Went on a fun and epic (can we still use that word?) ride yesterday with my friend Max.
Without knowing it, we both had been thinking of doing this same valley but from different angles.
My original plan was to ride up the east side of the Chilliwack River Valley on gravel FSR roads.
Max's idea was to ride up the west side on gravel and a section of the Trans Canada Trail. We mentioned this to each other at a social function on Friday and wound up doing both on Saturday!
I parked at the base of Chilliwack Lake Road, which is paved and runs up the whole valley for 40 km's and then rode 6 km's around to the next valley over to the starting point. Max rode 10km's up from the town of Chilliwack to our meet up at the water parks in Cultus Lake, which lies at the bottom of the Columbia Valley.
From there we headed east for a short steep climb up and over the ridge line between the Columbia and Chilliwack River valleys and then began heading south on great gravel roads up to Tamihi Creek, a staging area for river rafting and off roaders.
A steep downhill section into the Chilliwack Valley. Max had the advantage on groomed but my 26'r with suspension and fatter tires paid off in stuff like this.
Some groomed gravel towards Tamihi
Tamahi Creek
After Tamahi we followed an obscure and almost non existent portion of the Trans Canada Trail (TCT). This section was a lot of fun from an adventure perspective as it involved some singletrack, bike pushing/carrying, getting stung but tons of stinging nettles and spots of bog where our bikes sank up to the axles. It looked like we were the first through that year.
Hah ha! Max forgot to unclip. I laughed but blame genetics as I was born without the sympathy gene.
Things are getting funky!
We crossed this washout, had a drink and after about 10km's or so of trail then popped back out onto the pavement further up the valley.
To be continued next post...