Here’s the new address for those of you keeping track at home:

5907 MacGregor Rd.
Peachland, BC
V4T 1X4

The phone numbers remain the same:

250 826 4766
250 448 4454

Stay tuned for new rides and pics in Peachland…

Whenever they show up, we gotta ride Naramata.  Something about that place…

Jason was so excited, he just couldn’t keep his wheels on the ground.

Maybe it was this little dude that inspired him.  I like how he looks like he’s begging or something.

“Please Sir…can I have some more?”

A million laughs.  PK, pregnant chick shot.  I should have gotten some better ones.  Kelly was killing it today.  Nothing crazy, but she was throwing down some solid moves, make no mistake.

The other two ladies, Tera and Jodie, were also riding well.  Sorry, I didn’t get to know you well enough to know which one was which.  I get sort of hypnotized by hot babes on bikes.

Anyway, they’re both awesome.  See?

Round two and we did a half height Beer Run.  Since we already inspected the first time, we really let it roll this time.

The crew totally threw down on the Red Booter.

Almost forgot, we had a random rider from Edmonton join the crew on the ride today.  He must have had a great time, as the group was just buzzing all day.  Here he is, throwing huge.

Not to be outdone, here’s the girls on the stepup.

Another wildlife shot, this time of an Osprey.

Last run was a full tilt Drops A Lot rip.  Absolutely retarded fun.  Brant and Andrew showed up for the final lap too, as Brant was celebrating his 30th birthday with a triple crown adventure in the southern Okanagan.  Lucky guy….

three up, three down, sunset at Three Mile beach, and we’re done.

No Joe, you don’t actually NEED a rear derailleur here.

Absolute hammer fest of a day today.  We got there early, and rode hard.  The trail crew has worked their asses off this spring and it shows.  We cranked out 14 runs today.

That’s 23 800 vertical feet of shredness.

Jim, who was the most concerned about getting full value for the riding, actually had to pack it in a bit early.  That was a HUGE week of riding with some highly motivated boys.

OK, so we meet back here next year…one, two, three, BREAK!

One random shot of some longboarders on the road down from the resort, and this one is a wrap.

That’s right….ride, eat, sleep, repeat.  Now we’re off to Gillard for some more.

As an added bonus, we checked out French Johnny’s latest work.  The boys have been out in force resurrecting old trails that have been out of action since before the big fire of 2003.

There’s also all the usual fave’s, like this one on Rub-Her-Down.

Oh, and the Boss Hog wall ride.

Lush…

We even managed a Kerplop, and the sun made an appearance or two.

I think the crew may be getting their fill.  We only managed a few runs today, and then we were beat.

Just as well, as we had a premiere of the latest Radical Films release, Revolve, to go check out.

There were a few hundred in attendance, and we made the keeners do pushups for prizes.

Not a bad turnout, considering it was the first day of Silverstar being open.

Later we went out for beers with Spuds.

He’s with stupid….

There was even a bit of fresh snow in the high country, but still, all that rain this week was still not enough to really settle the dust.  I don’t care what various government officials are trying not to say….we’re in a drought here.

It was still awesome conditions for riding.

John makes this look huge, eh?  He’s only 3 feet tall though.

This is the part of the day that makes everyone realize just how big these hills are.

Hi Stash!  the camera just loves you, did you know that?  i always get the raddest pics of this girl.  With Gary on babysitting detail, Stash was able to get another lap in with us today.

Oh, there she is again.

Joe on the same line. 

Many thousands of feet of dust and sagebrush later, we’re still descending.

Maybe it’s not a full bluebird day, but we’re still having a great time.  Brant, Rob, and Gabe tagged along today to fill out the group.  Lots of Kobau virgins along for the rip this time.

OK, it’s time for the Rogues’ Gallery…

Rob

John

Stash

Joe and Jim.

Jim.

..and Gabe.

Of course, that was only round one.  Round two is TKO, and it was in awesome shape again.

You never get many pics on TKO.  You’re just too busy hanging on to the bars on that trail.   It was definitely getting bonier than the last time we were here.  The lower half was pretty sketchy in places. We found out later that an Oliver local crashed at the worst spot on the trail just before sunset, and had to get Search and Rescue out to keep him company overnight so he could get heli’ed out in the morning.  This is big mountain riding, you have to respect this one.

Besides, you don’t want to miss out on the wine tasting at the bottom.  We went to Hester Creek this time.

We actually managed to finish up early enough (these are the longest days of the year after all) that we could go for a swim in Okanagan Lake, and have a couple games of bottles.  It’s like horseshoes, but it involves beer bottles instead.  Don’t worry, the rules make it impossible to break one.

He also shamrocks walks on the beach, sunsets, and sleeping in vans.

But enough reminiscing.  Lets bust out some airs on the Bog….

Our warmup lap was all 3700 vertical feet of Carmi, from Code 4 right to the lake.

That’s enough to wake up anyone.

Unfortunately for Joe, it was also enough to cause a good strain of his Achilles on this aborted DJ.   You can see him about to bail out here.  Killer shot though.

