Yannick and I tore it up last weekend at Race the Rockies. Yannick has come off of two consecutive Full Moon in June victories so I had some pressure to keep his streak alive!!
We were among on a handful of teams that did the prologue on Friday night. It only resulted in a couple minute head start the next morning but it was also fun to bushwack and then ride on the lower parts of Kickinghorse Resort. The weather for Saturday was looking decent with the rain supposed to be done for the weekend and mix of sun and cloud. We woke up at 4:30 and had a quick bite to eat while taking a drive to check out the first part of the course. We wanted to make sure that we knew where we were going on our bikes for the first few turns. Weather seemed fine, a little chilly but nothing major. Then it started to rain. And not just a drizzle. It poured from about 5:30 to about 7:00. The race started at six and Yannick and I each decided to wear our rain coats which we weren't even going to bring along. Good thing because we got soaked. Then we ended up bushwacking in ankle deep snow up on the ridgeline and we had to use all of our emergency clothing to stay warm! Since we had hammered off the start we were all by ourselves navigating through the bush and snow. It was nice because then you don't second guess your decisions based on others!
It eventually warmed up, views were amazing and we were back on the bike within three hours of hiking. It was before 11 am and we had already done close to 2000 m of gain!
We rode to the ropes section which was a cool haul yourself and your bike across a canyon! We then rode down to the start of the paddle. The paddle on the Blaeberry was fun in race issue inflatable kayaks. Nothing technical but did take some water. Beautiful canyon and then onto the Columbia. Because we had done the enduro ridge section we were catching short course teams all over. We saved one duo from a log jam. Scary stuff. One guy had gone under one tree but was ok. Pried their boat out, found a pack and both paddles 100 m downstream! Lucky guys!
The bushwack after the paddle was probably the worst. Lots of ankle bashing, tree jumping, willow in the face action. Thank fully we had ate lots of pringles and coke at the paddle transitions to keep us going!
We were then back on the bikes and this leg turned out to be a lot worse than expected! Topo map circa 1982 was super accurate! Go figure! Some creek fording, dual track riding and good logging road climbs had our legs feeling out of gas.
We saw some amazing wildlife on this leg though! We had a jouvenile cougar run down the road ahead of us for a couple seconds, then a mink cross the road in front of us, only to then see a mother bear standing leaning up against a tree 10 ft away while her three tiny cubs sat and stared! The cubs eventually went up the tree, thankfully the mother seemed just curious and not aggressive at all!
In all we rode about 97 km, and it took us 13.5 hrs which put us just within the 14 hr time limit. We were the only team to complete the Enduro course and finish in time.
Long day but so fun! Too bad he isn't going to run the races any more. Perhaps a couple of years from now. Can't wait for MOMAR in September.
Here are some pics we took during the race.
Here is the race website. More pics and info.
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