Whipsaw Trail - Saturday August 11

[SouthPoint]

Farp, chico and myself are going to ride the Whipsaw Trail on Saturday, August 11. The plan is to meet at the Britton Creek Rest Area at 9am and ride out from there.

None of us have done this ride before, but our understanding is that there are a few B sections and that it is NOT a good ride for big bikes and/or inexperienced riders.

It looks like the maximum distance bewtween fuel stops will be about 140km.

If you are planning to join this ride, please post here as we will not be waiting to see who shows up.

[offworlder]

Doh ! I'd love to join you guys, and really want to check out this ride - but this is the weekend of the Loose Screw !!!

[North]

Same here, I would like to go too. But I am off to Trail BC for a couple of weeks.

[drifter dave]

Falcon Hill may be a little tough near the top - 3 people is a good number for when you need a push. Should be a lot of fun, enjoy!

[tomcycle]

We did the Whipsaw a couple of weeks ago on the Routledge Run.

Its a lot of fun but I would rate it as a B+ because its long and guys get tired.

Most of the mud should be dried up by now.

Falcon Hill is loose but a good rider should be able to carry his momentum to the top.

If you haven not done much off road riding Whipsaw is not the place to start, best to practice on Tamihi Church, get that mastered you will have no problem with Whipsaw.

I have the track that we used to get back to the Coq from Blakeburn I will add this to this post if I can get it loaded

Fond memories of the mosquito infested mud holes

[eagleguy]

Ted, you have a PM, curios if you are going up and down the HILL! and Tom, will my X C be worthy of the test? Nevets ( thats my name backwards)

[Farp]

That was an epic ride. We rode 242 km over some great trails. Now I know why Tom says this ride is one of his favourites; after riding it it's one of mine too.

The original trail has been intersected with a new FSR where the red pushpin is displayed on the map. We had a lot of trouble finding it because of the new construction. It was getting late at this point in our ride so we decided to follow the new road out. After making a couple of wrong turns which wound up in dead ends we got on the right road only to be stopped by a large cat parked across the road. The cat operator said they had just had a large blast and the road was completely blocked with rock and debris, but he said that a D10 cat would be clearing the way shortly. After a wait of a half an hour or so while we watched the D10 clear the road we were on our way again.

We parked our vehicles at the Coquihalla Lakes Lodge, about 1 km down the road from the Britton Creek rest area. We had a brief chat with the lodge operator who was an ex-dirt biker. He told us there are all sorts of trails in the area suitable for quads and dual sport bikes which made us think that this lodge might be a good place for an overnighter.

Here's the GPS track of where we went.



John

[SouthPoint]

That was probably the most fun I have had on a dirt bike! Lots and lots of varied terrain.

Towards the end I was feeling a bit tired and couldn't help but think how nice it would be to have a "spa day" and relax in one of those total body mud wraps. Just then my front wheel hit some submerged obstacle and over I went in to about a foot and a half of stagnant goo. I laid there cursing myself for not bringing any fresh cucumber slices to put over my eyes. Nevertheless, I got up feeling quite refreshed and rejuvenated. Too bad the GoPro wasn't running at the time.

I will post some video once I sort through it all.

A big thanks to Mark, the owner of the Coquihalla Lakes Lodge who gave us safe parking for a very reasonable fee. I was glad we didn't have to worry about our vehicles, especially after we passed a vehicle near the start of the FSR that had boulders heaved through the windshield.

[SouthPoint]

Here is some video of a small section of the ride. It is the portion just before and including Falcon Hill. For reason's I don't understand, the video shows as being 59 minutes long. It is actually 12 minutes long with 47 minutes of a blank screen.

[Bones]

SouthPoint, that hill is definately a lot steeper than it appears in the video.
I've always wanted to do Whipsaw....
Bones

[SouthPoint]

That's the deceiving thing about video, it all looks flat. Even Falcon Hill where I got stuck at the end of the video looks flat. It was anything but!