Frisby Ridge including Ultimate Frisby!

Later in the afternoon after the Kicking Horse Cup road race, 
I checked out CBT trail starting from the single lane bridge... 
pretty fun trail up & down - Golden

Next day, epic ride in Revie... to Frisby Ridge

Starting from town, west Hwy 1 to Hwy 23N to FSR...
9.3 km, 140m elevation, 27 min

Gravel forestry road to Frisby Ridge trailhead...
9.4 km, 768m elevation, 1 hour

Frisby Ridge trail to highpoint - 10.6 km, 734m elevation, 1:14 hr

A very rider friendly trail suitable for new mountain bikers

Super flowy descent, riding down (or ripping!) was way more fun than I thought it would be -  10.7 km, 35 min

Followed the gravel road down two switchbacks 4.7 km, and around the corner another 100m to the Ultimate Frisby Downhill trailhead

The 3 guys on downhill bikes did not question me attempting this trail with my hardtail!

I could almost keep up to their dog...until, I hit a few longggg steep pitches where I walked due more to sketchy loose sand/dirt.

I was riding fine until I decided to bail, with the bike unexpectedly rebounding back at me... pedal to shin - hard, bar to ribs - hard.

Hurt, though knew it could have been worse. Scraped the rest of the way down. Saw two of the guys and the dog waiting for their buddy to return with the truck.

If the GPS clocked it right, this descent was only 2.5 km with a 577 metre drop in elevation! - STEEP

Rode back into town with a slight descent and a tailwind

Epic! well-rounded ride

4:10 hr, 54 km

1990m total elevation gain

Wildflowers - OUTSTANDING!

reminder - horseflies, big as birds and majorly annoying

back in Revie for Jan's birthday with home-made cakes!

Prospector Trail Exploring - Exshaw

Checked out a new trail for me called Prospector out in Exshaw (15 km east of Canmore) with a bunch of the Deadgoats and a few Calgary Canoe Club paddlers and mechanic Janet Liu.

Amazing Rocky Mountain views

crazy fun trail - photo Deadgoat Steve Walsh

Riding this trail got me more enthused to get out on my mountain bike more. I'm a roadie at heart though trails like this one certainly puts that permanent grin on the face for awhile! fun fun fun

Deadgoat Henry Yau zooming down the Canadian slick rock

Marg focused on the ladder - photo Deadgoat Craig Marshall

Following a good technical rider will have me ride scary sections I would probably have balked on. I was following ice-paddler Barney McIlhargey on his full suspension when we approached another ladder. There was an easy turn off to the left.

I was already on Barney's line when I saw him take a huge drop-off from the ladder. I was committed and made it cleanly on my hardtail! Then I hear Linda whoop behind me as she followed me as closely as I followed Barney, so she was committed too!

Deadgoat Linda Green cruising through the forest - photo Deadgoat Craig

Trail starts with a good climbing effort interspersed with flowy fun sections. Not a super long trail, though opportunity to ride a few loops in a beautiful area.

Deadgoat Steve ace-ing the rocky ridge

Check out this link for AMAZING photography of this trail!

Deadgoat ride debrief - photo ice-paddler Candace Mihalcheon

Cali MTB ventures

Malibu Canyon with great tour guides... Shaun from the Wed Calabasas group ride, transplanted Calgarian Allan St. Pierre, and Pat Dodge who was visiting from Calgary

The most exciting part of the trail was reaching Castrol Peak where there was a short steep climb with sticky rock Moab-like, with an equal rocky descent on the other side... fun though short

Met up with local Mario Correa from my Transalp racing days... He took me on some great elevation single track climbing in Trabuco Canyon in Orange County

Hoping to catch Mario blazing fast out of the Holy Jim Trail and caught him with a second flat. I lent him my 26" tube which fit well for the rest of the ride in his 29" wheel!
Didn't know you could.

Tough to capture the amazing views when I was chasing Mario at his high speeds

The valley in Trabuco Canyon 5000' below where we started from

One of my favourite MTB rides in Elfin Forest is the technical Way-Up climb up Mt Israel. At the top is a fun super rocky loop that takes about 20 minutes. I ride it both directions then come bombing down the Way-Up trail.

I finally found a way to link this ride to the trails around Lake Hodges on the new paved road Via Ambiente!

down 15% past the lower reservoir

Darn water reservoir always had me trapped from getting to the trail head. Now Via Ambiente goes past a new ritzy Mexican style villa and connects Del Dios Hwy to the Elfin Forest road

the lovely 15% screaming fast grade to Del Dios

Smith Creek Trails - just awesome!

For some reason I never made it to these trails the last few years until recently. For my 1st trek up, Aaron and Tiffany from Edmonton joined me. Once we clued in to the green dots painted on the trees as the trail markers, we climbed up a reasonably graded switchback trail.

View of Westbank 1/3 way up Smith Cr trails

I bumped into a couple local riders, Steve and his buddy Dom. They lead me up to the top 11-km in while Tiff & Aaron turned around.

