Sunday, 29 July 2007
AM – rainy, 20C
PM – sunny, 22-25C slight breeze
I awoke at 06:00 to my phone’s alarm. It was morning twilight and the sky was a clear eggshell blue. It was too early. I griped to myself that I had set the alarm too early and went back to sleep. At 08:00, I awoke again, this time to the sound of water dripping from the eaves of the roof onto the vinyl chairs on the terrace. The sky was no longer clear blue, but instead a uniform gray. I went back to drowsing until I heard noise out in the living room. We had missed IGA last night after dinner because of the late hour, so we didn’t have any breakfast. We did have the coffee that I brought, so that was a good perk-up while watching the Weather Channel. Breakfast was the “original breakfast” at The Beet Root. We had walked by the day before and considered it for dinner, but they are only open for breakfast and lunch. The original breakfast was 2 poached eggs, 4-strips of American bacon, potatoes, and toast with condiments for $9 CAD. Pretty good, but not particularly cheap. If it’s clear outside, sit on the terrace so the kitchen smells don’t ruin your clothes like if you sit inside.
We hit IGA to grocery-up for the week. The weather had cleared up as predicted in the time we were having breakfast and going shopping. Gearing up and loading up the packs, we headed downstairs for an “easy warm-up ride”. I immediately felt like I definitely didn’t blend in here. The XC/race or AM demographic didn’t seem to exist in Whistler, or at least was well hidden. It was either full-head-helmet F/R or D/H, or tennis-shoe XC. It seemed that we were the only people with clipless pedals and shoes…
Across the playground and out to the road we went, crossing the two lanes of Blackcomb Way and riding up over the raised walkway to the parking lots. The plan was to ride the trails in the Lost Lake Park area, which were allegedly “easy”. Immediately, we were faced with a rooty, rocky swithcbacked climb through the pines as we ascended Peaches en Regalia. I rode over my first wooden stunt, but it was all a blur as I hovered in that ethereal state between awareness and passing out as I panted, sucking wind, legs burning – trying to go from cold to 120 percent in less than 30-seconds. My heart rate pegged and the sound of my heartbeat pounded in my ears as we crossed a smooth, graded gravel singletrack and entered Dinah Moe Humm. More rocky tombstones and wheel-stoppers littered the climb and made a relatively moderate slope into a technical climbing dance of pain and torment. The entrances and ends of Disco Boy, The Torture Never Stops, and Fountain of Love all passed in a haze as we ground to the top of the hill. The climbs were all rideable – no push-up steeps – but adding the technical aspect and the effort level quadrupled. Having seen the map, I wondered to myself if we couldn’t have just taken some groomed singletrack or one of the old doubletracks up to the top and descended on the technical singletracks. Summitting, we took a rest on a glacier-scarred granite knob. It was warm in the sun, but the air temperature was cool. Sweat evaporated quickly in the dry air – a far cry from the humid, sauna-like conditions back home. From this point, I could see a groomed singletrack contouring along the bottom of the slope. All the trails and paths were cut just out of eyeshot of each other.
Finally we reached the payoff – Pinocchio’s Furniture. Wooden stunts galore! This was a good “learning trail” for wooden stunts. There were no workarounds, but if ridden in the downhill direction, they were all safe and achievable. Some were wave-like, some turned and banked, others hairpinned. It was over all too soon, ending at a depression with an evil snaking switchback climb-out. Crossing the road onto yumpy Dwarf Nebula, the stunts continued down through Zoot Allures and the first part of Toads of the Short Forest. Coming out into the open, we crossed under the powerlines and through the disc golf course. We descended the sweepy Gee, I like your Pants and Son of Green Genes. The dark, technical Jellyroll Gumdrop put us out on the valley bottom near the railroad tracks and the bottom end of Fitzsimmons creek.
Jeff had really low rear tire pressure, so we stopped briefly to pump it up. There was an outhouse here, and I briefly considered dropping some ballast before the climb back up but decided not to risk discovering the potential horrors within. We climbed up the smooth gravel singletrack Hooktender and Tommy Moore to the end of Comfortably Numb on Poler’s Road to find the new, under-construction trail that the bike shop guy told us about. The trailhead was fairly obvious and we ascended it as it paralleled the gravel road and crossed it twice before ending near the Fairmont Chateau Whistler golf course. The trail was under construction from this point on, so we continued up the gravel road hoping for a drop-in back to the trail system. We ended up at the paved road leading to the golf course golf academy and had to backtrack down the gravel road and singletrack to the beginning. Jeff’s tire was low again, so we had a bar break and changed his tube.
We returned via Donkey Puncher groomed singletrack until I spotted a small side-trail. It wasn’t marked, but was maintained and well-used. The die was cast and we entered it, finding a good 2-meter rock roll-in. The trail came out onto the nasty loose Centennial gravel doubletrack, then picked up again on the opposite side a little further down. Coming out into the light along the cliffside, the trail joined onto the White Gold Traverse contour singletrack. This was a great fast singletrack section with a fairly heinous rocky climb-out at the end. It was an evil but doable climb. I really liked this trail for some reason. The climb at the end was a worthwhile trade for all the flowy fun in the middle. On the first pitch, I hit a good wheel-stopper while trying to get all creative with lines through the rocks and roots. Dismounting, I gouged my top tube with my shoe spikes. That got me all salty. The second pitch was almost endless, and was a real challenge to clean in one go, both from the technical and length aspects. Connecting onto the upper end of Dinah Moe Humm, we descended back to the village backtracking along Peaches en Regalia.
We briefly observed the antics at the dirt jumps, then returned to the condo for Endurox and the hot tub. There was an Asian family down at the pool – Auntie, Uncle, two boys, and a girl. Mom and Dad came down briefly, but disappeared back upstairs. The day’s aches and pains were melted away, only to be replaced by new ones on the climb back up the stairs to the condo. Getting cleaned up and dressed for dinner, we headed for the village. I stopped by the currency exchange to make $400 USD into $440 CAD. The exchange rate was pretty bad, but it had dropped to 1:1 a few days before, so I wasn’t complaining. After shopping for post-event bargain T-shirts at Garbanzo Bike and Bean ($20 CAD on sale, $30 CAD regular – WTF?!), we hit Earl’s for dinner. I got the calamari appetizer, a 550ml Hoegaarten, and a bacon-cheddar burger with salad on the side for $42 CAD including tax and tip.
The Hoegaarten made the world all weird and distorted and made the world spin in steadily decreasing circles and put me out barely after emptying my pockets back at the condo. The “easy” warm-up hell was over, and tomorrow the “real” riding would begin!
Pictures here
D = 9.47-miles, Vavr = 5.9 mph, Vmax = 18.3 mph, T = 1-hour, 36-minutes
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