bike a lot more to break in the suspension and the tires to really tell what it actually rides like, but from my impression, despite a few minor issues, it is a great bike!
The second stop to our journey was Sun Peaks for the BC/Canada Cup race, which was also the Canadian National Champs race. I had high hopes for this one after crashing last year on my first ever DH race and ending up 17th. I knew the course was fast and rough and that’s how I liked it. Or so I thought…
We drove to Sun Peaks the day after Panorama and thanks to a very generous friend, stayed in a massive condo with more than enough room for the other riders who we were traveling with us to come stay. Caleb and I went out to ride for a day before the course closed to get a peak at what had changed and to start practicing. We thought the course was pretty much the same as it was last year, until the first day of official practice showed that the course actually started below the first two really steep fast sections, which was a bit of a disappointment. The top of the course was steep, but relatively flowy with lots of berms. It got less steep and more wide open towards the middle and bottom of the course, with only one slightly technical section with two tricky berms.
I felt quite confident after the first day of practice that I could do well if I put a good run together. Again, the second day of practice brought on a lot more riders which resulted in race course really taking a beating. It hadn’t rained for quite a while and everything was starting to get really dusty. It was impossible to follow your team mate down even 50-100 feet back because the dust lingered in the air due to no wind. After riding all year in wet and rainy conditions, I wasn’t comfortable riding in the unpredictable silt and marbley rocks that coated every inch of the course. My confidence was slowly going away.
My seeding time was average. I did all my lines cautiously and didn’t pedal extremely hard. I thought I could pull at least 5-10 seconds back in my race run if I hit everything full speed and pedaled my legs off. My hands were still feeling good and I was ready to lay it down on Sunday.
By the time of race morning, the course was absolutely destroyed. Moving into Jr. Expert, my race time was a lot later and after a lot more riders than in my previous category, which meant that the course would get beat up even more.
I had no idea how much until my actual run. It started off well out of the gate and I could really feel like I was putting down a lot of intensity. That feeling quickly vanished after the first corner when I saw the big dust filled holes created by all of the other riders braking. It felt like I couldn’t get back into race mode after that. My wheels were all over the place and I was going way slower than I wanted to. I began to tense up and rode the technical section even more cautious than in my seeding run. In the end, I pulled off the exact same time in my race run that I got in my seeding run. A huge disappointment.
Due to the schedule of the BC Cup series this year, we decided that it would be cheaper and easier to stay on the road for the month of July and not come back to Vancouver between every race. There was a BC or Canada Cup race four weekends in a row. A few friends of ours, Caleb, Mom, and I traveled to Panorama, Sunpeaks, Silver Star, and Kicking Horse to see how much damage we could inflict.
Panorama would be the first race where I could meet up with my team for the first time. Although all of us weren’t racing, it was still our first race as a team. I walked the track on Thursday night and I had no idea what to expect. It started out with some small (way too small) jumps and berms out in the open, and then got more and more technical as it went in and out of the trees. It looked pretty average for a race course, but one thing that bugged me was this awkward uphill section near the end. It was a brand new section where they cut out trees with grass still growing where we were suppose to be riding until it came to a drop right after a 45% rock filled corner. Then it was over a jump, through some uncut trail and sprinting the fire road to the end.
Practice was ok the first day and I felt slow because I had never ridden the course and was still finding lines. Since it wasn’t a very big race, the track was staying relatively packed and not too dusty and blown out because there were only 100 or so riders. Day two was a different story. More and more people were showing up and it got hot. The open sections and berms started to get powdery and blown out. Luckily for us, It rained on Saturday night. Unfortunately, it got slippery in the trees and I had a little crash that twisted my ankle. I didn’t notice the pain until later, so that wasn’t a big deal other than blowing my confidence.
My race run came around and everything was going alright. As usual, I got nervous and went a bit slower than I had practiced which actually wasn’t such a bad thing because the course had deteriorated quite a bit. I was having an average run up until the fire road. Upon exiting from the newly cut out trail, my front wheel slipped out and before I could do anything, I was on the dirt. After getting tangled in my bike and trying to get up as quickly as I could, I wanted to make the best effort that I could to make it to the finish line. Being in my lowest gear on flat ground didn’t help that much and I entered the finish arena quite defeated, braking before the line.
