On August 3rd, Dan (my husband), Phil (my brother) & I headed to the interior for some riding and racing, and it was a blast! Phil drove us in his truck which was super, and made it so much easier than trying to pack everything in to our car – I don’t think we could have fit everything actually!
We first went to Sun Peaks resort and rode their bike park for a day. We had an AMAZING camp site not 10 minutes from the resort (Morrisey Lake Recreation Site). Very remote, very small, very beautiful.
Click for More PhotosWe camped there again after riding Thursday and then drove to Golden Friday (another 4 hours away). The race organizer was kind enough to allow us to set up our tent in the yard of this ‘palace’ that he had been ‘given’ by the resort for himself, his family, and a bunch of other folks that were working for the race, including a few former professionals like Tara Llanes and Lindsey Voreis.
The riding at Kicking Horse resort in Golden was really different than on the coast – super steep with lots of rock faces. The race track was good, had it’s tough sections, but overall fun. Sadly I had a crash on the Saturday in my last practice run, and hurt my thumb (hyper-extension or something). Although I could barely grab my handle bar, I decided to race anyway but take it very easy. It was such a steep course that not having a good grip on my bars was pretty risky but if I wanted to contend for the overall BC Cup series, I had to race. I finished with a very slow time but made it down without further injury (unlike several other ladies who ended up with pretty serious injuries from this very challenging course).
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29937947@N07/sets/72157627274236469/ (not many really of the racing etc. in our stream, but loads here: http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Western-Open-Alberta-BC-Cup-Recap-2011.html) and a little video:
Western Open 2011 on pinkbike.com
Of all the BC Cup races I attended this summer, the Western Open was by far the best run event, extremely well organized and tons of fun with a Shimano kids race and lots of swag and vendors (even the Specialized demo crew was there so you could test out all their new bikes). I highly recommend this event for next year…too bad Golden is so far away.
