 |
| Ryan Kuhn on Horsefly, the last wooden stunt on Blaster. |
With the relentless drying by the sun the last few days, we haven't been able to work with the dusty dirt. So that means it is wood building season again at Kicking Horse. But with supply quickly dwindling, let's hope it rains soon so we can get dirty!
With the Western Open going on last weekend, not a lot of trail work got done. When we weren't picking up bent and damaged racers on practice day, we were picking up bent and damaged riders.
 |
| Practice day at the Western Open gave us opportunities to practice our first aid and bike transport skills. No, there isn't a short patient in the green tarp. |
It was great seeing Brett Tippie in Golden for the first time ever. He seemed to enjoy himself on the trails before his fat ass (his words, not mine) broke his shock. He gave it his all in the plaza for two days giving the event some much-deserved hype. He is a force of nature.
 |
| Western Open reunited two old Kamloops boys from Way Back. Tippie, Richie Schley and I went to the same high school. I watched Tippie win the BC high school football championship 2 years in a row in BC Place stadium. Were you captain both years, Tippie? |
Practice day kept us busy, but race day ran very smoothly and gave me time to wander about with my camera, so I whipped this together:
What wood did we build? Did we build "north shore", a term Euros seem to use, but drives certain Canadians into bouts of cantankerous lunacy. Or did we build "ladder bridges", a term which some in North America use, but I find clumsy and confusing, but also oddly accurate. Or did we build "TTFs" or "technical trail features" which sounds stiff, bureaucratic and hyper-organized. How about stunts? Well, how about I just show some photos:
 |
| New wall rides on School Marm. Dirt to be added. |
 |
| New berm to replace Ghetto Berm on Superberm. |
 |
| The Ghetto Berm that haunted the dreams of innocents. |
Actually, it hasn't all been about wood. Just before this dry spell, work was done to
Home Run to make this beauty ride a bit cleaner.
 |
| Hobo doesn't want me to name anything else after him. He thinks that practice a bit odd. So these aren't Hobo Berms. They're Mike Parsons Berms. |
The reroute of
Showdown is firming up and beginning to take shape. Some mistakes were made, but we are going to let the season and this winter pass to see what's what before we start fine tuning. But whatever happens in the end, the result will be better than what it was.
 |
| Crumbly Corner on the new reroute. The low line is coming in, at the expense of the high line which changes every day. |
The temporary exit of
LYM is a sponge. We never wanted to give it a good effort to drain it because it is temporary. But we couldn't take it anymore, and made a good enough effort. So now it ain't pretty, but it's dry. Now we need to find some wood to continue LYM so this thing doesn't become permanent.
August is almost half over and we look forward to the death of bugs in their billions. But before that, be sure to come up here so you can tell all your school friends how cool you are in September. Because if you don't come, that claim may be just an empty lie.*
Ride on,
Crowe
www.kickinghorseresort.com |
| *disclaimer: coming to Kicking Horse may not necessarily make you cool. But it worked for Ryan Kuhn - look at him fly! This image is pulled from a video of Ryan boosting a hip on Showdown |
