Fernie Trail to Ale

 

The logo of the Fernie trails alliance features 3 prominent mountains as symbols of the wide range of trails in the town. In reality, the extensive network of trails occurs on more than just three mountains. The Fernie Trail to Ale challenge tackles three trail summits: Project 9 on Mt. Fernie, Hyperventilation on Castle Rocks, and Swine Flu on Mt. Proctor, and finishes with a free beer at the Fernie Brewing Company at the base of Mt. Proctor. On any given weekend, you are bound to find some early risers tackling Project 9 and encounter some still optimistic riders either starting or finishing with Swine Flu.

The only problem with the Trail to Ale challenge in that in its quest to tag three trail summits, you end up riding by other just as good trails. Why skip a climb up Lactic Ridge to S-Bomb, a descent off of the ski hill, or a lap through Ridgemont? The first time I did the Trail to Ale ride, I rode the minimum: Project 9, Hyperventilation to Southern Comfort (at the time Hyperextension was closed for logging) and finishing with a Swine Flu. It was in the middle of a long weekend and of course I had time to ride the other trails on other days. It ended up being ~44km, 1560m vertical, and took me 3:45 elapsed (definitely not a race pace).

The ride through town to tag a lap of Swine Flu after a wonderful descent off of Hyperventilation seemed anticlimactic and left me wanting more than just a Swine Flu lap.

A couple of years later, with a full day open to riding, I started towards Project 9, with the intension of doing a fast lap up the climb. Getting the KOM on the climb at the time and descending down the trail, I met up with my girlfriend Jenny and started up Stove trail to Mushroom head, to Red Sonja, her favourite descent in Fernie. Well that was the nature of the plan, but in my style, I raced up Stove, Mushroom head, then Lactic Ridge and then down S-bomb, back to Mushroom head. A female group ride had just started up Stove, I'm not sure if they appreciated me racing by, but that's the way it goes. Jenny wasn't at Red Sonja yet, so I descended Red Sonja to where it intersects the Phat Bastard climb and then climbed back up to Red Sonja to descend with Jenny. After climbing back up to the campground for a lunch, I felt the urge to throw in a hot lap up Hyperventilation. You can probably guess where this is going. Well, after a wonderful descent of Hyperextension and Roots Extension, I felt like I should finally get a ride in on Contra, a jump trail.

After casing all of the jumps on Contra... It was time to finish off with Swine Flu and get my free beer. The legs were tired and it felt like a victory lap, especially with a huge crowd near the top of the climb. I grabbed my obligatory Trail to Ale selfie at the sign post and then dropped in. I had caught an older lady on the descent and she let me by when the opportunity arose, but yelled something at me. 

After finishing off Swine Flu, I rolled over to the brewery for a First Trax Brown Ale. As I was getting back on my bike to ride back to the campground, the lady rolled up and told me that I should have waited longer at the top and given her more space before descending. I'm sorry, but I had time to finish my beer before you got to the bottom! Other people use the trail, some faster, some slower, you have to accept it!

Riding back to the campground, I still had some energy left, and the altimeter was showing that I was approaching 3000m of climbing on the day, although the battery didn't have much life left. Why not add in a final lap up to the ski hill, up Gorby, and finish off with a Black Forest, Mega Hurtz, Happy Gilmar and back to the campground to start making dinner. 

75km, 3000m climbing, 7:35 elapsed. A proper ride!