He’s pretty tough, he kept riding all day anyway.  Round two was a full height Beer Run.  Haven’t been doing the upper section that often, but Gabe went out and cleared the top for us last week so we called him up to show us around.

Can’t believe that guy is going to be a dad too.  They’ll let just about anyone into that gig.

The other brothers had to step up and do some road gaps now that Joe is taking it easy.

Fruity portrait shots in Ivy League…

Whoa…who’s that handsome devil?

We also got a bonus lap on Drops-A-Lot.  No pics, as we were BANGIN’ on that lap.  Seriously, bumper to bumper action all the way down.  So ggod that we had to chill on the beach with some beers until…

..the sun set. 

Can it get any better?  Well, there’s always tomorrow.

I promised the boys that if they couldn’t get their fill of vertical today, then it just can’t be done.

As it was, we only got 4 runs in before we were totally cooked.

Good runs though.  Hard to go wrong when you get over 8 grand at Powers.  We scored a full house on Crazy Train by the end of it all too.

That was all three bro’s hitting it up there.  We also did Justin’s new line below there, and it was my first time on that particular one.  With the bit of rain through the day, we all had some interesting …. situations.  I saw Jim bum sliding one tranny, and Joe totally missed another one off to the side.

It wasn’t until we got out to 2.5 that things got really rad.  The rain picked up a bit more then.

As Joe was just killin’ it, he got sort of confident as we went.

Really confident…..until he:

What doesn’t kill you, gives you a muddy face and makes you want to drink beer.

More tomorrow….

Here’s the guys that caused all the trouble.  Some Legends in there if you know your North Shore history.

It would appear that the boys brought some Pennsylvania weather with them.  It was wet and cool today.  Luckily, it’s been like that all spring back east, so they were fired up and ready to hit Big Ed.

OK, so that’s how it’s gonna be.  To think that I was a bit worried about starting out on one of the harder trails in the Okanagan.  These guys lapped it up like it was cream.

Actually, it was pretty good.  Will this do for day one, John?

We took some time to session a few of the smaller booters to get into the flow. Jim was charging everything pretty hard, a theme that was to be repeated throughout the week.

John also had a theme.  He keeps nailing great shots, but if you were there…..yikes.  This wasn’t just a cased landing; he actually hit the lip with his FRONT wheel.

Joe just quietly rode it all.

John is a much better skinny rider than a hucker.  although for a technician, his bike maintenance skills are a bit…curious.

Just ignore the dab and pretend he rode it.

We were in the presence of one of the Whistler legends for today too.  Binty rode this lap with us, but for some strange reason I have no pics of him.  If you think you’re a good XC rider, head on out to Binty’s Highline in Whistler and see how you feel.   That guy has been riding Whistler on a little bike for something like 25 years.

He had no reservations about this rock line, and we got a full house on it.  That’s Jim in the pic.

Another angle with John, and we’re out for lap one.

We had plenty of time to kill for day one, so I thought we’d go over to McDougall for an All Mountain run.

Yeah, it’s a bit pedally, but when you get views like these coupled with a solid 45 minute downhill, what’s to complain about?

Jim, Joe, and John.  AKA Slug, Boyd, and Newman.  I didn’t ask, so I can’t tell you.  Picked them up in afternoon and went straight up to Oop’s place in Vernon for something this crew of OG North Shore types calls “Suffer Fest”.  It’s horrible.  I made the boys build their own bikes.

Meanwhile, the rest of us suffered through this little scene on the deck.

The rest of the guys were out wake surfing when we arrived, so they missed out on…..absolutely nothing.

We had already stopped for some food, so as the sun set we really suffered when the food came out.

Oh yeah, leg of lamb and Kokanee (actually, some damn fine reds were going down).

Great start to a tour and it was awesome to see some faces from the old ‘hood again.

…but someone has to take the girls out riding, and it may as well be me.  Right?

Just another ride on Smith Creek.  Daniella missed out on the Girls Got Skills clinic, and hasn’t done an XC ride before, so there you have it.  Oh, and we ran into John out for his first Smith Creek ride too.

The new trail is getting a bit of a rep.  This sums it up…

Andrew knows.  I can always count on him.  Every time we’ve hooked up for a ride, it’s been an epic.  Today was no exception.

I’d heard that you could ride into Rock Oven from above, but the info was sort of sketchy. After studying some maps, it didn’t look that complicated, but it’s big country.  We went for it, and with all the flailing earlier with no shows, we didn’t get going until sort of late.

Long story short: a 6km doubletrack traverse, 1.5-2 km push uphill, and then massive amounts of singletrack.

I only went the wrong way once.  Well, twice if you count this time I crashed because my hands were so tired.

Much time spent riding, hardly any spent taking pics.  Here’s a shot of a cave, man.

Standard lookout pic. This is the ‘normal’ high point.  Today this was almost at the bottom.

Oh yeah, Andrew got a flat.  And neither one of us brought a tube.  Fricken geniuses.

Well, it was a tubeless tire, so we crammed a twig in the hole and it wealed up just enough to hold about 10 psi, which was Good Enough to get out.

