Seven Summits

At the beginning of September, Kyle and I took the week off to go on a BC road trip with the trailer. We stayed in Fernie for the BC Cup DH final where we both had podium finishes. It was a pretty knarly course and Kyle killed it on his new hard-tail! I won't tell you how many people were in our respective categories but we had lots of fun racing! We woke up Monday morning to grey skies so we took our time making our way to Nelson via the Kootenay Ferry. 

Kootenay Ferry

 We stopped for lunch in Ainsworth and visited the hotsprings. The hotspring through the cave was unbelievable! It was great to have a relaxing day. I feel like we don't get too many of those.

Parking lot lunch

 The next day was a whirlwind of shuttling the fantastic Nelson trails with some other visitors that we met in the Walmart parking lot. Our new friends Gavin and Dan are both living their dreams traveling around BC and biking every day. After a wicked day on Powerslave and Goldmember, we decided that we should ride the Seven Summits Trail in Rossland in the morning as the forecast for later in the week did not look promising.

A few km into the Seven Summits, looking stoked!

 Despite the best intentions, it was slow start, but we finally got going with plenty of time to ride the 30km before dark. After dropping a car at the south end of the trail, we started off from the Nancy Greene Trailhead. We tried to cut off a bit of the initial climb by driving up a logging road but it was so overgrown that we didn't get as high as we had planned. The first climb was brutal as it never seemed to end. We pushed lots of the steep section, taking advice from others to go easy at the beginning or the rest of the trail would be much more painful.

One of the summits along the way

 After what felt like hours of climbing we came out at our first of the 7 summits. From here, the trail became much more fun, with fast, flowing descents along ridge-lines and short climbs with amazing views! 

Stopping for a moment to enjoy the view

 This was my first big ride on my new Specialized Expert Carbon Enduro that I just got the week before. It was the perfect bike for the ride, I was able to crush the climbs and it was a weapon on the descents. I couldn't believe how big it felt for such a light bike. Thanks so much to Barry Mah at Specialized for hooking me up!

~20km into the ride and still smiling!

 The trail was in great shape, probably a bit dustier and rougher than it would have been with a bit of rain but we were having way to much fun to notice. Gavin kept us entertained throughout the ride with his Aussie stories and tales of his travels. Every time we reached a downhill he would say "its all down from here." We learned really quickly that this was never the case, there was always another uphill around the corner! The award for the hero of the day went to Dan for riding the trail on his Santa Cruz Drive 8 and not even complaining. 

Summary of the day: beautiful scenery and a bit of dust

 We had parked the truck at the bottom of the Dewdney Trail, a 5 km descent from the end of the Seven Summits. Despite it all being downhill, I was hurting by the end. My body was exhausted from the long hours spent on the bike. Arriving at the truck was a huge relief!

I was feeling pretty wrecked after the ride

 Overall, the trail was super fun! Having now rode 2 of the epic trails (Seven Summits and Comfortably Numb), I would definitely recommend Seven Summits over Comfortably Numb for its amazing views, wicked descents and (relatively) fun climbs. It is way less technical so despite being a longer overall trail, it doesn't take as long and is nowhere near as painful. I would totally ride this one again! To see details about the ride, check it out on my strava
http://www.strava.com/activities/80139064

Note the dirt lipstick and the colour of my arm from all the dust

The rest of the road trip involved staying in Nelson as it was so awesome and we didn't want to leave. I guess we will have to come back next year!