Kever profile

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Different strokes for different folks.  The vast majority of trails on the shore absolutely require jank removal and dumbing down as they progress from loamer to established trail or they can lose their fun factor and become downright dangerous.  And even with some smoothing the trails are still chunky and technical AF. 

I do see the appeal of the authors style of fat biking though.  Sometimes when I'm building I find someones personal little offshoot janker line that has basically no work done and would be best ridden on a hardtail or fat bike.  These are trails that consist of meandering forest floor with a few sticks kicked out of the way.  A slower, different way to experience the forest, and their jankiness generally prevents them from becoming popular.

Nice, that was better than expected! Good job

"After an encounter with a legendary Whistler cougar"

Anybody know what band plays that song?

Jeez I hope I qualify to ride crabapple hahaha

Sick bike

lol

best hardtail evar

awesome!

Unless you need the cash or the space I'd say hold on to all the bikes you can, it's not a great time to sell and it's gonna get harder as bike shops try to dump overstock for cheap. 

If you need to sell, the clear redundancy is the road/gravel bikes, driud/prime, and titan/chilcotin, so I'd say pick your favourite from each category and run with it.  And if you never ride your hardtail and can't envision yourself riding it then sell that too.  Or just build a storage shed and start your bike museum!

Check out the FR Enduro Blackline: https://evocsports.ca/collections/protection-backpacks/products/fr-enduro-blackline

I tried on a bunch of packs and this was the most comfortable.  It's a bit heavy but there's a back protector which I like and it has lots of room for all the tools, water, and clothes.

I heard a little air come out the other day when I opened mine.  Probably worth checking every once in a while. 

Similar topic: having trouble tuning my performance fork to make it feel good.  Lack of high/low speed adjustability is not great, fork is diving.  I removed a token and upped the air pressure to try to compensate.

The fitzsimmons quad is being replaced by an 8 person lift.  I wonder if there will be 2 back-to-back bike-carrying chairs to to one people-carrying chair.  That would increase efficiency but also increase confusion.

Temperpedic is good for side sleepers.

Not exactly non-alcoholic beer at 3.5% but Moosehead Cracked Canoe is a decent low alcohol/low calorie drink if you don't want to get too tipsy.

I am fascinated with fishing and fish.  Two books I enjoyed recently were Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish by G. Bruce Knecht and Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon by Alexandra Morton.  Both books were exciting, hard to put down, and invoked an emotional response.

I also read Utopia by Thomas More and found it interesting to imagine reading it in 1516.  

I am reading The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham and finding it to be a real page turner.

Thanks fellas.  Glad to have contributed to something valuable, and building is a good time.  I just wish more of my buddies were stoked on DH bikes and hot laps!

Posted by: rip78

thanks for the detailed reply.  I know it's always been more of a DH trail, and while I still have a DH bike I prefer to pedal up.  I know it's always been fairly difficult, but I feel like in the past I could ride about 95% of it on my trail bike.  Now it felt like 85%.  maybe it's just me getting older.

I wasn't expecting it to be dumbed down when it was sanctioned, just more curious what the overall plan is.  Especially with the climb trail as I wasn't sure exactly where that is supposed to be.  I think I know, but not sure what the purpose of it is if I'm understanding it correctly.

Fair comments. My vision for meat sweats is to keep the flavour but "dumb it down" a little over the years to keep the constant erosion from making the trail too gnarly. There's a couple zones on upper meats that could use some work right now, hopefully we'll get to those in the fall. It's tough because the trail surface is fairly loamy with glacial till underneath, so it's basically wet loam for at least half the year. I've worked on a lot of trails in the last ten years and upper meat sweats is the toughest zone to build for sure, especially the zone above the second hip jump. 

The purpose of the climbing trail is to provide a trail for hikers, which will keep them off DH trails and "give back" a trail as mystery DH used to be hiking only. It's being built by the NSMBA by a contractor so it'll be MTB friendly if you choose to earn your turns or link up with the West side trails via skyline. 

The climb trail will make more sense for mountain bikers once there's a new blue or dark blue descent, hopefully that will happen at some point. The existing trails will carry on as is, with maintenance being done to ensure they stay good. Support the NSMBA; we'll post public trail days as they come up.

Posted by: rip78

does anyone know what the status is with the announcements that were made last fall?  I seem to recall that they were building a climb trail and that they were going to sanction meatsweats.    I rode meatsweats this morning and it's even rougher than I remember (the top half anyway)

Long-time maintainer of meat sweats here, yes meat sweats was among three trails that were sanctioned last fall.  Since that time, significant efforts have been made by myself and other Cypress builders to improve those sanctioned trails.  I am proud of the work we have accomplished since last fall; Jersey, Meat Sweats, and Morgies are all running better than they have in years.  And surprisingly, very few people have been riding that side of the mountain compared with the last 3-4 years.

You're right that upper meats sweats is a rough and difficult trail, it always has been and probably always will be.  There was quite a bit of work put into upper meat sweats last fall by smoothing out a few key sections, cleaning drains, and building a roll down bridge down a janky stump.  Certainly there are good lines and not so good lines down the trail, but it is rewarding when you can link them up.  The trails on Cypress East side are designed to be a training ground for DH racers, so they run best on modern DH bikes.  Upper meats can also be quite challenging in the wet as the roots can get quite slippery.  Overall it's a tough zone to build, but I believe the alignment of the trail is generally good and it will continue to be a good trail long term as long as it is maintained and improved regularly.

So, my suggestion is to run tire inserts, lower tire pressure, know when it's too wet to ride, ride a DH bike, and study those lines.  It's quite fun when it all comes together!  And yes there will be more improvements, we are just in a holding pattern at the moment due to weather and a few other factors.  Happy trails folks.