Off Season?

This past September was one of the most unreal Septembers ever. An Indian summer came into the Rockies and left us all up there running around like a bunch of sugar high kids at Halloween as we tried to take advantage of the unreasonably awesome weather.

Things all started off with 5 days in McBride/Jasper of riding bikes up to the alpine and then summiting peaks from there. It was heaven.

Second up was a 4-day mountain bike tour into the North Boundary-Willmore Provincial Park to visit my Mom and her friends who were hiking the 180 km North Boundary trail over the course of 2 weeks. Our family grew up on the North Boundary, as my Dad would bring us along for weeks on end to do patrols of the park on horseback. This was a trip down memory lane as we had spent countless summers out here with him horseback riding, fishing and exploring. The highlight of this trip was doing a 7 hr bike ride into the Wilmore through Eagles Nest pass. There were parts of the ride through overgrown willow meadows, which I wouldn’t recommend for anyone but there were also stretches of pure Rockies bliss under endless blue skies.

At the most isolated part of the ride I came across some small bear tracks in the mud. “Oh cool a little black bear!” A few meters later I came upon some massive Grizzly tracks. “Oh shit” Mother and cub. Unfortunately for me they were headed the same way down the trail and they were ripping apart the moss on either side of the trail looking for grub. I would follow these tracks/bear scat for over an hr with it getting fresher and fresher. I was ready to turn around when I came to a wet pile of scat as the trail was entering a bit of a canyon. It raised my adrenaline but I would get back to Willow creek cabin with no winnie the pooh sightings. From here I hiked 2 hrs into the evening to Welbourne to meet up with Mom and her crew. Just a few km from the cabin I stopped for a swim in the Snake Indian river and also caught a large trout for dinner. The icing on the cake for one of the ultimate days all summer!

Getting back to Jasper after this 4 day, 30 hr tour I was in real danger of complete burnout. This is where Dad stepped in and had us scheduled on a 6 day horse trip up the wild Moose river in Mt Robson Provincial park to do some trail clearing-scouting.

Day one was straightforward as we road under cloudy skies to Resplendent creek camp.
Day two was a working B as we cut trail up to Colonel pass over the course of 8hrs. This camp sits in the subalpine along the continental divide between Robson provincial Park and Jasper National Park.
Day three and four were spent hiking & exploring the head of the Snaring river. We came across Grizzly, Wolverine, Cougar, Moose and Wolf tracks all within a few km of camp.
Day 5 the real excitement began.

After cutting the trail down Colonel creek back to the Moose River we started riding the trail 10 km down river towards Resplendent camp when I spotted a big bull moose trudging up the other side of the river. The moose was minding its own business until Dad let out a moose rutting call. Immediately the moose looked up, saw us and got fired up as he charged across the river and up the bank towards us. It was a “what the *uck” type of situation as the horny moose was now on the trail behind me looking pissed. Dad got the pack train of 5 horses going pretty quickly down the trail but I was at the tail end of it with no where to hide from Bullwinkle. I started to speak human to it and prayed and thank heavens Mr Bullwinkle lost interest when he got close enough and saw all 5 horses and carried on a different way into the bush.
Dad was surprised his moose call worked so well as he has spent over 40 yrs in the bush with no real success with it until that day. I tried to make him promise to put his moose rutting call to rest until we had a a hunter with us to deal with the situation next time.

Day 6 was a bonus day at Resplendent creek as we had planned to head home this day but the weather was alright and there was a real cool valley to explore up to the head of Resplendent creek where its drainage starts on a massive wall of glaciers. With bike racing winding down for the year there was no real push to get back to civilization to train so we took advantage of the day and went for a ride.
3 minutes from camp heading up the Resplendent creek gravel bars we came across a healthy young Grizzly bear heading towards us. Dad let out a little yell so it would see us and then the next few minutes were spent watching the young Grizzly try to sniff us out and then run around the gravel bars for a bit before hitting the tree line. Dad was a little worried about the bear messing with our camp while we were gone for the day so he took chase of the Grizzly with myself close behind. Coming to the edge of the bush line we could see the Bear 200 ft away in the woods as it had stopped and was now facing us sideways trying to look big and tough. He sure as heck looked big and tough and I was content leaving him alone but Dad continued after him to make sure he figured out that our camp wasn’t to be messed with. I followed suit as Dad usually knows what he’s doing in the backcountry although I was slightly questioning this move.

After the Grizzly was gone we continued upstream to where the creek came out of a canyon. It looked like it was the only way to continue up valley so we started up the canyon only to come across a large black bear making his way down it. We were downwind, and the poor bear didn’t see us till the last minute, stood up on his hind legs, got rough image of us and our two horses and then shot up the hill like a ghost from hell.
The rest of the day was unreal as we road another couple hrs up to the head of Resplendent creek and a massive mountain wall of glaciers and the snowy peak of Resplendent mtn.
Returning to camp that evening we were having a nice dinner when I looked behind Dad and saw there was a 3-foot high blue flame coming out of the stovepipe in the 10-x10 tent. “Holy Shit” Dad said as he calmly asked me to go fetch some water to simmer down the stove and put out the stove flap on the tent which was on fire. Apparently the wood supply around Resplendent creek is some of the driest most powerful wood around!

Day 7 we had a nice ride back to the highway under torrential rain to end what was an unreal week in the Rockies!

The next morning I was starting to make plans to head up to work in Fox Creek when I came across two emails that changed everything.
One was a generous invite from the Australian 24hr Championships in Canberra who were offering some good incentives to race Oct 13th-14th and take on World Champion Jason English. The other was an email from the MBC (Mongolia Bike Challenge) saying they and the Crocodile Trophy had arranged a rider exchange between the two races and I had a spot there for the race Oct 20-29th. DONE!

Opportunities like this don’t just pop out of the woodworks everyday so there really was no option but to book a ticket over to Australia ASAP.

Making this trip come together I was blessed with support from my friends and family in preparations and some big support from my sponsors KONA, Freewheel Cycle and The North Face. THANK YOU!