May 30, 2004 - Evan Thomas Creek

We were on our way bright and early this morning and got on our way. Bright and early for me is before 8:00am. It was hard, but I did it. We stopped at a Subway on the way out of Calgary and they were just opening. We observed that there was very little traffic. However, as the Calgary flames just won an important game against Tampa Bay last night, we made the assumption that most people were nursing hangovers and trying to avoid the bright light of day outside.

We arrived at the trailhead after about 10:30. It is on the East side of highway 40, just before reaching Kananaskis Village.

This is the parking lot at the head of the trail. This picture is looking West toward the highway.

Although this trip does not reach the same elevations as previous trips, we obtained photo evidence of the altitude at the bottom of the trail (1534 meters).

This is how the trail started. It looks quite mild. But when you are up here in the thin air and climbing a steady uphill, one tires quite quickly.

I was nursing a very bad cold and because of that and the fact that I am too fat led me to have to stop to pant every so often.

Before long, the trail (currently going South) bends East and exposes a bit of scenery, which Teon is sure to take advantage of. And he might as well do something while waiting for me to catch up anyway.

From here you can see a glimpse of the Evan Thomas Creek for which this trail is named.

Another short while later we encountered this sign:

As you can see the trail gets suddenly more rugged. This is not bad yet however, but the sign could also be interpreted as such:

Well onward Ho!

After awhile we came across a stream that not only crossed the trail, but became the trail for about 150 feet. Teon went to the opposite side of the creek so he could get some action photos as I had indicated that I was going to attempt to cross on bike and Darcy was going to follow.

I started on my way and failed miserably. The small rocks in the creek would get pushed aside and my wheels would get sucked in deep and I kept stopping dead at the larger rocks. I was not able to pedal more than a foot or two at a time. It would be quicker to carry the bikes across, but being a wannabe hard-core biker, we tried anyway. Lucky for us, the photos Teon got made us look like we were actually accomplishing the task. This is because of our consciousness that the camera was there and the desire not to look stupid on film. When we got across, I took the camera and recorded Teon's attempt to cross also.

Just as Teon finished crossing the creek, some people on horseback approached the creek. There were a couple of lookers in the bunch too, but both Darcy and Teon neglected to point out that the waist strap on my backpack was around my sternum. This not only looks stupid but it also accentuates the gut below it. The fact that Teon's camera hates me makes this quite obvious in the photos above. So there was no hope of me impressing any of these ladies as the passed us. Oh well. That's not really why I came here anyway.

They commented on their way by that four legs is better than two. I gave them a conventional non-witty reply that they were correct although I bet that is just a typical horseback rider cliche. Besides, since those four legs are not theirs, they don't reap the benefits of using them.

The trail became more of the same and still on the uphill. By this time, I was just starting to get warmed up a bit.

These photos don't really do the trail justice. The trail was much more rocky than most of the puctures we have, but it is all good.

Lo and behold! We encountered our fist flat tire.... Mine. We disassembled the bike and were trying to replace the tube. The only problem with this is that I bought the wrong size of tube for spares and I in fact had two road-tire tubes. So out came the patch kit. We pumped the tire up a bit so we could find the leak. It was about 4 times its normal volume. I took the opportunity to tell Darcy and Teon about a story where my brother and I were trying to pump up a wheel-barrel tire until it exploded. It was so enormous that we were scared to be without something between us and the tire. So we ran the hose under a door and closed it so the tire would explode in the staircase on the other side of the door. Clint Ratausk, a freind of ours, happened to show up just then and came down the stairs to see us. Instead he saw a tire that was too big even for the staircase and it exploded while he was standing in close proximity to it. The ensuing screams made us laugh so hard we couldn't breathe.

Anyway, back to the bike trip.... so yeah... we fixed the tire...

We got back on our way and finally reached the top of the most major climb. As we did, the people on horseback came back the other way. The woman in the lead reassured us that we were nearly at the top and I replied with "Thank goodness!" It was a sincere reply. At least the downhill is often woth the climbing.

From here we could see a very small stream trickling down the mountain and we had a decent view of other nearby mountains too.

Well it was time to do an exciting short downhill that would prove to last about 30 seconds... It was just enough to keep me reminded of the fun it will be coming back and I waas thereby motivated. By this time I was warmed up and in fine shape to ride and thus we were making much better time. We made good on a few photo opportunities before we continued.

Then it was uphill some more on the same narrow dirt and rock type trail. We got to the top of the second climb quite quickly though and made use of the camera for the scenery again.

And now the same scenery with me in it this time:

About half way down the next descent was a big rock in the trail. You can see it in one of the photos above. I decided that I would get up on it for a pose.

