The long awaited Whistler trip! (pics)

[altagirl]

or... How to ride until you can't hang on to a bike anymore in 5 fun filled days.

(And my husband and I are both still in one piece, though I feel like I dislocated several fingers - not from wrecking, but from riding my DH bike 8 hours a day. I have a few fingers I can't straighten fully- just from overuse. Yay - that's a fun injury to have... from too much riding!)

Anyway, we've been talking about going to Whistler to ride for years and a couple weeks ago just decided we needed to commit or it was never going to happen so we bought plane tickets to Seattle, found a rental SUV and went for it. Luckily we were able to meet up with a few friends from TGR on Sunday for riding and some beers, and then randomly happened to run into other people we knew on a couple other days.

We didn't even take the camera out for the first couple days, other than to take a couple pictures of the bears wandering around, because we were having way too much fun to stop riding.

And dang, I wish I had a good hemet cam, because one of our laps through B-line, we ran into a guy hoofing it back up the trail. He said there were bears on the trail and he was trying to figure out a different trail to take. There really wasn't anywhere else to go from there, so we just figured we'd go slow and loud. As Mr.AG went down the trail, we saw one young (probably year old bear) jump off the trail and ran off. Then as we rode on, we looked up and balanced on a branch over our head was a tiny cub, standing up tall to keep as much vertical distance as possible between us and him. Cutest thing you've ever seen. (Would have made for a hell of a ride to have a bear cub land on your head as you're riding along, probably with mama bear hauling ass after you...) Anyway, no pics of that.

Finally on Tuesday we managed to break out the camera, though we really didn't take many pics. Silly, but it was too much fun to stop, well, and muddy/raining a good amount, but here's what I've got:

Me on Dirt Merchant:

Mr.AG on Freight Train:

Me on the wall ride on Crank it up:

Mr.AG on Drop in Clinic

me:

Way too much fun, and I wish I was Whistlergirl, in summer anyway!We're driving next year too so we can bring multiple bikes. And Moose (our dog).

 

[altagirl]

Anyway, a few more pics:

Mr.AG hitting the jump park:

Me on Crank it Up:

dropping in on Duffman:

Heart of Darkness:

Me on A-Line

 

[RachelV]

Those are awesome. We've only tried mountain biking twice, and it is SO MUCH harder than I thought. Really makes me appreciate these pictures.

 

[tradygirl]

Good Lord, AG. You weren't kidding when you said they took their trails seriously up there!

Love this pic:

Some of that stuff looks a bit over my head , but I've heard they have a ton of intermediate riding there. The trails look beautiful regardless!

I thought you guys drove. Did you just rent bikes?

So I took Yentna's Stab up to DV on Saturday and boy howdy, it was a good time. I borrowed SG's armor and helmet so I was doign stuff I've NEVER done before. Josh took me down the bottom part of Thieve's Forest and it was so fun! I can't believe the difference it makes being on a bike that's made for that stuff.

That being said, if we can even remotely swing it next year with both of us in school, we would LOVE to go up there with you guys. We've been talking about going up there for years. The big question is whether we go up there in the winter or the summer....

 

[altagirl]

Good Lord, AG. You weren't kidding when you said they took their trails seriously up there! Some of that stuff looks a bit over my head , but I've heard they have a ton of intermediate riding there. The trails look beautiful regardless!

There are a lot of intermediate trails, and not all of it is wide like in the pics. There is some sweet tight singletrack and such too, and everything from wide open berms with no jumps to wide open with massive kicker style jumps, to techy, steep, exposed singletrack. The nice thing is that all of their jumps on the trails are tabletops. No big death gaps. You can go huge or you can land flat on the table and it's alright. They also do a nice job of putting up an obstacle at the top of the black diamond trails so you know if you can do that, you're good on the whole trail. If not, turn around now. It's a great concept. The double blacks - I guess they just figure you should be able to read the signs... We ended up on Clown Shoes, which was not only a little over my head, but kindof slimy wet too... I walked a bunch on that, but oh well. It's a fantastic trail - with some really cool slickrock like roll-downs, but when they're slimy and the runout is in a hairpin turn in the trees... I'm a chicken. A little frustrating because I believe I'm capable of riding it all, but those high consequence things on wet rocks and roots... and I decided I'd rather stay in once piece for the whole trip, and our upcoming Downieville trip, etc. And there was plenty of stuff that was still big but lower risk to play on!

I thought you guys drove. Did you just rent bikes?

We decided that it would give us more riding time to pack up the bikes and fly. Craig has a bike bag and I borrowed one and we just flew with the DH bikes to Seattle, then rented a Jeep Liberty and drove up to Whistler from there. Saved about 14 hours of driving each way, so I think it worked well for this shorter trip. Next time when we want to check out some other trails, we do want to have both bikes, so we'll drive, stay out at a campground, check out some other areas, and have all the bike tools too. I think driving will be worth it for a 2 week trip.

So I took Yentna's Stab up to DV on Saturday and boy howdy, it was a good time. I borrowed SG's armor and helmet so I was doign stuff I've NEVER done before. Josh took me down the bottom part of Thieve's Forest and it was so fun! I can't believe the difference it makes being on a bike that's made for that stuff.

That being said, if we can even remotely swing it next year with both of us in school, we would LOVE to go up there with you guys. We've been talking about going up there for years. The big question is whether we go up there in the winter or the summer....

Awesome! I'm so glad you had fun!! The bottom of Thieves is sweet, huh? You guys should definitely come to Whistler next year - you'd love it! And there's such a variety of stuff to ride, it'll be great to have a big group next year and break off and do what you want. Plus great bars to hang out at afterwards with a view of the jumps and drops at the base. And the lifts stay open until 8pm! Holy crap, you can ride yourself stupid.

IMHO - the summer trip has to be more worthwhile. The skiing does look killer, but it rains a lot, and there's killer skiing other nearby places that would be easier/cheaper to get to (and stay at) from UT. The bike park, however, is totally one of a kind. We're talking MASSIVE - and if you do top to bottom runs, they are ridiculously long. And that's just the bike park - supposedly there's 10x as much other riding in the area that we didn't even explore. Not that I wouldn't like to ski there, but I have Jackson, Big Sky, etc. on the list that I think would be amazing but cheaper and easier, and then I think I'd rather head back to Europe for a big ski trip (the whole experience factors in over there) or save up for heli-skiing. Whereas for biking - Whistler has to be #1.

 

[SnowHot]

AG, as always you're an inspiration!

 

[first lift last call]

Ooh work wants to send me to Vancouver in a few weeks. I was sad because it will be too early to go skiing. But, having seeing these pics, I'm gonna hang out for a few days and go biking instead. Awesome shots AG. Can't wait to get amongst some of that banter.

 

[volklgirl]

OMG!!! Those pics are awesome!

Specially love the one of you on Crank it Up. I really love the jump park progression.....we need something like that here (I'm such a chicken on anything requiring my wheels to leave Terra Firma ).

 

[Ski Spirit]

AG - Wow! Awesome photos!!!