photo by Harookz www.harookz.com story by Ross Measures

        Last weekend I was up in whistler for the Redbull Exodus downhill race, I was assisting Harookz with his photography duties. On the trip home, we took a quick 4×4 scout up to a high alpine zone somewhere off the sea to sky highway. It brought back memories of a trip we had been on five years prior, to another high alpine zone way out in the Fraser Valley. The trip had started out as scout pictures of beautiful single track through alpine meadows with ominous peaks in the background. The location of said photos, was quickly discovered, and a trip was put together. Harookz and I were organizing, with Tyson Mcrae and Trevor Chronister joining us. The directions we had acquired were sketchy at best, which is usually how the best wilderness mountain bike trips begin. At this point in time, Harookz was still driving his aging ’93 Ford Explorer, which had 4×4 capabilities that were adequate for driving in snow, but not the gnarly road that we were about embark on.

        We arrived at the bottom of the mountain early in the day, without any indication of what we were in for. The road started out as a mellow gravel highway, it was well travelled and not an issue. There were some serious pot holes though, and of course as we bounced through one, my bike as well as Tyson’s were ripped off the back of truck, as the bike racked collapsed. It was a flimsy rack that was held on with a couple straps. Not at all stable enough for any serious bumps. Now this posed a serious problem, we knew that road was going to get gnarlier, how gnarly, we had no idea. There was no room for four people and four bikes inside the truck, that was certain. We quickly came up with the idea, that Tyson and I would be towed behind the truck. We strung a hundred foot rope through the back passenger door and then out the other side of rear drivers side door. The rope was evened out and then the doors were closed, locking it in place. Tyson and I were positioned about ten feet apart, and about forty feet behind the Explorer. The problem had been solved for the time being.

        As we travelled along the road, we started to climb, taking lefts and rights at varying forks. We soon realized we had zero idea where we going. We just kept choosing the direction that we were heading, based on whether the road pointed towards the mountain peaks, or not. Eventually we came to pretty ugly creek crossing, in which the bank on the far side, was pretty steep and rutted. After a few minutes we figured the Explorer could handle it. Some how we managed to creep up this fairly gnarly bank. How the Explorer didn’t high center is beyond me. At this point the road went from mellow skidder, to gnarly shitshow. On the positive side, we finally had a good view of the mountains that were in the background of the scout shots that we had seen the previous week. We knew we were close. The explorer was in 4×4 mode full time from this point on. We climbed for another 15 minutes through rough terrain, until we came to the flow buster. At this point we knew the Explorer was done, there was no way we were getting passed the next section. We somehow managed to parallel park the truck in a full on bramble bush hedge. The rest of the climbing would be done on foot. After we passed the gross section that killed us, the road of course, became smooth, wide and would have been no problem for the Explorer, had we got through.

        We ended up finding our way into a recently logged area with views of the peaks in the distance. This was good in the sense there were no trees to block the views, but bad because the ground, where the trees used to be, was covered in a mix of underbrush and stumps. We came to the conclusion that we would have to find something on the side of the logging road. As night was descending upon us, we found a super easy build, for a hip with an epic view of the peaks. We headed back to camp to fire up some Gumbo. The next morning we awoke and quickly pinned it over to the zone. (note: the zone we chose was two hundred feet from our makeshift camp) The build took literally an hour, it consisted of carving out a lip from the soft bank on the edge of the road, and raking a landing. At this point we realized it was still morning and we were going to have to waste the next five hours until the god light hit the mountains. We really didn’t do a whole lot; threw some rocks, and played with the water purifier. At one point some rednecks on dirt bikes came and did some doughnuts around our campsite, creating a dust storm, then sped off. Dicks.

        The day progressed and Harookz found his angle and setup his lights, Tyson, Trevor and I warmed up on the jump. The light slowly went from brutal to nug, and we started shooting. We each hit the hip five or ten times, and then we called it on Harookz’s confidence that we had bagged an A grade or two. As we were packing up, the winds picked up, and big black storm clouds rolled in, which if you look, are all over the photo in the background. The dusty dry logging road turned into a dust tornado and we were forced to quickly rip down our tents and pack up our shit. Now for us on bikes it was all down hill to the trusty explorer, but Harookz was on foot and carrying gear. He was going at a tenth of our pace. We ended up waiting down the logging road for about 5 minutes, until we heard the roar of a dirt bike engine. As the noise came around the bend, a couple of rednecks, on those off road trikes that you never see anymore, appeared. Pinning it without helmets or rear suspension. On the back of the second trike, was Harookz hanging on for dear life, bouncing around trying to clutch onto the shirtless redneck.

        The truck came into view, just in time, as the rain began to sprinkle down. We packed up Trevor’s bike, and Tyson and I began to pin down the fireroad. Harookz hopped in the explorer and pinned down the skidder that we had so carefully creeped up. The rednecks took off, never to be seen again. It took us about five hours to get up, and about an hour to get down. We got down to the smooth gravel road and Harookz shifted up from 2nd gear to Overdrive, hit a pothole and put his Explorer in reverse going about forty. He ended up doing a quick one eighty, and with that, the adventure of the trip was over. The image we got was definitely worth the effort of the trip, It is just a shame it never ended up running anywhere. These kinds of adventures are what make mountain biking so awesome. I cant wait to explore the zone we scoped out last Sunday.