The BC Bike Race is already pretty well known as a days long events that shows off some of the finest trails British Colombia has, but less heard of is the much smaller BC Bike Ride. It’s a guided trip with seven days of riding and a few more of rest, meant to show off the region without the pressures of racing. It costs just under CAD$4000 (around £2,500 at the moment), offering an odd mix of sleeping in tents, travelling by private jet… and of course by bike!
They’ve been sending us occasional press releases from most days of the ride, with plenty of photos too, and we thought they’d make a nice gallery.
Leg one took riders from North Vancouver to Prince George.
This is a warm up trail on Fromme Mountain, North Vancouver.Bit less of a warm up: This trail is called The Kitchen Sink, and that northshore is sixteen feet off the ground.Okay, they didn’t ride all the way, but were shuttled from North Vancouver to Prince George in a private jet.Otway trail network in Prince George.
Next up were a couple of days based around Burns Lake.
Early morning yoga seems disgustingly healthy compared to post ride beers.Post-ride swimming with a bag of cans.Extensive woodwork on Boer Mountain……and also a bike park at Burns Lake (riders: Fletcher Havelaar and Julia Hoffmann).Adam Craig riding a pretty big drop.Local guide Ben Yeager also tagged along for a day.
The final leg was Smithers and Terrace.
Dean Payne, President and Co-Owner of BC Bike Ride.Geoff Gulevich sends it over a plane crash on the Piper Down trail in Smithers BC. According to legend everyone walked away intact, and now the wreckage has been incorporated by the local trail builders.Singletrack in Smithers. Wait, Burns Lake? There’s a Nelson in British Columbia too. Were all the characters in the Simpsons named by looking at a map?Darren Butler leads a rider down a trail in Terrace.Big grins on Terrace trails.If you can’t flatten a trail into it, build over it.First Nations drummers invited the guests to drum while they danced.This was the final base camp at Prince Rupert, where they apparently relaxed with some fishing, jet boating and canoeing. They haven’t sent any photos of that because we’d all get too jealous.
David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly.
Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.
*starts saving*
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