Despite what the photos suggest, I was not the only one there. Teon was taking pictures and it seems Darcy was doing his best not to be in them. I, despite being the least picturesque person, seem to make it into view of the camera quite regularly.

Well from here it was another fast descent. This time there were doom-inflicting boulders all the way down and it took some good maneuvering to get to the bottom. When we got there it was worth the trip. There was an awesome little stream that we had to cross, and it fed into the real Evan Thomas Creek. Both are pictured below.

I was first to finish the descent as usual and the question came up why I was always the first down the hill while Teon was always the first up the hill. Teon suggested that he likes high altitudes where I like low altitudes. But it was soon decided that it was because Teon has the best endurance to climb the hills of the three of us, and I was the most fearless. It seemed to be a consensus.

We spent quite a bit of time here. We hiked around the creek a bit and found a campsite in amongst the trees. It was kept clean as the people that make it in this far care to respect nature for the most part.

We made use of the makeshift furniture here by placing the camera on a table and getting a picture of all three of us. This is conclusive evidence that we were all here.

To give you some perspective on things, I seem to be the shortest of the three of us, yet I am 6' 2" tall.

As we pushed onward, we encountered another creek that we had to cross. This creek feeds into the Evan Thomas creek. Darcy is pictured here crossing the creek, using his bike to stabilize himself. We all crossed the creek in the same fasion.

We had another short climb and then more trail. We were fortunate enough that Darcy and Teon's vision was sharp enough to pick up on some fresh bear tracks.

The tracks were about 9" from toe to heel. As you can see, the bear displaced a good amount of mud and was likely very heavy. We were not too concerned since we were going the other way as the tracks and if we were going to meet this bear, we would have already. We continued.

However we did not get too far. The trail turned into this (above). So we took a bit of a break here before turning back. And took a reading of the atimiter again.

It seems we were now exactly 300m higher than the parking lot. It doesn't sound like much, but there was a good deal of descents and then more climbing during this trip, so the climbing was probably fairly even with the Prarie View Trail overlooking Barrier lake.

We began the return trip which ended up being about 1/10th the amount of time it took to get to where we were. We crossed the creek again:

The remainder of the trip was so fast that we got few pictures. But the story gets most interesting on the way back because this is where the true potential for "fun" was.

We ripped down the hills at some pretty amazing velocities. This was a silly thing to do because the rocks and boulders strewn about shook us like a British nanny. It is still a couple of months to the Rodeo, but we should have gotten trophies for staying on our bikes for longer than 8 seconds. At one point, we encountered a sapling that was laying horizontally and about 6" off the trail. I was in the lead and I did not see it until the last moment and I managed to hop over it without incident. Then Darcy, like me, did not see it in time and hit it. It got caught up in his bike and snapped off, sending the end on a mission to impale Darcy's leg. It shed blood, but not too serious. Darcy, again, came nearly clear of his bike after hitting one rock, but he managed to maintain control.

As we continued being jittered by the high speeds versus large rocks, I encountered a nice bald spot where it was fairly smoth riding. I took the opportunity to take one hand off the handlebars to straighten my helmet that had almost been shaken off. While riding with only one hand, I hit a rock. Since my ability to steer was impaired, I was involuntarily sent from one side of the trail to the other, nearly sending me off into the bush. When I got my other hand properly placed it took me a few moments to regain control again.

Then a little further down the trail a small pine tree, that was sticking out on about a 60 degree angle from the side of the trail, managed to elude my vision. It was about 9 feet long and I managed to hit it with my handlebars. I recently installed bar ends hoping that they would knock away these kind of obstacles. Instead it hooked the tree in my handlebars. Since I was likely exceeding 40 km/h, there was no stopping. I held onto the bike as hard as I could and the tree bent over and pulled through the bars. This event again impaired my steering and sent me off towards the cliff on our left. Again I managed to get it under control.

We crossed the creek again and started on the last stretch of downhill. I told Darcy and Teon on the way up that I was going to do this one without touching my brakes. This included a 90 degree turn about half way. And thus I did not touch my brakes. My computer was not properly tracking my speed, but Darcy paced me briefly and his computer says we exceeded 60 km/h. I continued accellerating, jittering all the way down. I made the 90 degree corner and found myself back at the parking lot very soon. I put my bike on the rack and talked on the cellphone with Tim for a few minutes before Darcy arrived at the parking lot, and followed shortly thereafter by Teon. Darcy said that he and Teon saw the rut I left behind in making that 90 degree corner.

And thus ended another great Mountain Biking adventure.

See the complete set of raw images here. They are very large, so please be gentle with my bandwidth.