At the top, the trail wound into the descent which looked menacing as I viewed it from the climb. There were huge ladders and jumps all over. Each stunt had an out to quickly go around it. I kept telling myself to "look away" real quick as the trail would guide the rider onto the jumps & ladder.

Near the bottom, the 4-km descent finished with a huge swoopy section. About 1 hour up and minutes down! Well, I'm still in the double digits.

High fives to the trail makers!
And the signs that advise for no motorized vehicles i.e. dirt bikes.

Kettle Valley Railway - Myra Canyon

2nd trip on KVR, I took in a leisure ride on the Myra Canyon section with my friend Dorothy. Set her up with my Scott while I rode my Ridley X-Fire, and got opp to get photos which I missed on my 1st trip.

1st trip back July 15, was a distance mtnbike ride with 6 Kelowna riders, the day after I arrived. Even though it was excruciating to put my sore foot into a shoe let alone ride, I didn't know what was wrong with my toe yet... and this ride was worth it.

view of city of Kelowna in the distance by Lake Okanagan 

We mtnbiked up McCulloch (stopping to pick saskatoon berries) to the end and turned back on the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) which is the old railway bed (4-hr ish round trip). KVR is pretty much a slightly descending gravel road with minimal scenery as it tucks into the trees, not overly exciting.

2nd trip thru KVR end of August

When we rounded the corner many miles in, I was WOW-ed by the views. We just hit the Myra Canyon section with 18 train trestles. Definitely not scary like the trestles in Costa Rica though pretty cool. Most of them were rebuilt after the huge forest fire in 2003.

Dorothy in the distance on a trestle in Myra Canyon

The mtnbike ride finished down the wicked trail Angel Springs in Crawford. Yikes- technical!! At least I had that ride as a memory as I began on my toe healing journey.

Rocky Mountain Outings

Bonus of spending time working in Calgary is access to the Rockies... it was abit of a wet month of June.

Prairie Mtn Hike May 31

Lady MacDonald tromp thru snow June 9

Stopped before last pitch up Lady Mac... a little sketchy with fresh snow on loose rock. A nice glissade down...

a fav new mountain bike trail in Bragg Creek area, Pneuma - June 22

Bragg Creek Trail map

SW of Calgary with view of K-Country - June 30

May Long Weekend - Invermere Revisited

Back in the adventure racing days, I spent more time out in the Invermere area racing the Sea2Summit stage races with the occasional training weekend. I took opportunity to stay at x-c skier friend Jeff's place for this May long weekend.

view from Castle Rock

Driving in Sat morning, I was so beat from an exhausting week that I slept the day away in the cozy house. Late that day, I was adamant to get an activity in so I went in search of the trailhead for Castle Rock on lumpy bumpy farm roads. By 7:20 pm I started the hike (I actually ran it). Pretty late start and glad that daylight stuck around a long time this time of year.

It's a great hike with 33 switchbacks and then long sections to the viewpoint. It seemed to take longer than I remembered in the past though I made it down to the car within 2 hours and before dark! 9-km round trip, 3300' elevation gain.

Sunday, went on a road ride counterclockwise around Windemere Lake fighting a nasty headwind. Looping back on Hwy 93, I jumped onto side roads Kootenay Road #2 and #3 that went through Reservation land. Continued on the Windemere Loop road which cuts past Swansea with a short section of gravel. Rode out/back to Wilmer which was short though hilly. My favourite road was out/back the road to Panorama except for the insane 18% section at the start. Total mileage 106 km, 4:15 hours, 4300' elevation gain.

Trail not for Heights-Challenged riders! Amazing views!!

Monday, checked out the mountain bike trails "Along the Johnson" and "Kloosifier". 5 stars for the Johnson trail - fun, fast, flowy, incredible views of Toby Creek from cliffsides and ridges. Short though... maybe 1 hour though there is a connector trail to Kloosifier for another 45 min of berm riding. 22-km, 2000' elevation gain.

Awesome weekend - Thanks Jeff for the stay!

Epic riding at St George Utah Ironman

I was excited to be asked to drive Mark Woodhouse down to St George Utah safely for his Ironman. Whenever I've driven to California, I've zipped by St George many a time wondering about playtime in those red hills. This time I had three days to play while Mark prepped for his Ironman.

Found us accom with awesome couchsurfing hosts Ed & Ruthie in the comforts of a St George home, including their dog Moqui.

I remembered that a wickedly strong endurance racer lived in St George. I contacted Lynda Wallenfels and was excited she would squeeze in time to show me a few rides. Check out her coaching site and awesome blogsite of her amazing adventures.

Two more mini-might riders - check out that scenery!!

Lynda emailed links to Garmin tracks of the courses we planned to do. Using these set courses on the Garmin made that unit so much more worthy. The GPS would beep when I was off track which was helpful in technical sections when I needed to keep my eye on the trail and not the map on the unit.

Riding with Lynda was a full-on technical session for me. I really hadn't been on my mountain bike since my three races in June last year. It was great for me to try to stick to Lynda's wheel. Bonus was following the wicked lines.

Ride Day 1: Church Rocks – Prospector – Leeds Reef – Silver Reef – Icehouse – Dino Cliffs

I was in awe of the terrain right from the start and wanted to take tons of pictures. 

