MTB ride, adventure 120km with over 3,000mts of elevation gain/lost
The plan was simple "Ride for 10+ hours", so Andy suggested the following route: start at West Bragg parking lot, climb up Ranger Sumit, then down Sugar Momma, bushwhack to get to Station Flats, ride Sulphure and connect with Pneuma, all the way up Pneuma to the top of Toothless, then across onto Powder Face and up all the way to the Powder Face Ridge, then down to hwy 66 to ride the Little Elbow (43k) loop, then take the road to Station Flats, up Snagmore and Boundary all the way to the West Bragg parking lot.... It did sound pretty challenging and of course with Andy I could literally go anywhere. Not only he knows the terrain very well, but he also has a fast pace all the time.
We rode with Amit and Ray from West Bragg to the top on Pneuma, as they wanted a shorter ride.. Andy and I then took Toothless (which wasn't in good shape, but was rideable..). At the bottom of it the creek was dried, crossed it and rode to Powder Face link. All the way up the the PF parking lot the trail was in good shape. Once we started going up Powder Face we could actually notice a lot of trail damaged by the flooding in June, as we were riding up and often hiking we realized that the Bow80 will probably be cancelled this year due to all the damage on that section.
All the way up and then left at the top to ride/hike the Powder Face Ridge ! no water left at this point and at least 28c temperature ! torture hike up !! once at the top the descent was great, we managed to find a creek and filter the first 2 bottles of water.
The new filter I bought last year works phenomenal, I would say 40sc per bottle which is quick. We kept going down all the way to hwy66. We made it there in 4:53hrs and it seems good time for the first 47k. As we started Little Elbow loop (43k) Andy noticed an advisory sign at the start that read "some sections of the trail are wet", so not a big deal "we thought" and we kept going. First bridge down !@ and we had to bushwhack for a bit to connect with the other section of the trail./
First bridge down and we had to carry the bikes to get across, luckily we made it to the other side just fine. This is another stop for filtering water as we had 40+k to go with a long climb to the top..
Home made sandwich with lots of stuff on it :::---)))) yum yum. We were starting to dream about a coke with lots of ice, but Andy suggested to stop thinking about it since we were far far from that....
We filtered some more water at this stop and sat for a few minutes to enjoy the peaceful silent of being in the middle of nowhere... We were waiting for a Bear sighting, but did not happened at this point of the ride. After a few minutes we kept going, just to find out more and more walking due to part of the trail been washed out. There is one section that was completely gone, so bad that we couldn't even see other side of the trail, at this point we are thinking "oh man I hope we are walking in the right direction..."
Few more sections without bridges that we have to cross carrying our bikes, it was hot (28c) so the river was actually refreshing !!
Almost there, I could almost see the end of this loop and hit the paved road. Initially we planned to ride some trails from Little Elbow to Station flats, but due to the lack of time we decided to stay on the road. We hammered the road all the way to the top and the descent was fast to Elbow Falls ! we saw a black bear at this point, but didn't have time for a pic ::--))
Back in Station Flats after 11hrs all we have left was climb up Snagmore and Boundary, probably around 45min to get to West Bragg, surprisingly enough we still had legs to hammer the hills and made it to the car in under 12 hours total time.. 120k and ready for a break in Subway to have a big coke with ice !
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