Tripleshot Cycling

http://app.strava.com/rides/16024121

Went out with Jamie Cameron, Kevin Ford, Geordie Morrison, Jeff Doyle from Pro City, Glenowyn, and my wife Barbara.
It was an awesome ride, one of my highlights of the summer. With routes i made up using backroad mapbooks pre-loaded into my handheld garmin gps and Jamies 705, we set out at 7:00 to try to find our ay from sooke to shawnigan lake on the backroads to the west of the watershed on cyclocross bikes.
Some very steep climbs and a maze of declassified roads make for slow going, and a couple wrong turns, but we managed to pick our way through. We got up to over 600m above sea level as well.

170km and over 10 hours riding time, mill bay ferry and home at 8:20pm. 14 hours to the minute from when we left home.

WHOA!

That is one inspiring adventure, Josh. Were you dodging active logging traffic much? And were any of the roads complete washouts (i.e. impassable rocks)?

for the ride: Respect

If you are still married: RESPECT

Didn't see any logging trucks at all, saw two work trucks. Some of the climbs out of sooke were 22% grade. It's crazy that they drive fully loaded trucks DOWN those roads.

We did have to cross a closed/decommissioned bridge. It was one of the logging road style bridges where they have a gravel berm for the roadway with a log along each side holding the gravel, so it doesn't really look like a bridge as you approach it. It had a bunch of warning signs about it being unsafe for vehicles AND pedestrians.....do not use....etc.
We figured it looked safe enough for people on bikes and figured the pedestrian stuff was just for liability. The thing was old but it was made to hold logging trucks after all.
We sent Geordie across it first . It was only about a 100 foot drop to the creek below..

Barbara had a great time, Peter. She's always up for a stupid adventure with me.

When Jamie and i were looking at the route ahead of time, our goal was to find the 'northwest passage' around the sooke lake watershed. The watershed area is closed and gated off, so we wanted to find the closest possible route around the northwest corner of that without having to hop any gates and go through closed roads.
Our planned route ended up having a barbed wire watershed gate on leech main (right before the impassable bridge). When we got to that we studied the maps for a bit and thought we had found a potential way around which we set out on. Our planned route ended up degenerating into a grown over declassified rd, at which point we turned back and decided to bushwack around the gate on leech main in the interest of not spending the night in the bush. You can see on the map the point we do the out and back and then head up leech. We already have some new ideas on how we can make it through, and we might plan another one of these rides sometime soon.

The section from leech main to old renfrew rd was really cool, as it was all on a narrow declassified road. Some sections were washed out with trails going beside them, and a couple sort of tricky, rocky descents. Nothing crazy, but wouldn't have been able to make it through there in a vehicle, even in a 4x4. It was more mountain bike style stuff, which is amplified when you're riding a rigid cross bike. Makes you appreciate how far mountain bikes have come, and why they decided suspension might be a nice feature. It's pretty fun to ride that stuff on a cross bike though, as relatively easy terrain takes a lot more skill and concentration than it would on a mountain bike, and totally takes me back to my mountain biking days in the early/mid 90's.

some pics

It was a really good ride, with really good people. The roads were really good to ride and inspiring to try again.

Using the Garmins and data from the Back Roads Guide, sometimes felt like the newstories you read of GPS's leading people to roads that don't exist. Getting out of Sooke and trying to get onto Butler Main, we were going through a trail with thick grass, Jamie told me to go straight on. I turned the corner and there was a river 20 feet down and the landings on either side for where the bridge should be. Oh, that is why there is a break in the white line.
Josh missed out on seeing the bear cub that ran out onto the road and back into the bush followed by hand signals to slow down and watch out for Mom. He also told us that we would not get higher than 460 meters, we reached 600 meters. We stayed at 550 for most of the ride until we came into Shawnigan. We went from 550 to 150 down the logging road, so fast, so many easy kms. The roads we couldn't take were fun to explore up and frustrating that we couldn't stay on it. 8 flats and one tire replaced. Josh and Jamie were well prepared to take care of whatever came up. There is a strava segment that came up as Impassable Bridge,which we crossed