I met up with a few folks from DualsportBC. Initially we were going to ride up around Cat Lake, north of Squamish, but when we were chatting at the morning meet we thought we'd start by checking out what was going on above Brittania beach.
We scooted up past the first gate with no problem and saw some folks working logging equipment. I chatted with one of the guys and he said there's no problem with us riding through. Cool guy.
Don, on the 1983 Honda, had broken a bolt on his head and was leaking a fair bit of oil onto the engine and exhaust. Luckily Don had brought some extra oil along.
Here you can see the fog that "Ol' Smokie" was creating.
We found snow all too soon and turned back to go to the old mining facility.
Some of us took the tougher shortcut (it's to the left above the bikes).
The old equipment was very cool.
The hole in front of Simon went down ... to where we do not know, we were not set up for spelunking ;)
Some equipment from 1904
We took a fair number of photos
Rural Decay
Too bad there was no beautiful scenery
At the site of the old dam
We always waited at all trail forks & gathered everyone up.
Sign said no entry. Which was no problem as we were exiting ;)
On the way down we ran into a downhill skateboard race that had been set up. But we put on a show on the way down the hill once the skateboarders were off the course.
Don and ... well I forgot the name of the guy riding the KTM, went home. Don posted up a message and he made it home safe despite the engine issue.
Simon, Jiri and I went north to Squamish, gassed up and then went to see if we could ride through to the top of Indian Arm.
Getting around the gate & blocks was a bit tricky, but with 3 guys, determination and no fear of banging and scraping the bikes it was no problem :)
This road was a fair bit tougher. I'd noticed earlier that my shifter was coming lose and I didn't want to be in the back country and have parts falling off.
So when we stopped for a bit of a break I decided to fix it. Turned out that my footpeg was falling off as well. So more loctite all around.
All too soon, snow and lots of it.
Again, if only we'd had some scenery to enjoy.
A couple of shots of Jiri's bike in the snow that he asked for :)
After a fair bit of muscling the bikes we made it back to one of the cross roads and explored up a different mountain.
The path got rough pretty quick, once again, no view to speak of sadly.
Simon went ahead a bit but was back within minutes. I took a few photos of how deep the ditches were that we were crossing at times.
Here I stood inside the ditch.
We cruised back down to the main gravel road and Jiri was tired and turned back toward Vancouver.
So, then there were two. Simon and I decided to go along the main road to check things out. After an hour of riding, some dead ends and a minor "off" for Simon on a steep rocky brush covered descent, we got back to ... snow.
By now it was 3.45 pm and we'd been on the go since 9 am.
We were both getting tired and decided not to try and force the snow issue. Once again we were wishing for some views or something. Bloody BC and it's lack of scenery.
The ride out was not that eventful, we always made sure we kept in touch every few minutes. Here we are back at Hwy 99 under the Chief.
We were both tired and had an amazing day. Great dualsporting and all so close to Vancouver. We'll be back in the area once the snow is gone to get all the way through to Indian Arm.
One final shot.
You can see the slide show here
Hope you had a great day!
