Operation East Canyon Part III (Sept. 27, 2008)

This time around I brought along Mike , a buddy from work, who was keen on tagging along on the adventure that was operation East Canyon Cleanup. It was a perfect day out, the weather was beautiful, and we cruised along the first 5 km to the single track portion of the trail. The leaves and bushes were still very damp from the overnight rains in the mountains and we were soon soaking wet from the overgrown portions of the trail. Luckily the weather was nice and warm and we managed to dry off eventually. We pushed on for quite a ways moving logs and fallen trees that we could until we got to a large area that was covered with wind fallen trees, some of which were 4 foot diameter firs. This was past the 10 km mark and we decided to leave to leave the bkes behind and hike the trail to the supposed creek crossing at the 11 km mark.

After walking from fallen log to fallen log ,suspended many feet above the forest floor, we managed to cross the jungle of fallen logs and continue along the trail. Eventually we got to the "11 km" creek crossing although we believe the distance to be a very conservative 11 km. It was warm and sunny out and the water of Gold Creek was perfectly clear and was very inviting but decided against crossing the creek and to save it for another day.

After the amount of trees we had to move and the countless others we didnt and couldnt move at the time, we deemed that it would be necessary to come back another time without bikes and dedicate our time solely to clearing the trail. Along our now long and exhausting ride back to the parking lot, a conversation about starting a mountain biking tour of the Fraser Valley would be fun. To go out and ride a new Mountain or an entirely different set of trails each weekend. And so starts another continuing biking adventure.