Did I learn anything? I’m not so sure about this race. I had the fitness and the strength to do well on it, but somehow couldn’t make my lines work too well. I still have no idea how I slipped out in a place where I had been fine all up until my race run. Overall, it wasn’t a very good weekend, but it was still good to meet my team and ride with friends that I haven’t seen for months.
I recently had to turn down a grassroots sponsorship offer from Cove Bike Shop due to the wheelbase on their DH bike being shorter than I need. Because I’m tall, it is hard to find bikes that have a long enough wheelbase, even in Large sizes. Unfortunately, the wheel base of the of the Cove Shocker is 37mm shorter than my Commencal.
I’m pretty disappointed because it’s a pretty neat bike and that I won’t be riding for our local bike shop. Cove have been building excellent bikes on the North Shore for a long time and have a lot of cool people working in the shop which I think I could have benefited from. Hopefully there will be more opportunities in the future!
We went to spend time with family for Christmas in Chilliwack/Abbotsford. I decided that while we were in Chilliwack to ride Vedder Mountain, one of my favorite shuttling places to ride. My brother didn’t want to get wet, so I was on my own. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t the only one riding there. There were a few other guys skipping turkey to shred some trails. I guess I’m not the only weirdo who like to ride his bike no matter what day it is…
Dreamin’ of a white Christmas?
Yesterday, a few friends and I and took the forty minute drive to Squamish to do some shuttling. They had been there before, but my brother and I never have. We met up with some other people from Whistler and started driving up the road past Quest University.
It was about 10 minutes to the top of the our warm up run called Cake Walk. It was a nice easy technical run with a couple drops and jumps. Some parts of the trail didn’t drain well and there was quite a lot of water, but for the most part, the conditions were good.
After dumping out of Cake Walk, we made the 8-10 minute hike to Full Nelson, a trail used in the film Strength In Numbers. That was probably my favorite overall run of the day, even though we only did it once. It was smooth and had lots of good berms and jumps. I did find that you really had to keep your speed up or you’d have to pedal to keep a good flow, which didn’t happen because there were four people ahead of me and only one of them had ever ridden that trail. Full Nelson dumped right into Half Nelson which was pretty much just a smaller version of Full Nelson, hence the name. That dumped us out onto a parking lot about a third up the mountain.
We shuttled the bumpy road all the way to the top to get to a trail called Grin and Holler. About 500 Meters from the trailhead, we hit snow. I had never ridden in the snow on my DH bike so I was kind of excited. We pushed up to the trail and found that it had been ridden a little bit so at least we could see where we were suppose to go. It was quite steep and technical and me being new to clipless shoes didn’t help much. The trail had two mandatory high skinnies that you couldn’t ride around, one of which I fell off (walking it). After that, the trail seemed to get easier and less steep.
Right at the end of the trail was the best part of my day. Big manmade jumps. There were four wooden lipped gaps that I couldn’t wait to put my tires on them. After walking down and looking at all of them, the only one I was really worried about was the first one because it had a wood landing which was almost as high as the take off. First jump was about 15-18 feet, second was about 22′ third was at least 27′ and the last one, depending where you landed was 35+. I dropped in, hitting all of them the first go, which I didn’t think I’d do, but the jumps were built perfectly and judging the speed was easy. I overshot the last one by quite a bit, but It wasn’t a big deal because the landing was so long. Only three out of the six of us did them and we pushed back up three more times because they were so much fun.
The last trail of the day we decided to do all of Half Nelson because we had only done half of it when we did Full Nelson. The top half of the trail is pretty much the same as the bottom. The top was a little more technical, but it turned into smooth flowy goodness real fast. Again, I was behind two people, so I couldn’t go as fast and keep a good flow going. You’d think I would have learned by now, eh? Everybody was too tired to do another run, so we rode down the road back to Squamish. It wasn’t as steep as we had thought so we actually did a lot of pedaling (oops).
The thing I learned about riding Squamish is that you’re going to have to hike up no matter what trail you do, so if you’re used to riding park, you’re not gonna like it. It is DEFINITELY worth the hike, though. Just make sure to bring lots of water.
Last jump on Grin And Holler. It’s a biggie!
We went to moose mountain yesterday do ride some shuttle runs. We went a few weeks ealier in the year when it was warmer. When we got there, there was snow on top and the trails were really wet. I hit a couple of trees trying to avoid the big puddles that gave you a mud bath every time you went through them. It was still a really fun day though. I hit some bigger gaps that I didn’t do the last time and found out that they were easier than I thought.
Muddy Bike
Snow at the top