CAMBr Goes to BC

After an amazing time last year, our group of 8 friends/riders/trail builders from CAMBr (Chicago Area Mountain Bikers) decided to head to BC again this year. Same as last year, Whistler, Squamish and Pemberton were on the list. After talking about it last year, Coast Gravity Park was also added for obvious reasons.

We woke up before the sun to catch the Horseshoe Bay ferry to Coast Gravity park to start the trip. The ferry ride to the sunshine coast was a great experience in itself and probably the only time on the whole trip we didn't have to worry about how we were going to get to our destination. Some much needed rain overnight and into the morning made conditions at the park perfect. Having been to BC last year, I had a pretty good idea what to expect riding wise. That being said I really wanted to focus more on taking photos than I did last year. I knew it would not be easy to do, but that was the plan. Lucky for me, I broke the rear hub on my bike after only about 4 laps at CGP on the first day. So I really had no choice to get out my camera and start shooting. Now since the only thing I had to do was shoot photos, I was focused and not even thinking about riding. I eventually fixed my bike and rented some others, but I was able to stay focused on shooting photos even more than riding for the rest of the trip.

Chicago has no real mountains or even any hills with more than a couple hundred feet of elevation. Because of that everything we rode seemed to be worthy of a photo, from the easy flow trails to the tech double black diamonds like Treasure Trail. The riding and shooting conditions were tougher on this trip than anything I've done before. Even with the crashes, broken bikes and generally not knowing where we were going, every day of the trip was a highlight!

We will be back next year having even more fun being "mountain" bikers for our short time in BC.