Golden BC

Cadence Coffee and CloakOfCarrot photography are at it again for another great season of riding: Getting shots of great non-pro riders ripping the best trails from Alberta and BC.

This weekend's rip was at Golden BC - conditions were wet - but that did not slow us down... Well - not some of us!The weather has been crazy lately in the west - we had 10 days of solid rain: and not intermittent sprinkles either - this was 10 days of full on power rain. Many of the local trails turned into swamps, along with many peoples basements. Even my basement ended up getting some water in it.

But that did not deter the any of us from suiting up for a ride.

In the face of adverse conditions, Paul Shannon, Wade Schmidt, Daniel, Bernard, Paul Sudlow, Pascale and his buddy, and I packed up our vans and trucks and headed for Golden. After a great breakfast at Cadence Cafe in Bowness, we headed out into the mountains - things did not get any better looking weather wise as we got closer to Golden.

Good news was - van ran great the whole way: pulling 120km per hour no problem through most of the trip. We arrived in Golden just in time to meet up with Wade and D. B and Paul arrived moments later.

It was raining fairly steadily, but no one was going to call it a day: Paul Sudlow was smiling in every pic I took!!

But even the craziest were not into trying Dead Dog due to the conditions, so we headed to 10k.

10k was muddy and slick - but not too bad until we hit a section that had some of that crazy Mount 7 clay. Wade, running a hard tail, was the only one to survive the slick mass - the rest of us ended up hung up in various comical positions in the trees off the trail.

In fact, Wade spent most of the day out in front - gunning ahead of the rest of the fully suspended crew manualling the hard tail through all the gnarly sections of Mount 7. It was a very impressive lesson in how skill and not suspension is the key factor in speed.

Paul Shannon's Big Hit experienced a rear brake failure right at the start of the first run: which did not slow him down (haha) .... He kept running the whole day with 1/2 a brake.

With the rain coming down, and having been given a lesson in how lacustrian clay has virtually no bearing capacity when saturated, we avoided Bris and continued over to the Psychosis DH course. We ended up running this route all day due to the highly varied weather conditions.

Conditions made shooting pics difficult, but did not dampen spirits of the crew. I tried out some new techniques I have been thinking about for shooting - using a slower shutter speed with a flash fill, slower shutter speed with a focus pull.

I had kind of given up with the camera getting wet enough that you could see the rain on the lens, when the sun suddenly broke through. I got some good sequence shots with the light filtering through the trees on the third run.

With the weather looking better, we headed to the top. On the peak, I shot some entertaining 'poser' photos of Paul in the clouds.

Dead dog was still too sketchy, so we did the bypass down to the DH course.

After a great day of riding, we pulled into the campground for beer and bbq: followed by some bike repair at Xander's house in Golden, where we were treated to apple crisp and beer.

Next morning, I had to head back to Calgary, but the rest of the guys went back out to run the DH course some more. Out front of Jitta's ran into a dood (Colin?) with the coolest old-school suspension bike - gas tank and all - just like the one I had when I was 10. Very cool....

All the discussion about the upcoming Red Bull sponsored version of Psychosis somehow twisted my brain enough to get me to regiister for the race - so now I am scared: But the good news is that it will get me back to Golden a bunch more times - next trip planned June 25 and again July long weekend!



More pics on http://www.cloakofcarrot.com

And - make sure you drop by Cadence Cafe in Bowness check out the pics, get some breakfast and get inspired to go out riding!!!!

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