North Shore 100 proposed TrailForks Badge Event

UPDATE July 11 5:00pm

THIS WILL NOT BE AN OFFICIAL EVENT

https://www.trailforks.com/route/north-shore-100/

THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN EDITED

In the style of the Fromme Funduro TrailForks Badge event, I am proposing a North Shore 100km Double Crown Challenge.

The benefit of this route is that it is a Figure 8 loop route that starts, crosses halfway, and finishes at InterRiver Park. So there is more opportunity for riders to meet and socialize, and to use their vehicle as a feed zone/pit/socially responsible tailgate party area.

This route is a shortened version of the 125km route I created/rode for the Merritt Crown Virtual Challenge in 2021 (due to Covid, the In Real Life Merritt race was for locals only, and all others were to create there own 120km+ race course with at least 3000m of climbing, and race it on the same day while being tracked with their phones or GPS, and submitting Ride Logs to the virtual race website). A few friends joined me for the ride, so I know a 100km event is do-able. The hard part is trying to keep the amount of climbing to less than 3000m while still including as many popular trails as possible; therefore, the reason for all the easy urban trails and paved bike paths. Otherwise, even trying to stick to one mountain, but trying to include the top 5 most popular downhill trails results in >70km 4000m+ routes.

This will not be a mass start race that would attract attention and complaints, but would be small social groups, or groups that want to unofficially compete with their buddies, or just individuals that think they can FKT (kind of like all the North American underground bikepack races that have no official recognition, no official organizer, no prizes, no entry fees, no T-shirt etc.). The idea would be just to complete it, but competitive riders could compare Ride Logs at the end of the day (hopefully no one would be a dick about it and treat public roadways, sidewalks or downhill portions of trails as a taped off World Cup course)

Link goes to unconfirmed badge which I can’t see in the App. Probably need admin to confirm it

Link updated

Now TrailForks admin approved

Open to routing suggestions/changes to eliminate a lot of the pavement riding?

Posted by: syncro

Open to routing suggestions/changes to eliminate a lot of the pavement riding?

Yes, if it doesn't add a lot of climbing

3000+m of climbing in one day is a pretty tough challenge, so I still want most North Shore/trail/down-country/non-Ebike type regular riders to be able to finish

As is, it is like doing two marathon race events like the Nimby50 and Test of Metal in one day. So not getting hung up on "100km" and shortening it might be required

I'm not sure the diversion to interriver BMX makes sense?

Adds road riding for not much value? After circuit 8 I'd be inclined to stay on trail/gravel as much as possible and get across to fisherman's, then up to bridle path and carry on from there?

InterRiver works for resupply half way and for people that only want to do one of the laps. Plus easy parking in an area that will not cause complaints from residents

Ah ok that makes more sense. I was envisioning coasting down past the graveyard, doing a lap of the BMX track, then grinding up Seymour Parkway to strathhaven for no good reason. But lot/refuel area is good. 

You could possibly do that at rice lake lot though? Inter river for sure reliably has more space though.

Nice to finish with a downhill coast too

and you go right by a corner store, pizza shop, and Seymour's outlet a few flat blocks from the finish

and if you have to see an exact 100.0km on your device's odometer, you can do bonus laps on the pump track

Posted by: taprider

Yes, if it doesn't add a lot of climbing

3000+m of climbing in one day is a pretty tough challenge, so I still want most North Shore/trail/down-country/non-Ebike type regular riders to be able to finish

As is, it is like doing two marathon race events like the Nimby50 and Test of Metal in one day. So not getting hung up on "100km" and shortening it might be required

I created a route, just waiting for it to get approved. 

It starts/end at Inter-River which I think makes sense. It goes up Seymour first:

- up GSM
- down Cambodia
- out to the dam and back via Spur 4 and the Seymour Valley trailway
- over to Fromme and up Mtn Hwy
- down UOC/Crippler
- back up on No Quarter
- down Pipeline and Lower Expresso
- back over to Seymour
- across the mtn via Bridle and Blair Range
- up Old Buck to the powerlines and across power lines 
- Mushroom to Dale's Connector
- down Dales and Forever After
- back to Inter River via Bridle, Twin Bridges and Richard Juryn

About 103km and 3300m climbing. I can easily cut about 30km of distance, but cutting elevation is tough unless It's one of the second laps on either Fromme or Seymour. One way to cut about 500m of climbing is to start at the top of Seymour, so a shuttle up to the top which isn't all that bad. The CBC lot would be the start point.

I received a reply from NSMBA. Pretty much anything where a tent would be set up requires permits from all the applicable jurisdictions.

So it looks like the only way these routes work is to keep it underground. At least you can have it recognized as a TrailForks route.

Also looks like NSMBA might not continue to host TrailForks type challenges due to the problems with the TrailForks software recognizing if a rider has completed a trail, so that probably means there won't be a Fromme Funduro this year.

I am going to ride my route this Sunday anyway since I need to train for some bikepacking routes. If you are interested in trying the route too, let me know

re. trailforks and 'completions', I've noticed that when I've had on the bike routing problems from trailforks routes on my garmin, getting told off course, etc., the trail alignment is generally old or from a shitty gps track, so the trails need to be edited to follow the general heatmap/activity tracks. Yeah it's another hassle for sure, I'm a mapping dork, so I'll sit and edit a bunch of trails at a time like that and submit them, but it's not something the average user is equipped to do.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/the-mental-ride-its-only-a-ride-on-10-mountains-in-the-sea-to-sky.html

Then there's this.

Posted by: FlipFantasia

re. trailforks and 'completions', I've noticed that when I've had on the bike routing problems from trailforks routes on my garmin, getting told off course, etc., the trail alignment is generally old or from a shitty gps track, so the trails need to be edited to follow the general heatmap/activity tracks. Yeah it's another hassle for sure, I'm a mapping dork, so I'll sit and edit a bunch of trails at a time like that and submit them, but it's not something the average user is equipped to do.

For any route or event planning in the future, would pre-riding a route with a Garmin MapGPS (or even more accurate device that is fairly accurate under tree cover) to obtain a better gpx track, result in better ride completion recognition from Trailforks?

You would not "snap" the gpx track to the Trailfork mapped trails, so the route would appear as just one long trail. And is there a way to customize to make the recognized "corridor" wider?

The alternative would be to use an alternate app like Trackleaders (the app used by most North American bikepack races, but as it is a live tracker it requires a satellite transmitter/tracker, and therefore extra cost and complexity)