Sulphur Springs MTB

The weather has been pretty eventful this week. We had tornado warnings in Calgary, and pretty much every day there has been a violent thunderstorm. You have to take your chances though, so Mark Nelson and I headed out on Wednesday night to do the Sulphur Springs MTB loop in the Elbow Valley.

The storms have affected the trails, and the results are not pretty. Run-off and interflow were still flooding numerous sections of trail, and in places the path had become a fast-moving watercourse. In other locations, deep erosion ruts have appeared, and loose cobbles dumped by flash-flooding litter the trail. This is a pretty sandy, well-drained trail compared to, say, Telephone Loop, so I reckon it'll be a while before the boggier trails are properly rideable again.

The loop itself is about 11 km and contains a lot of hills - the route is shown in the Gem Trek map extract - I had walked it previously but had somehow forgotten how lacking in flat sections it was. Flat sections mean puddles and mud anyway, so maybe not a bad thing. I'd just had a tetanus jab though, and I felt like crap all the way round. On the uphills I felt like vomming and the downhills shook the arm muscle where the jab had been, like a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with a rat in its mouth. The trail conditions didn't help, and I was very glad of my disc brakes, except when we almost ran into a bear, and the squealing of rim brakes might have come in useful. It's a great little ride though and one I'll do again, for sure.