Archives
All posts by luke.mattar
I’ve been out of the blogging mode for a while now and need to catch up on the many things that have happened. For right now, here are a couple of links from this past week.
We “attended” the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous in Quartzsite AZ, and our van mullet was captured by a photographer/blogger attendee.
While we were there, we did a couple of areas bike rides. You can see the details and photos from one of the rides here, where I submitted the information to mtbproject.
I’ll try to get caught up on the blog!
After the Kootenays, we spent a long day on the road and drove all the way west to the Coast Mountains, with rides in Lillooet (with Steve), Pemberton (with Phil, Mary-Lyn and Steve), Vancouver (with Holly) and then Abbotsford (with Holly).
After the Okanagan, we traveled over to the Kootenays and did rides in Rossland (x2) and Nelson (x1). Conditions were really good.
Our friend Steve from Ontario flew out and we joined him and Scott for a ride, at Smith Creek, near Kelowna. (Scott is another Ontario transplant who now lives in Kelowna.) The Smith Creek trails are his favorite local ride and he was a great guide and host for us all.
Overlapping with the time spent with Kyle, I met a really great guy, Tim D. This eventually got me involved with a project shooting tabletop product shots for the trail-building tool company, TrailBoss USA. These lightweight trailbuilding tools collapse into sections and slip into a backpack. Their major market is the mountain bike trail building community.
After hanging around in Bellingham for a bit, we made a new friend, Kyle R. He was ‘stuck’ in Bellingham dealing with the second half of a car repair that was first begun up in Prince George, BC.
(I say, ‘stuck’, but after about 10 days with us, Kyle was spouting ideas like, “Bellingham actually wouldn’t be a bad place to live!”)
We spent about 10 days hanging out, bike riding, kayaking, hiking and getting to know each other.
Kyle has been out on the road since January and he’s aiming for a year. He’s hit virtually all the National Parks and wilderness areas. On previous jaunts he has hit Labrador, Alaska and some of the more far-flung spots. We had a lot to talk about and it was a great time. Eventually we got called away to meet some friends in BC and Kyle drifted towards the Montana high country near Glacier. We’re hoping that our plan to meet up again down south this winter works out.
The kayaks were rentals from the amazing Community Boating Center. Did you know that Bellingham is the best town for kayaking in the USA? The ocean is so warm here.
Knob Gobbler trail / Sumas Mountain photo courtesy Holly M
I broke my blogging streak. It (shamefully), has been about a month since my last confession.
I’ll be doing some catch-up postings to let you know what’s been going on.
Short-version: British Columbia.
But I broke something else too. Here’s a quickie post about my…well…post?
elevation plot: go up, then down
This has to be one of my current favorite trails. It’s the hardest easiest ride. The longest, shortest, most complicated basic ride ever.
I went for a rip on the North American Enduro Tour / Cascadia Dirt Cup course over in the Chuckanuts, on the south edge of town.
Bellingham could be called the Loam Factory. The trails on Chuckanut Mountain weave through an old growth forest that provides that abundance of soft, PNW dirt. When the trails get steeper they snake around some crazy sandstone ridges that brake up the flow and add a technical aspect to some of the harder sections. The course is on the longer side for a single day race, we’ll keep the specific layout under wraps until closer to race day, but expect a 26-28mi course with 4000+ feet of climbing.