Kicking Horse and Terminator Ridge

Kyle scoping out freeride lines at the top of Kicking Horse

The trails at Kicking Horse Bike Park in Golden, BC are steep, rough and endless. We spent 2 days riding the hill with Peter and Kristina enjoying gondola accessed downhill trails. Sadly our first day was cut short by thunderstorms, but that didn't stop us from having an epic alpine weekend.

Gondola accessed fun

Day one was a (mostly) full day in the bike part. We hit a few trails before a storm rolled in around 1:30, closing the hill for the rest of the day. You really need to hustle to get your money's worth. The bike park is only open from 10am - 3:30pm and a lap takes close to an hour. We learned that if you do more than 2 runs, you don't qualify for a rain check, so it was an expensive 3 laps. We cut our losses and enjoyed an afternoon beer on the Whitetooth Brewery Patio.

Alpine berms

The warm up slab on Rock and Roll

Ripping down before the storm

Great views from the upper trails

Stick Rock

On Sunday morning, we loaded the Kicking Horse gondola once again. Our plan the previous day had been to end the day in the park with Terminator Ridge. Not a sanctioned bike park trail, the trail follows a hiking trail up and over Terminator 1 through 4 before dropping down the ridgeline to the top of LSD in the Moonraker trail system. The 17km ride finishes after 1400m of descent at the bottom of Canyon Creek Trail in Nicholson.

Canyon Creek

The long ridge would have been a terrible place to be during a thunder storm so we were grateful to have clear skies and a second chance on Sunday. Kyle and Peter had dropped a car at the bottom on Saturday so we were all set to give it a go. Instead of trying to squeeze in a full day of bike park before riding the trail, we instead opted for enduro (2 ride) passes to get up the gondola. This allowed us to have a bike park warm up lap before setting out for our alpine adventure. 

Leaving the resort behind

Up the switchbacks

Hike-a-bike

Almost at the top of T2

The high point of the ridge is T2. From there you can see the trail following the ridge off into the distance and great views down the Columbia Valley. The trail started with a steep descent followed by a techy climb to reach T3 and T4.

Hiking time is over, now lets ride!

A long way down

Terminator Ridge and the Columbia Valley

Alpine Choss

Dropping in!

Loose and technical

The trail was dry, rocky and exposed. It was the kind of riding that required all your focus with lots of sharp rocks looking to puncture tires. As much as I wanted to take in the scenery, I had to pay attention. As we descended, the trail mellowed out and we started to find more flow.

Leaving the alpine and finding some flow

Suddenly disaster struck. I hadn't checked by brake pads before the ride but knew that they were getting low. I have Magura MT7's which have a really interesting feature of pushing the pistons out when the pads are too low, locking the brakes and making it extremely difficult to remove the pads. The last time this had happened was on a ride in Pemberton and we had broke one of the pistons trying to fix the issue. Now we were up high on an alpine ride without cell service and I couldn't spin my front wheel. I managed to get the wheel off to try and adjust the pistons, but then couldn't get it back on because of the position of the pistons. With bike parts in tow, I jogged down the trail to catch up to the group so we could come up with a solution together. Seeing me carrying my wheel in one hand and my bike under my arm in the other fortunately cheered up Kristina who had been having a rough time, but Kyle was justifiably frustrated that I had neglected to change my pads. It didn't help that the bugs had found him and were already feasting. A few minutes later it was Kyle to the rescue and we were back on the trail with functional brakes.

Protecting Kyle from the bugs as he fixes my brakes