Category Archives: bikes

Trying out a 29er

29ers have been around for a while now, but until this week I’ve never ridden one on a trail before. If you don’t know, a 29er has 29 inch wheels as opposed to a normal mountain-bike which has 26 inch wheels; also, that maybe a sign that this post will be of little interest to you. With larger wheels, they are supposed to be easier to roll over bumps &, once you get those big wheels rolling, easier to keep moving with the extra rotational inertia. With my bike still waiting for a part to turn up to get it back to a rideable state, Megan has generously let me use her bike a bit to enable a little riding during the start of my final three weeks in Canmore. She & Alex have both now got shiny new 29ers recently – I have in fact ridden Megan’s a couple of times, but as there was this much snow in the Canmore Winter Meltdown Triathlon it hardly counts as trail-riding.

The first thing I noticed riding through town to the G8 was that the tires were hard & fast – pumped up for the recent 24 Hours of Adrenalin event in town. Tire choice & pressure make a big difference to a ride & while I love the Crossmark on the rear, it never gives me much confidence on the front. I prefer something a bit chunkier with enough tread on the side to save me from washing the front wheel out too often. Near the start of the G8 is a decent climb that I only conquered a few times last year on my bike – it’s steep enough that the biggest flaw in my bike’s geometry tends to show itself & the front wheel becomes very difficult to keep on the ground. The 29er got up this easily, although with the bigger wheels I was spinning the granny-ring a bit earlier than normal to keep them turning at slow speed. This was a pleasing climb, but pretty much what I expected. With the big wheels requiring an easier gear, it was nice to make my way up the rest of the climb feeling that I wasn’t spinning excessively (the reason I prefer the middle-ring on 26″).

So having shown that the larger wheels made the more difficult climbs easier, it was time to see how they would go on faster undulating & then downhill terrain. Generally, the roots & rocks were absorbed better – but perhaps due to the setup, not markedly so. I did also notice that I would repeatedly have the rear tire skidding a little in the strangest places – perhaps better brakes & the hard tire a bit, but not completely. It was hard to keep the control I wanted with that wheel not gripping. Also, through the twisty parts of the trail the large wheel is not nearly as nimble & agile – but when you can just hit things & roll over them, it doesn’t matter so much. As suspected, I didn’t have much confidence in the grip of the tires to rail the corners as I normally would.

On the downhill, there was a strange disconnect from the trail – a little hard to describe, but I just didn’t feel the trail as much. It’s noticeably less work, less rewarding & less fun. The bike would also pretty much stay planted on the trail – which can be good & bad, but in this instance I was really missing not popping off the odd root or rock. So after that first ride, the least enjoyable part (uphill) was easier – but the most enjoyable part of the ride was less fun. Not completely sold yet, but it sure was nice having a shiny new bike to ride.

I let a bit of air out of the tires yesterday for a little spin around the Nordic Center. This improved things a bit, but I still had that same problem of the rear wheel not gripping the surface properly. Consequently, on a couple of chutes that I usually ride at speed & with ease I was just past the edge of control & mildly alarmed. Good to be out on the bike on another glorious Canmore day, so I can’t be too picky – especially as I won’t be buying another bike for a while yet.

Back to Canmore – Roadtrip Complete

To finish off the three months of driving I decided to drive all the way back from Vancouver to Canmore in the middle of the long weekend. The logic there being that Jasper would be a zoo on a sunny holiday weekend & I’d be better off checking it out a little later when there were less people around.

So Saturday morning I set off on a wonderfully sunny drive east across BC. The traffic was pretty good & BC was beautifully forested – it really is a large province when you drive across the bottom in one day. After Kamloops I was back on roads I’d driven before & there was a half-hour wait near Shuswap – but I had the Kindle out so I wasn’t too fussed. Over Rogers Pass & coming into Golden there was an ominous big cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. I was near the front of a queue for almost an hour as some poor family watched their RV incinerate. The rest of the drive was uneventful & I was soon driving below familiar peaks – just they had a lot less snow (almost none) on them than I remember. It was a little odd getting closer to Canmore – being away for three months & doing so many other things must have lessened the blow of leaving such a great place as I wasn’t too concerned that I’ll be gone in three weeks.

So that was it really, just under 22000 km, 87 days, 13 states, two provinces, 45 MTB rides totalling a thousand kilometres, at least 15 National Parks & 5 National Monuments, only 2600 photos & 435 gallons of gas. What a great trip! We were blessed by the weather – notably it never got really hot, as it did the last time I visited Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California in 2009.  Highlights are hard to list as there were so many. But I’ll try anyway:

A separate list for the riding highlights, which is even harder as I rode so much quality singletrack.

