SEVEN RIDES IN FOUR DAYS - WILL THE KIDS SURVIVE? SUMMER OF SCOUTING - WEST KOOTENAYS
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For our fourth scouting trip of the summer, we headed for the West Kootenays. This is a favourite family destination as our good friends Rob, Michelle, Randy, Nella and Maggie live just outside of Nelson and we often make the trip in the winter for the awesome skiing. Given the opportunity to take a family riding trip out that way, we had to make it happen as travel restrictions opened up in Western Canada. Singletrack 6 visited the West Kootenays in 2017 with stages in Rossland, Kaslo and Nelson and will be back in 2021 with two stages in Rossland. This trip would be a combination of looking at past and future Singletrack 6 routes as well as checking out some areas that I haven’t seen before.
Rossland would be our first stop, riding parts of the planned Stage 6 on the slopes of Monte Christo above the town. The trails here are meticulously constructed and maintained by the Kootenay Columbia Trails Society and we had local rider Dave Ford as our guide for this day’s ride. After some steady climbing we descended on a new trail called Stardust - a very fun and moderately technical trail with lots of entertaining features. We continued with more fun descending on Milky Way and Green Door. My daughters, Cici and Kyleigh followed my line down the descent and were surprised by a few of the optional drops that I led them off.
We deviated from the planned stage to continuing descending all the way down to the village of Warfield, just above the City of Trail. Apparently there is a group of Rosslanders who commute to Trail using this route, taking turns driving everyone back home once a week. It’s hard to imagine any commute more fun than this! After a steady grind back up to Rossland it was time for a lunch break. After lunch, we rewarded the girls with a shuttle drop on the Dewdney Trail. This 6km section of downhill singletrack was the finish of the 2017 Singletrack 6 stage 3 at the end of the Seven Summits trail. Such a great way to finish a day of riding!
For the second day we stayed in Nelson. Michelle and her doggos showed us a trail network that I haven’t seen before - the 49er Trails. This area could be called “classic” Nelson riding, with a steady forest service road climb and then some “Nelson blue” singletrack descents - which for us Albertans is more like a black in terms of steep technical singletrack, but still very enjoyable. This area sees less traffic than some of the surrounding networks and is slated for logging in the coming years, but will likely be rebuilt with more trails in time, given the excellent terrain.
In the afternoon, Rob and I headed up to check out a new trail in the Smallwood area. We used this zone for Stage 4 of the 2017 Singletrack 6. For this ride, we didn’t venture all the way up to the epic ridgetop “Vallelujah” trail that we used for the race, but climbed part way up to ride the new “Below the Gods” downhill trail. This new handbuilt trail incorporates a lot of creative flow style features that makes it uniquely fun. The stoke increased steadily as the trail rolled through the descending terrain with lots of rewards and little challenges on the way down. From the bottom of the new trail a short climb brought us back to Antler, Smallwood and Bigwood trails - full of techy goodness that were all part of the ‘17 stage.
Day 3 took us to one of BC’s newest trail networks - Merry Creek in Castlegar. This network is split into a lower area which can be shuttle accessed, and then two trails above the road crossing with “Mr. Green Jeans” being primarily a climbing route and “Captain Kangaroo”: an expert downhill only trail. Our group of 7 riders and two dogs opted to ride from the base all the way up to the top of Mr. Green Jeans. This trail is nicely graded and allows for a steady spin all the way to the views on top, overlooking the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. The Captain Kangaroo descent rolls off the top with some steep rock slabs and drops that earn it a black rating. More steep slabs and larger features pop up throughout the descent and make for a fun and challenging ride back down the mountain. The lower part of the network is more heavily constructed like a bike park - we rode the Hail Merry trail and enjoyed the big berms and tabletop jumps on the way down.
For the final day of riding, thunderstorms were forecast to roll in late morning, so we made plans to ride first thing with TransRockies photographers John Gibson and Jean McAllister on the Morning Mountain trails. One of the most popular trail networks in the area, we used these trails for the final stage of the 2017 Singletrack 6. We climbed up the Bottoms Up and Upper Bottoms trails to the top of “Turnstyles” where we could see dark clouds threatening across the valley. With legs tired from days of riding, we decided not to climb any further and jumped into Turnstyles, a super smooth flow trail. The girls love trails like this - getting high up on the berms and grabbing some air on the table top jumps. We made it back to the truck just before the rain started to fall.
We decided to try to squeeze in one more shuttle ride in the afternoon. Clearer skies in Castlegar beconned and we headed for a trail called “Grandiflorum” just out of town. A 9km descent with 1,000m of descending, this trail is accessed by driving up a rough forest service road to drop vehicles and start the ride. Starting with tight and rough trail through dense forest the ride gradually opens up into more open, dry and even sandy terrain and you descend. Long boardwalks and skinnies, big step-ups, ramps, dops and a-frames make for a challenging rider for expert riders, but with bypass options our mixed ability group all enjoyed the ride immensely with everyone riding all or nearly all of the trail. It was a perfect end to the trip.
We somehow managed seven rides in 4 days (including shuttles) despite rain in the forecast nearly every day - the weather gods were really looking after us this time. More amazingly, every ride was pure pleasure - with no ride leaving us disappointed or uninspired. The more technical riding in the West Kootenays really challenge riders of all abilities, but for our family, skills and confidence increased with every ride. The trip was a perfect mix of checking routes for races and discovering new riding areas. I really like to see different types and styles of riding to put our race routes into perspective. For my teenage girls, visiting new terrain really sparked a new level of excitement about their riding and I’m sure they will be keen to come back!
Resources:
Kootenay Columbia Trail Society