Just past church rocks...

Soon after we started I hollered out "Was that a turtle?". Lynda was amazed she didn't see it as she dodged it on the trail with her bike. It was a baby tortoise.

Teeny Tortoise barely the size of the palm of the glove

And thanks to the tortoises, this area is called the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and is not an ATV rec area! We ended up seeing at least five Mojave Desert Tortoises of all sizes on our rides.

awesome flowers in bloom

The terrain was ever-changing, a whole variety. Had a little history tour when we checked out Silver Reef where a town of 2,000 people existed in the 1870's with a silver mining boom. Only a few buildings left with a museum that had been the Wells Fargo bank.

Thrilled to try samples of the Mulberries at the tree in front of the museum (free food!)

I quite enjoyed the next section of dirt road climb which twisted in tree-d area and was impressively more lush and green. At the top, we bombed down a section on the Mesa that had split second decisions to dodge jagged lava rocks, like a little bomb-field for the bike rims. The trail called Icehouse is the longest technical descent I'd ridden in a long while, it went on and on, fast and rough. Loop finished with a nice moab-rock section. 

I was baked in the 85F sun with my pasty Cdn white skin. The trail was consistently rough that the palms of my hands had little blisters high in the grip area - pretty dainty this time of year!

Ride time: 4:25 hr, 65-km, 4900' elevation gain

Couchsurf hosts, Ed and Ruthie, had us watch an epic movie with Anthony Hopkins playing Burt Munro in "The World's Fastest Indian". They are both motorbike tour enthusiasts. I loved the movie - lots of good motivational things to take away. Hopkins was awesome in it - cute, sweet and charming.

Ride Day 2: "True Grit" pre-ride! (check out -->race video).

I rode in to meet Lynda at the trailhead just SW edge of town. Wore white arm coolers to protect my sunburnt arms. Forgot to do anything with the blisters on my palms so I bared it! It was pretty hot in the canyon rock area.

We went over the True Grit race course that was so wickedly technical with step ups and moab-like descents. Some sections could barely tell there was a visible line to ride. Thankfully, I could follow Lynda if I could keep up!

there's a trail in there somewhere...

Tortoise siting #5

Then Lynda left me on my own for the final 40 km of mostly rolling terrain, until I hit the Barrel Roll trail which was back to a technical loop. I was baking out there.

this trail sucked me in on the slight decline of fast fun rollers for miles!
Siting of the white Bearclaw Poppies, another Preserve Trail for nature, yay!

pic of the black raven on the rock on the left (for Di & Al!)

Running low on water, I took the road option on my return thru Santa Clara, a town with very tall trees lining the streets. Another wicked day of riding red dirt!

Ride time: 5:10, 74-km, 5100' elevation gain


IRONMAN Race Morning

Super early morning to drop Mark off at the athlete shuttle to the swim start at the Reservoir. Back to snooze then get ready for my Day 3 ride.

Last minute packing of transition bags

Ride Day 3: Hurricane Rim Trail - Goulds - Gooseberry Mesa - J.E.M.

Lynda was volunteer bike escort at the IM so I was on my own. Last ride was another epic near Hurricane, around 30-km from St George. The bike shop recommended starting at the trailhead near the town of Virgin and to ride the loop counterclockwise. This gave the technical track first, and ended with a wicked long gradual descent.

It was a windy day. A few riders I rode past commented "watch out for the wind"! I was jostled a little riding on the exposed rim trail. I thought it would be worse.

town of Hurricane below

The network of trails were again epic, varied and fun. Different than the last two days in that there was more mileage open sections.

Ride time: 2:34, 41-km, 2700' elevation gain

Enjoying this day, I was cutting time short to get back to town to see Mark finish the bike section of his Ironman. Little did I know the same wind picked up for the Ironman swim making it challenging in the 3 foot waves in a supposedly normally calm reservoir.

The bike had alarming gusts of wind with the leader getting blown off, unhurt, got back on. I wasnt sure if Mark had gone from bike to run yet. It was hard to figure out where Mark was on the run course with the "E" shaped out/back run down multiple street blocks, and people lined on all the sidewalks.

Mark's wife Karen was texting me to let me know whenever she saw Mark via internet online. Finally I found Mark finishing later than expected. He was a little bummed he did not meet his goals though not much one can do about conditions like that. More impressively, he finished it, and he recovered quick.

Ironman Mark with Couchsurf hosts Moqui and Ed

Wish I had a couple more days to ride as I would love to do those same three rides again, and maybe a couple road rides too, oh, and some trail runs. Lots to explore in the area.

I was happy that Mark was excited to join me on one of the best spring water stops in North Ogden Utah. We stopped twice on-route there and back!

Note, for organic shopping in St George area... Real Foods Market was small and abit expensive though had good stuff like raw milk! Natural Grocers in Washington was awesome with excellent selection and pricing. Zimmy's Cafe was a find for some yummy post race food for Mark (cafe is inside the amazing Bosch Kitchen centre with tons of awesome kitchen goods).

Easy 17-hour drive back to Calgary direct from St George. Pretty fun few days!!