My Mountain Biking Adventures

After a long drive last night, with a few stops along the way and almost being killed on the Coquihalla by a blue Toyota Camry, we finally arrived in Revelstoke at 12:30am and put our new tent to the test by setting it up in the dark…  It passed!  Not bad considering we bought the tent sight unseen and had Colin’s dad pick it up for us earlier that day.  A few minutes later we were ready to sleep and anticipating riding the next day.  Or so we thought…  A group of teens in the site next to ours kept us awake with drunken conversation until 3:30am.  Fortunately it started to rain which forced them back into their tents.  Unfortunately they started back up at 6:00am with fresca and whiskey?!  Not my choice of beverage, but anyhoo….

Colin had some repairs to do on his bike before we ventured into town.  Our first stop was Flowt Bikes and Skis to get a trail map and information on where we should ride.  The guys there pointed us towards the Mt McPherson trails.  Afterwards we made a quick trip to the Chalet Bakery to do some carb loading since we needed energy for the ride.  Both of us downed a massive Boston Cream donut that was big enough to keep me energized for the next week and absolutely worth it!  We then made our way to the trail head.

The Mt McPherson trails are relatively close to town off Hwy 23.  You can park at the bottom, but we chose to park a bit further up the road by a sign with the trail map and then continued riding up the logging road to a trail called Berm Donor.  It started off as a nice flowy single track that was a gradual climb to the top of the mountain.  The trail wound past Beaver Lake until there was a fork in the trail where we continued on the right (left took you to a trail called Beaver Lake Road which, as the name suggests, was on an old logging road).  Once we reached the top we were rewarded with a nice downhill section with several berms which made a sweet S curve down the hill.  Now we knew why the trail was called Berm Donor!  The trail intersects with another called Tantrum which you can ride up and back to the parking lot, or ride down which takes you back into town.  We cheated and took an alternate route back to the highway.

Sample video clip of Berm Donor.  I’m riding a bit slow on the second bit (cold start) but it gives you an idea…

Revelstoke - Berm Donor from Kookjai Media on Vimeo.

It was definitely a great ride and a great day.

Tags: flowt, kootenay, mcpherson, revelstoke, women mountain bikers

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Kootenays, mountain biking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.