In the middle of the biggest and busiest mountain bike festivals in the world in Whistler, Canada I found myself at the top of WORCAS most popular alpine trail taking in an incredible show by mother nature without another group of riders around for miles.
The festival I am talking about is Crankworx which is one of the biggest international celebrations of all things mountain biking. A week long schedule of racing and events that attract some the best athletes and biggest bike fans in the world. The week is always incredibly fun but it’s also nice to escape the craziness if only for a moment.
In a last minute plan I convinced my friend Ben that it was a good idea to ride Whistlers most popular alpine trail Lord Of the Squirrels starting at 5pm in the evening. Lord Of The Squirrels is part of an 18 km alpine loop that shoots you up on to Sprout Mountain with a nice 1400m of climbing followed by an incredible descent back down into the Whistler valley.
Why would we leave on a 3-8 hour backcountry loop at 5pm you might ask? After seeing the moon not far off full earlier in the week I thought it could be an incredible sight to watch the sunset and the full moon rise all with in a few minutes of each other. It seemed like a great idea to enhance our trail experience and make good use of the 360 views that Mt Sprout had to offer.
To make things exciting we packed night lights for the descent back down so we could take in the full moon from the top of the mountain. The weather turned out perfect and from the photos I hope you can see this will be a backyard adventure I won’t be forgetting about anytime soon!
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