(Old school Blue Mountain trail map)This part of the tour we moved onto a new destination, although technically it is still the same mountain as the Woodlot. In this leg of the tour the biking crew consisted again of myself and Jordan K. I figure if we continue the bike tour in a westerly direction then the next destination would be Blue Mountain. We drove out to east Maple Ridge along Dewdney Trunk Road and turned up McNutt road until we got to a small parking area near the gate. The weather forecast had called for 15-20mm of rain so we had come prepared with jackets and garbage bags for our gear. Luckily for us we had another perfect riding day and it didnt rain on us at all and the trails were fairly dry. There were even the odd surprisingly warm breezes which were both nice and very unusual.
The plan was to ride out to a trail called The Chute. This particular ride was a favorite back in the days prior to the Woodlot. Active logging in recent years had required the main road up the mountain to be regraded which made for a much easier climb than in the past. We made our way up the mountain to the "parking lot" just above the power lines where the main connector road would take us west toward The Chute. The connector road unlike most mountains is an enjoyable part of the ride, there is no real change in elevation along this trail so we were able to keep riding along at a good pace and there were some technical rocky sections as well some nice exposed rock sections to try to master and then add in a few creek crossings for good measure.
Eventually we made it to the trail head of The Chute. We had noticed a lot of nice signs that clearly marked each trail. Looks like Blue Mountain Motorcycle Club put some good work into keeping the trail system alive. Jordan and I suited up at the trail head and ready for the descent. The Chute was just how I had remembered it: wide, and fast! We bombed down the trail and managed to pedal through the huge mud bogs along the way, one of them the famed "Colonel Sanders". I do not remember why we had named this particular mud pit that.
After negotiating our way through some rocky sections and across the remains of some old skid roads we came upon Upper Muzz. This trail was a sweet tight twisty single track that snaked its way through the forest until it came to a "t" in the trail. From here we could right on Muzz, which look really gnarly with rocks and fallen trees strewn about, or left on Lower Muzz which looked much more ridden and "maintained". We figured that Lower Muzz since it was designated "lower" would actually take us lower down the mountain, turns out it kept going uphill, so we turned around and took Muzz.
Muzz ended up being a decent trail and we took this for quite a ways until we found a smaller trail that would take out to the power lines again. Somewhere in the mix Jordan managed to crash on the trail and had his bike land right on him, other that being even muddier he was ok.
Once under the power we were left to figure out where exactly we were in relation to the way out of date map I had. After some hiking up and down the power lines we ended up taking an old logging road down the mountain that was very rocky in sections and included some nice slick rock sections to ride. After a few minutes of thudding our way down this rocky route we came upon a gem of a trail called Black Flies. Except for the occasional deep muddy rut, which is typical of the dirtbike trails of Blue Mountain, this trail was sweet. Black Flies ended up taking us most of the way back and it was a fun trail with some nice flowy twisty sections and several bridges built over creeks and fast wide turns hub deep with watery mud.
All good things must come to an end at some time and we ended up popping out on the lower logging just when a lady and her golden retriever were jogging by, startling both of them. After a quick chat with the woman and her golden dog, they jogged off out of site and we then set out in the same direction towards the waiting vehicle. Entirely muddy and entirely satisfied with ride we successfully completed part III of the Tour de Fraser Valley.
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