Finished and unfinished business

 The drilling has been completed and operations in Houston(not Texas) have wrapped up. Work and play for me has ceased in the Bulkley Valley for 2011 but not before I managed to address a bit of unfinished business from the year before.

I was fortunate that work had been in an area that was rife with good riding, however the burdens of said work only allowed sporadic trail time. I made the most of every opportunity but was primarily relegated to an hour or two once or twice a week. Most of those rides in Smithers were in the Bluff. I finally managed to get out to Huckin eh’, a trail I had intentions of hitting in 2010 but Mother Nature had other ideas. 1ºc and rain were not favorable conditions in late October and I was keener to go home than submit myself to hypothermia. I was not to be denied this year.

The summer of 2011 was one of the most dismal on record in Northwestern BC and delayed the opening of the newest and most anticipated trail, Pump Daddy, for over a month before the powers that be gave up waiting on favorable conditions, finally relented and opened it in early August.

Most of the new trails are new school DH and very shuttle friendly, especially if you are a 15yr old with no fear and has a mother with a pick-up and a free day to drive you to all of them. The 40+ yr old whose car is a long way away however takes the b-line as he has to return to the aforementioned job.

There were a few new XC oriented trails built as well and they suffered from the same dismal conditions. Clay rich soil never drained properly was slicker than the gulf oil spill and combined with a little sand and gravel was murder on drive-trains. Not to mention the XC crowd there is sparse and lacks traffic required to bed in the new trails quickly.

Regardless I enjoyed my time there and on the last day made my way up Hudson Bay Mountain to take in Piper Down, one of the classic lines in the area known and named for the crashed plane that is now a prominent feature of the trail.

Vancouver beckoned: homeward bound I broke up the drive with a couple more stops. The first in Burns Lake to explore more terrain on the very porcine in nature Boer Mtn and then in Williams Lake to do a lap of the Pedal By the Puddle Enduro course.





Though not marketed properly, the Walmart in Williams Lake has the goods on some great XC trails.

Now that I have a few weeks between the next foray in mineral exploration it’s time to reacquaint myself with my local trails and prepare for the long overdue trip to the 7 summits in Rossland.