It was a completely innocuous moment but it set in motion the best adventure I have been a part of in sometime. I had just stepped off one of the baggage pods of my helicopter onto a dead flat expanse of wild grass when my knee collapsed. The fact that the knee did collapse wasn’t uncommon for me, I had torn the ACL for a second time a few years before and at times it had a habit of dislocating. This was different however, it went a new direction and there was sudden acute pain followed immediately by swelling. My breakthrough season of flying had just come to a sudden halt with a freshly torn medial meniscus on top of the ruptured ACL. Surgery and prolonged rehab was definitely going to be a part of my immediate future.
Fortunately cycling is a fairly stable and low impact form of exercise and one of the best ways to recover as well as cope with a knee injury. The swelling had subsided substantially as well as most of the pain and it wasn’t long before I was aboard my bike and a full year of exploration would ensue.
Cambodia, that’s where it began. It was a little notation in the blog of a SRAM sponsored athlete. I don’t recall how it was that I ended up on this particular blog but something struck me about a particular rider profile. “Favorite trail: Cambodia, somewhere in Vancouver”. The North Shore of Vancouver is littered with trails on three mountains to choose from. There are dozens of well-known trails as well as an almost equal number of the not so well known and having ridden in this area for 20+ years Cambodia fit into the not so well known.
Believe it or not the North Shore can be a pretty boring place to ride. While being world renowned for the extreme nature of the riding here the trails are generally short in nature and apart from pedaling to the trail heads there is little more than coasting and holding on till you get to the bottom after you drop-in. Now I like technical trails as much as the next guy but there are no real epics on any one of the local mountains. Save for the Bridal Path on Mount Seymour the Shore lacks areas of serious pedaling, having to actually go uphill for much more than a few meters on any of the trails here is rare indeed. When found the efforts are usually rewarded with the North Shore equivalent of the Holy Grail: Loam, that highly organic soft aromatic soil that provides tremendous traction as well as incredible forgiveness. Loam is also quite rare because of the ease of car access to a number of the more popular trails. The easier the access by car or otherwise the sooner it becomes a rutted rooted mess and if real popular will eventually resemble a cobbled country road in Europe.
Your perspective of a trail changes so much when not perched on two wheels, that much more when walking uphill. Not long after returning home from the injury the first potential epic would be found. Urban Warfare is a name Sonny and I had given to a link-up of a number of trails on Cypress Mountain many of which that are not mapped. Sonny is one of my most frequent riding buddies and while Fromme mountain is in my backyard in North Vancouver, Cypress makes up his West Vancouver property extension. Over the wetter parts of the season and to mix things up a bit he and I often hike the same trails we ride but on the lookout with keen eyes for the subtleties of trails we may not have descended before or even noticed for that matter. Baghdad, so named for the “Green Zone”, a tremendously lush mossy spot that was lit up by the afternoon sun the day we found it was just such a treasure found on a little walk. Baghdad wasn’t a new trail but it also wasn’t seeing any traffic whatsoever which was amazing considering it’s entrance is literally one whole bike length from a reasonably well traveled intensely difficult trail for which Vancouver is famous for.
With historic trails such as Blind Skier, the short lung busting climbs on the Antagonizer and a rip down the Slippery Canoe as a lead in, Baghdad and 4 other trails would make a ride that would last nearly an hour and descend almost 2000’. All too accessible by car but an option of a climb up an old classic called the BLT, so named in the late 80’s for the Boulders Logs and Trees that one would be subjected too either climbing or descending what is essentially an access road for the power lines that climb the west side of the mountain, it could add another hour to the experience if one is so inclined. As accessible as many of these trails are, a couple of these trails see little use because of the climbs. Who in there right minds would ride up a trail on 40+lb bikes? Fortunately not very many and as a result there remains a little haven of loamy single-track oh so close to some of Cypress’s most popular descents. Couple that with that climb up the BLT and my faith in finding a little epic on the North Shore would be restored.Cambodia however still remained elusive. Donna, my source for single-track goodness in Sea to Sky country knew said sponsored SRAM athlete and he wasn’t giving up any information regarding its existence. The rest of the summer of 2008 would include multiple rides on most of the classics trails on all three mountains. I returned briefly north to Yellowknife for work but due to an open compensation claim a result of that knee injury I soon found myself back at home. Nothing to do but wait for the claim to sort itself out and fortunately due to lack of pain associated with the injury a hell of a lot more riding and exploring would be done in the coming months. The only thing to give out before my knee would again was the bike…
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