We left home at 2:30 Friday afternoon, and after a drive and a few ferries, were picked up at the Langdale ferry by the tour organizers. We got to our campsite in Halfmoon Bay (a school sports field) at 10pm, set up our tent in the dark and crawled in.
Sometime during the night, a storm blew in. It was windy and it POURED with rain.
We started out on our day1 ride at 9:20 after having breakfast in the rain and packing up our sopping wet tent. The trails had been saturated by the overnight rain and were mucky & slippery. It was like riding in November. The trails were a lot of fun - lots of twisty, rooty, rolling terrain. Most riders hadn't seen wet trails for months, so I witnessed a lot of crashes as people re-familiarized themselves with wet roots
A reminder for a lot of people that speed & skill don't necessarily occur simultaneously in the mountain biking learning curve!The weather forecast had called for "showers", but we were unprepared for "downpour rain". We were drenched through and covered in heavy mud almost immediately, but the promise of hot showers at the Porpoise Bay campsite kept us going.
The photo doesn't really capture the amount of mud involved in the day, but I think you can tell how pleased I was to be so muddy and cold.
It stopped raining just before we got to the campsite, right about the time I got a flat (200m from the campsite entrance). We set up our tent and headed to the showers, which contrary to what we were told all day, were freezing cold!! Every object in the campsite became a makeshift drying rack.
Day 1 was ~33km with ~800m climbing.
Day2 started with a long climb, then there was another long climb, then a steep climb, another long climb and finally another climb, followed by a fast & flowy but relatively short descent into Gibsons. It didn't rain, but we were in the clouds for most of the day, so we didn't get to see any of the "spectacular views" from the top of the mountains. There were some singletrack sections that were a lot of fun, but much of the climbing was done on fire road or doubletrack, and occasionally up beautifully bermed downhill courses (which is possibly the worst option because you spend the whole climb thinking about how fun the trail would be in the other direction!)
Aside from the descent into Gibsons, there were 2 highlights that everyone was talking about before Day 2 started: the creek crossing, and the nasty switchback climb. The creek crossing wasn't simple, but wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Apparently there is usually a bridge here, but not this year.
The nasty switchback climb, I didn't even recognize! I was following Roland up a fairly steep & kinda twisty piece of singletrack thinking "don't go too hard here cause those nasty switchbacks should be coming up soon". When Roland stopped to wait for me at the top of the twisty section, I said "I guess the switchbacks will start now?" He looked at me like I was nuts and said "that was the switchbacks". Oh. I thought it was just a twisty trail. Nothing like Switchbacks at the dump.
Day 2 was supposedly 60km, but our garmins measured 44km with 1200m climbing.
All in all, a great weekend with unfortunate weather but some fun & challenging riding. I'd recommend the trip to anyone looking for a mountain bike weekend. The trails aren't particularly challenging, but the climbs are. You will be tired at the end. Climbing the stairs from the lower car deck on the ferry to the cafeteria was grueling.