Quirk Creek / Wildhorse MTB

Again, we were too late leaving Calgary.....so we hit the trail in the middle of the afternoon, and paid for it with a snowstorm up on the final pass. The riding was great, but we did get a bit lost for a while up in the McClean Creek OHV area. The benefit of that was riding some interesting trails usually used only by powered vehicles. Muddy, but fun. If you're doing this one it's important to know that at around 9.7 km, the right turn is grassed over now, and not immediately obvious, especially if there's a herd of cows lying on it......Turn right as soon as you've crossed the second creek, and the road will appear in 100 m or so. Because of that, and the arrival of heavy sleeting rain that soon turned to snow, we didn't make it to Threepoint Canyon, but that's OK. We'll do this ride again for sure. The trail climbs on double track for ~10 km, then the remaining riding is on single track (19 km of it), which sometimes disappears into the grass. The final 2 km descent on a packed dirt trail through the forest is not to be missed. You do have to ford a few branches of the Elbow River though.

Lou saw a grizzly just off the trail while descending, and there was an obvious territorial marker tree nearby with deep scratches on the trunk, so keep an eye out, and make noise. More photos here. By the time we got down the Banded Group were plastered with snow....winter is definitely on her way again, but the forecast for Thursday is 27C, so we're not done with the bikes just yet....

Sheep River Ride

This is a great double-track ride that allows you to get a good look at Gibraltar Mtn. It's only an hour or so from Calgary, and is pretty quiet. Take spare clothes, as you have to ford the river and its tributaries many times during the day.

The ride is about 40 km in length, lthough being an out-and-back you can turn at any point. We stopped shy of the Sheep Pass, because it was getting late in the day, but that would be the logical turnaround point. From there you'd have views of Cougar Mtn, the Banded Peak Group, Mt. Rae, and various others. Our turn-around at about 17 km still required fording 28 creeks/rivers, plus numerous sizeable muddy puddles.

The ride is described in Doug Eastcott's guide to the Canadian Rockies.

More photos here.

Night on Moose Mountain

The closest Rocky Mountain to the city of Calgary (I can see it from my office window), Moose Mountain makes a great evening's MTB ride. You can ride it from Highway 66 if you have the time and energy (around 30 km and 1,000 m of climbing), taking advantage of the Moose Mountain Bike Trails Society's trail network, or you can drive to the top of the oil access road and cut the trip to a mere 15 km and 350 m height gain. We opted for the latter, and I was glad of it - we finished not far shy of darkness.

For this ride I was joined again by Ian Stewart, and the weather was perfect; after a hot day a light breeze was raking the mountain. The early trail sections are generally rolling, with good packed dirt, after an initial iffy 50 m downhill on loose cobbles and rock - 'Iffy' as in, 'If I fall off at this speed, will I break my leg?'.

The crux of the route is the xig-zags, which are a mixture of ridable stone and deep gravel, particularly on the hairpins. I pushed several times on this section, but the scenery was good enough to take my mind off it. We were overtaken by fell runners here, too. Those guys were so fast that we failed to catch them again on the downhill.


After the zig-zags, the false summit. This is a lovely open bit of ground and the point where the views to the west start to open up. Last night visibility was perfect and the mountainside deserted - for me this was what it's all about.


Eventually you have to ditch the bike and hike the last few hundred metres to the summit. The fire ranger there invited us to ride the path back down, but that looked like a sure route to blazing a new double-black diamond downhill course on the side of the mountain - we opted out. On the summit, it was hard to believe that 3 hours earlier I'd been at my desk looking across the foothills to this place.

After signing the visitors' book and a quick hike down, we bombed down the mountain in a third of the ascent time. The cobbles and gravel made for some tough riding, but what a fantastic place it was to ride!




Moose Mountain from gas trailhead. ~14.5 km. More pictures here.

Elbow Loop MTB Ride

The last couple of weeks has flown by, with yard work causing me more pain than all my other exercise types put together. The weather has been pretty hit and miss, too, with hot afternoons, thunderstorms, and tornado warnings. So it was great to get out for an MTB ride yesterday and blow off the cobwebs - especially since it's now less than three weeks to the Jasper-Banff ride.

The Elbow Loop is a fantastic circuit. It's fairly long (44 km) and has a height gain of about 400 m over Tombstone Pass, but if you ride it anti-clockwise then there are no big hills to climb, and you get to ride the single track section downhill. Riding the other way means you have a continuous climb of several km approaching Tombstone Pass, and then a horrendous uphill to the summit. The views into the Front Ranges are awesome and for large sections of the trip you're unlikely to see many people. I rode this one with Ian Stewart, a friend from Northern Ireland, on his first ride this year - good riding, Ian! More pictures here.

Weekend in Golden

Just back from a great weekend staying with friends near Golden, BC. What a fantastic location! We paddled down the Columbia River, did a couple of MTB rides, and hiked down the Kicking Horse ski hill trails. My legs are sore, and I was pleased that we'd done so much exercise, but I've just noticed bruises all down one leg, suggesting that my general ineptitude at steering and sitting on a mountain bike may be responsible instead. We biked on Mount 7 and Moonrakers trails - fantastic trail networks that made me wonder why Calgary is so short on such facilities.

I had to post these pictures, although the trip photos are here. Someone had left their trash out and this young bear had been attracted into their garden. Although I managed to get a great couple of shots while Mark was scooping up and binning the refuse, I was sad and angry, as there's a good chance that this bear will end up getting shot as a result of people's laziness. CLEAN UP YOUR TRASH! The lesson ends....poor bear.