By Tim Wild
Every adventure starts somewhere. Tim Wild’s BC trip starts here, with a prologue to the main feature.Â
I’ve been obsessing over the logistics of this British Columbia trip for weeks. It’s complicated. Ten riders need to converge in Squamish, BC, on the same day – one from Alaska, one from Quebec, three driving up from Moab, four flying into Vancouver from different USA cities and me from the UK. Flight times change at random. People cancel. The whole thing feels like a house of cards that could collapse at any moment.
First thing I do on departure day? Leave a £300 Berghaus waterproof jacket – my only jacket – in the luggage rack of the train to Gatwick.
But ten hours later, my sturdy RAM 1500 pickup truck contains four friends, five bikes, a ton of gear and a palpable sense of excitement as we roll into the drive of our Squamish house to a flurry of hugs, beers and bike building. We’re all here. We made it. It’s actually going to happen.
The plan was to spend our first day riding Lord of the Squirrels in Whistler – a legendary monster of a loop with hours of climbing and multiple feature-packed descents. We don’t all know each other and we’re about to head off together into remote backcountry for the next three days, so we need a first ride to spot any problems with bikes, fitness, or general group cohesion that can be sorted in Squamish and not bite us in the ass halfway up a distant mountain. But Lord of the Squirrels is closed due to snow. In July. This is the kind of detail that would usually send me into a mild panic spiral, but organiser Dave is made of sterner stuff. Calls are made, plans rearranged and we’re soon in business.
If you feel like riding tomorrow, I’ve not done my job.
These encouraging words emanate from the mouth of one Nate Mckay, a Squamish local, friend of our leader Dave and minor MTB legend. Nate was one of the original builders of the Whole Enchilada in Moab – on every MTB trail bucket list – back in the days when it wasn’t even legal, and involved dodging park rangers and secretly burying tools. I will, however, mostly remember him for his cheerful attempt to kill us all with a combination of heat, climbing and trail speed.
So – the climbing. There is a lot… All in one go… About 5,000ft in total, mostly in one major hike. But the payoff on this trail is absolutely remarkable. For me, and a few others, Rupert is our first taste of genuine Squamish slab riding – and it’s a doozie. A cliché I know, but YouTube does not do this stuff justice. Tight rock-built turns, super-satisfying rock rolls, boulders to huck off, mad little wooden bridges and a roll down a slab so steep my back tyre threatens to pull my shorts down.
We’re in Disneyland right now – we have to go further to reach Narnia.
That classic trail fib ‘just one more hill’ leads to another nasty climb, one that sees us zigzagging left to right to catch the shady parts of the path and escape the blazing noon sun. It takes us to Ditch Pig, a steeper version of Rupert that ups the stoke and speed before we reach Pseudo-Tsuga, the trail cherry on the cake of a long and exciting day. I’ve never ridden a flow trail this long, this fast or this well-made. It just… keeps going. Berm after berm after berm. Whoops of excitement are peppered with incredulous laughter and ‘WTFs?’. We all keep expecting it to end, but somehow it doesn’t.
Our warm-up ride was just a 50km loop up a 5,000ft mountain. It only leaves enough time and energy to order up a curry, sink some beers and raise a toast to our guide before passing out.