Well, so long as we stopped to pump the tire up every ten minutes or so anyway.  Must have been the 13th today, with the way things were going.  I’m not even going to talk about the thunderstorm.

The moose didn’t care.

Here’s where we went.  Roughly 25km and 4500’ of descending. 

That last one is Glen, the owner.

As an added bonus, I tried out the other line up Powers (finally).  It’s not exactly the “Double Black Diamond” that they’ve rated it at (more like a blue trail with 50’ of steep rocks in one part), but it’s still pretty rad.  I’ll have to get some pics of that one for you soon.

We also did a bit of exploring in the truck on the way up.  It’s a pretty long shuttle, so it’s debateable on whether or not to ride up.  If you’re in good shape (we’re not, check the pics), then it’s about 2 and a hlaf hours round trip. 

You get the fresh legs for the descent if you shuttle though.  We’re talking about 40 minutes of sustained downhill riding here, except when you do a little walking up for the camera.

Nothing really radical about the descent, but you do get some nice views of the valley and the lake.

Oh, and the occasional sweaty downhiller.

Only a few miles above the main riding area in Gillard.  This fire blew up to 7 hectares in only an hour or so.  It is seriously dry out there this year.

The crews got on it right away, and we got a bit of cooler and wetter weather, so it’s contained and almost out now, but it’s a good reminder to play it extra smart out there.  For a few minutes we were worried that we’d wasted a day of effort fixing up our trails.

There was also this problem root ball on Boss Hog.  We had a serious lack of saws today, so we took turns with an axe and cleared it by hand.  It’s a double stump, too.

May hands make short work, though.  Ryan also went crazy on a bunch of older stunts on BH that were falling down, and there’s a couple of sweet additions and some general buffage all around.  The Hog hasn’t looked this good since before the fire.

A bunch of guys also went and buffed out Kerplop, so that one is prime now too.  Big thanks to Kelly at Fresh Air for putting this together.

We had a plan to do a couple of laps up Big Ed today.  Of course, I was with the DH buys, so there’s no riding pics.  Just this view off the top….

..and this shot of Justin’s swellbow.  So only one run (and a lost helmet, and general flailing and dumbness from all involved)

We’re always having a good time, eh?

He looks pretty stoked to be riding in Canada too.  Just a random call from a guy up in the valley on business.  I had to do some background on Nick to find out just what kind of wine he makes.  Apparently, it’s pretty damn good wine.

It’s a good career path for someone totally amped on riding bikes.  Wine country tends to be good bike country, and if you make good wine you might just be able to afford a good bike.

We ran a lap of Smith Creek for starters.  Then, since Nick hasn’t really seen the freeride side of the sport, we went for a couple of laps on Gillard.

I wouldn’t say that he stomped the trails.  Even with the primo demo bike courtesy of Trek and Fresh Air Experience, he got spanked a couple of times early, leading to a few shy moments like this one, but at least he got a day in with only minor “souvenirs”.

Pretty tough to have a bad day on the trails when it’s this nice out, and the locals came out of the woodwork to make him feel at home. 

Great day.

She just wouldn’t be my bike without some serious freeride capabilities, no matter how XC oriented.

Here’s the full spec:

Frame – Med. Endorphin
R Shock – Cane Creek Double Barrel
Fork – Rock Shox Lyrik U-turn
HS – Cane Creek
Stem – Chromag Ranger
Bar- Chromag Rootbeer Fubar
Grips – Brown, yo.
Saddle – Chromag Trailmaster DT
Post – Thompson Elite
QR – Chromag
Crank/BB – Raceface Atlas
Pedals – NRG Lo Profile Flats
Wheels – Mavic Crossmax SX
Brakes – Shimano XT
Shifters, R der – SRAM XO
Fr Der – Shimano XT
Tires – Maxxis Hi Roller 2.5" UST full DH casing

With a down year in the industry and tourism, I needed a lot of help getting this one together.  Thanks to Skinny and Shroom at NRG, Dorothy at Cycles-Lambert, Ian at OGC, Kurt at Freedom, all the boys at Kelowna Cycles, Ian at Chromag, and of course Noel and Chris at Knolly.

Pics are from a rad little canyon beside my house.  You’ll be able to buy this bad boy in the fall.

In association with Outbound Cycle and the MTBco, it was time to revive the entrance to 2.5 on Powers Creek. It’s been getting sort of run down lately.

About 30 volunteers showed up to dig in the dust.

Dave got us smoothing and widening the whole top section in an effort he called “Operation Flow”.

Lunch was provided by the good people at Il Mercato deli in downtown Westbank.  Ryan brought his own beer.

We even had small shovels for anyone with pink sunnies…

And of course Nato showed up late and shredded the trail instead of working.  Some had to get first tracks….

You can just see Big White in the background of that last shot.  I was just in the snowline on this ride.  Really, I don’t think this will be part of the final route.  It was cool, but there was substantial bushwhacking in some heavy terrain that likely won’t see a trail for a very long time. 

When I finally broke through, the singletrack was pretty sweet.

Some stats for you…