XC on the Shore?

Words Trevor Hansen

Photos Trevor Hansen

Date May 21, 2009

I got a call from my friend James ‘Hot Lycra’ Wilson, owner of Obsession Bikes and event producer of the North Shore Bike Fest. He didn’t think I would want to come on his ride because it was going to be an XC lung buster covering the North Shore Bike Fest Marathon XC course to be held this Saturday May 23. My first reaction was there is no XC on the Shore so I’m in. Four hours after we started I realized I was wrong.

The Marathon XC is a part of theNorthshore Bike Fest happening this weekend. Check their site for details and maps of the course.

northshorebikefest.com/marathon_xc.html

The guys I was riding with wore very little and rode very fast on very light bikes. If it wasn’t for the awesome scenery along the Seymour River I would’ve been hating my heavy bike, heavy legs and slow speed. Luckily James was getting some of his crew from North Shore Rides oriented to the course since they have generously volunteered to marshal the event. This meant many breaks to outline the course. The race will start with a ride out the paved Demo forest road to the 6k mark. Drop down to a gravel logging road over the river then past Suicide creek and back then rip down Fisherman’s trail to Twin Bridges. That is an area I haven’t explored much and it felt like I was riding in Squamish.

After heading over the river again racers will do the bridle path climb to Hyanis then up Will’s Way for a lung busting technical single track climb. They continue on Bridle to Old Buck all the way up the Baden to Severed Dick. When we finally got here the thrill of Severed gave me the much needed energy I was lacking during all the climbing.

After Severed we lost the rest of the crew and it was just me and Lycra James with bikes on our backs hiking up a perfectly good downhill exit from C-Buster. From there we rolled out onto Bridle again for some fast downhillish single track over to a climb to Bottletop and some more fun downhill. For an XC event this thing was a lot of fun at this stage. After the down we came to Twin Bridges and the gravel double track uphill. We had to get home so we skipped the rest of the course which would have been more Fisherman’s to a steep up on the Homestead trails over to Richard Juryn’s xc trails then down to Interriver park.

I was quite happy to miss all this extra cause I didn’t have anything in the tank. We were out for a few hours and James figured the top guys would be finishing the entire course in 2 hours.

Based on how well run and fun the Rippers were I predict the Bike Fest will be a super fun event. Hope to see ya there.