Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Down Down and Towards Whistler....



There's a special alpine ride in the Sea to Sky Corridor near Whistler we've had the privilege of riding over the years. Only a select group of riders have had their hands on this well guarded piece of alpine single-track gold. That will all change shortly with a super cool WORCA project that is well underway.     Sunday morning we headed north to perhaps get one last lap on this gem before the crowds arrive.


I dropped Juneau, Danielle and Mike off on the highway where the branch road starts towards the climb and continued with the vehicle to the Whistler Brewing Company where the trail would eventually spit us out. As I approached Function I realized that the Whistler Ironman was already underway and the cyclists were already on the highway. At 8:30am I zipped right past the volunteers and was now on the road with my Norco Range Carbon LE sporting a very large camera pack. On route I had a pretty cool conversation with an Ironman Triathlete from Chicago. We compared our epic day in front of us and agreed he had the bigger challenge in front of him. After an hour or so I caught up to my crew and joined the 1200m sufferfest climb.                              



We took a few breaks on route....


The heather was in full bloom....



We reached the alpine after about 3 hours and took a dip....  



It's hard to get a more spectacular view of Rainbow Mountain....  




No words necessary....  


Unfortunately there are way too many idiots mostly on sleds shredding this area every winter. This is Whistler's drinking water supply! Stay out!  


The Metal Dome....


And amazing views of the Tantalus Range towards Squamish where we found ourselves only a couple of weeks earlier.... Alpha is the pyramid shaped peak second from the right.        



We gotta go there!  


Wedge and the slopes of Blackcomb Mountain dominated the view as we dropped in....  





And after another epic 1200m descent we found ourselves indulging in a $10 Beer and Burger!    


Back in Squamish the crew was spent. I sense most blogs with now end with variations of this photo at our own Squamish pub.

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