That’s that – thanks again Valerie for coming along for the ride & sharing the experience (& financing a lot of it too!).  I’m in Canmore until mid-August before flying back to London to catch the last of the English summer.  Mum’s coming across to England for the last few months of the year, so it’ll be great to see her & plenty of other friends & family in the UK.  From then on, I only have vague ideas as to what I’m going to do with myself… But riding better figure in there somehow.

Whistler Riding!

If Moab is the most famous overseas MTB destination when you live in NZ, Whistler is definitely a close second.  So it was great to get back up there yesterday with (what’s left of) my bike & get some cross-country & downhill rides in.  It was a slightly later start to the day after finding my car had been towed from the Visitor Garage in Karin’s building; but with that sorted I was in Whistler & riding by 11.30.

I started from the village & followed the Whistler Valley Single Track route that ended up being just over twenty kilometres. Mid-week, the trails close to town were still insanely popular – especially with large family groups. There were plenty of small kids out there & they were doing well as the rocky trails weren’t exactly a cake-walk. Mind you, I was climbing & they were mostly going downhill so maybe it was a little easier that way. The quick-fix of the dogbone on my bike only lasted three kilometres before the stresses of me pedalling uphill bent it, most annoying. The trails were good, but the names were even better – I rode Peaches, en Regalia, Dinah Moe Humm, The Torture Never Stops (it wasn’t that bad), Fountain of Love, Pinocchio’s Furniture (lots of wooden bridges & so on), & Gee I Like Your Pants among others.

With a little time on the road & cyclepath I was riding Cut Yer Bars & then A River Runs Through It. ARRTI was rated a black & had a lot of structures to balance on, jump over & so on. With my bottom bracket wobbling around & being worn out after three months of traveling I wasn’t really in the mood for what is quite a boring trail if you’re going slowly. There were a few see-saws/teeter-totters, this was the most interesting one & I managed to ride over this quite OK. I think it was the first one I’ve seen on a bike trail with industrial bearings for pivot.

I wonder what the lubrication schedule is for this, I could probably put it in Maximo if required

I spent an hour or so going around bike stores in town trying to make my bike more rideable so that it was worth going on some lift-assisted rides. Eventually I found the side of a long-cage derailleur in a crate of old ruined parts & after some filing I got it to fit. I was a little confused by the accent of the girl I bought my ticket off – turned out she was from Auckland, NZ; I’m disturbed by that. Off I went to join the DH set, feeling completely out of place as usual with my open-face helmet, clipless pedals, only four inches of travel & a 27lb bike.

I got one good run down B-Line that was great fun before the derailleur cage broke & my bottom bracket started thwacking around. The next two runs were good too, just I was a little distracted. More good trail names: I rode Ninja Cougar, Karate Monkey Samurai Pizza Cat, Heart of Darkness & Crank It Up. A mildly frustrating day all up with the bike, but the riding was good (if not completely my cup of tea) & I rode Whistler! I do hope I can find some solution to the dogbone issue back in Canmore as I’ve been so looking forward to doing all my favourite rides back there for the last few months – I still think Jumpingpound Ridge/Cox Hill rates as highly as any I’ve done on this trip (but just might be a nostalgically distorted view of what was a really good ride).

Whistler visit

Karin had a Sunday daytrip to Whistler planned for us & a couple of her friends, Mark & Elise.  It was a rare wonderfully sunny day in this part of the world & the slow drive up Highway 99 through Squamish had great views of the bay & mountains.  It was the last day of Crankworx (a ten day freeride MTB event), so the village was pretty busy; but not nearly as crazy as Saturday apparently.  We wandered around the village (nice to have no roads through it) a bit, had lunch & then Karin, Mark & Elise went off to go zip-lining.  Valerie & I pottered around a bit more, managing to catch Ryan Leech’s trials riding demonstration.  A thoroughly likeable guy (the couple of times I’ve seen him at events at least), he has a very good little show demonstrating what trials riding is all about.  Basically it’s on a special small framed MTB & consists of insane feats of balance, hopping on to things at height from a standstill & so on.  Impressive to say the least.

We filled in a bit more time with wandering around the Olympic Village & then getting a little lost walking to Lost Lake. I was expecting a nice quiet little lake surrounded by trees, & it was, but there were also hundreds of people on the grass around the shore enjoying the sun.

Blackcomb ski runs

The bottom of the main Crankworx course off Whistler Mountain & straight into the village

As far as I remember, we met the others & then returned to Vancouver, with a lot of other slow-moving traffic. It doesn’t seem as though we actually did that much, but it was a great day out & fantastic that neither Valerie or I had to drive. It didn’t take much of this beautiful sunny mountainous environment to have me dreaming wistfully of being able to stay in Canada longer – I’d put off thoughts of my departure with excited thoughts of the USA roadtrip.