Once at the top, there are some beautiful views back into Rocky Mountain National Park from the top. A spur of trail (that we didn’t take) gets you to the true summit of Crosier.

Then it’s 4.5 miles of descent, some of it pretty sketchy and loose, but still pretty fun.

I’d do it again:

Flickr set:

In February, after my 3rd knee surgery since 2005, I had no plans or expectations for my riding this summer. And when all my friends made the commitment to a Whistler, BC trip in April, I just figured I was out. But as the summer got going, I was feeling pretty good, and riding pretty clean, and got the big encouragement from Steph, so I was in after all.

Scheduling difficulties meant that I would only get 3 days there instead of the 5 my friends would, but nevertheless, I was in.

We flew into Seattle, and rented a couple of cars there. Flights to Vancouver were 2 or more times the price. It means twice the driving, and add a border crossing, but we figured it was worth it to save a couple hundred each for 7 people.

The Whistler Bike Park is incredibly well managed, and loaded with great riding. There are ride-arounds for most of the big and committing features. I spent 2 days there, and 1 day riding Vancouver’s North Shore.

It was incredible riding. There’s a reason half the photos in bike magazines are from BC. I thought maybe this was a once in a lifetime trip, but now I sure hope it isn’t.

The bike park was amazing fun, but next time I want more North Shore. The incredible amount of work done there to build trails and mind-blowing stunts was astounding.

Friends of Tom from SoCal were there at the same time we were, and very very kindly showed us around the bike park, and especially the North Shore. They were very patient with our (meaning my) slow pace.

Lessons learned:

Park bikes are very heavy and don’t really pedal at all. They’re kind of inappropriate for my riding style on North Shore rides.

So for me, park bike for park days, trail or all-mountain bike for the other stuff.

We had a condo, but the days were long and tiring, so we ate out all the time. Restaurants in Whistler are breathtakingly expensive. We could have hired a chef to cook for us in the condo and still come out ahead.

There’s no good beer there. And it’s expensive. Buy in Bellingham, WA on your way in. (In fairness, we did receive this tip from others, but were too preoccupied with getting there.)

Body armor and full-face helmets get pretty sweaty and stinky. Since it’s somebody else’s stink, rented armor and rented full-face helmets are even worse. At least buy your own helmet.

Allow extra time for the border crossing. Check the wait times.

Take lots of photos:

Day 1; Whistler Bike Park:

Day 2; More Whistler Bike Park

Day 3; Vancouver, North Shore:

Vimeo works better than Google with the AVIs from my new camera.

The log bridges on Little Raven can be tricky:

little raven 1 from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

This video notwithstanding, Casey handled the LR/SSV ride with few problems:

casey – little raven from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

ssv 2 from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

south st. vrain 1 from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

kevin – ssv from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

tyler – ssv from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

The corkscrew at Keystone looks cool, and is scary at first, but is really more of a gimmick.

Keystone corkscrew from charlie wanek on Vimeo.

There’s a correlary; The Indignity of a Commuting Bicycle. First Dean gets a younger, bigger brother:

And now this:

Fenders, lights and flats (and a broken waterbottle cage too). It’s enough to make a sensitive bicycle weep from embarrassment.

So surf on over to http://bma-mtb.org/valmontbikepark/index.php and buy a brick.

A couple bad crashes, and cleaned a couple things I’ve never managed before. I’ve had better trips, but I’ve also had worse. My knee held up pretty well; I joined the body armor crew, though just knee pads. I was mighty grateful at least once.

We checked out the shiny new Free Lunch trail in GJ on the way out. I didn’t hit the big stuff, but had a little fun anyway:

Of course, when speaking of MTB or Moab (or crafting a post for search results), I also need to be sure to link to my buddy Brian’s site SingleTrackRides.