Golden, BC: Mountain biking destination!

I've spent the past two days mountain biking in Golden, British Columbia.

I'd heard about the mountain bike trails here in Golden from a guy who was fishing on "my" pond while I was kamping in the Kootenays. He noticed that I had a "cross-country" mountain bike, and suggested I give the Moonraker system of trails a try. (Brief aside: I think it's funny how my bike, a Santa Cruz Blur LT2, is immediately identified as an XC bike out here. In my "home" trails in New Jersey/New York, it's often mistaken for a downhill bike. Just goes to show what the standard is west of the Rockies.) So after leaving Canmore - not a bad place for XC riding itself - I wandered over to Golden with the explicit intention of riding Moonraker. I eventually got to those trails, but in a bit of a roundabout way.

My first ride in Golden turned out to be a full day of downhilling at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. I hadn't actually intended to ride there - I was actually there to see if I could ride the gondola up to take sunset pictures from the mountain top. Well, one thing led to another, and I found myself encased in a full-face helmet, dressed in body armor, waiting in the chairlift line with another guy and our guide/instructor. Oh yeah, the instructor: never having done any lift-accessed riding before, I thought it prudent to have someone along who knew what he was doing, so I tagged along with this guy from Calgary who had signed up for a full day of guided riding at the Resort. Tom, our guide, quickly assessed our skill level, and after our first run on intermediate trails, it was nothing but black diamond runs for the rest of the day. Oh yeah, did I mention I'd never done downhill before? Turns out that a decade of regular riding in locations like Ottawa, New Jersey, and New York, combined with a couple of years of racing early in my career counts for something! I learned a lot in those hours and before too long I was flowing (as opposed to bouncing pinball-like!) down the trails. Alas, something I ate at lunch didn't agree with me, and towards the end of the day my stomach was churning, my concentration was shot, and despite the experience of several clean runs, on my last trip down the mountain I ended up falling more than I had in the past two years of riding. All the padding I was wearing certainly did its job! All I ended up with was a bruised knee.

Day two started with a bonus - an unanticipated shuttle up Mount 7. This guy in the hostel had nothing to do until his afternoon rafting trip, so he offered to drive me to the top of the mountain that had formerly hosted the Psychosis downhill race, also a launch point for para- and hangliders. I put my newly earned downhill skills to good use and railled all the intermediate runs to the bottom of the mountain. Note that I stayed off the black diamond runs this time: as mentioned above, unlike what some East Coast riders may think, my own personal bike is *not* a downhill bike! The bottom half of the mountain was especially fun and flowy, culminating in a sweet half-pipe. And that was just the start of the day...

I *finally* made it to the Moonraker trails - my reason for being in Golden at all - in the afternoon. Long story short: WOW! All kinds of flowy, fun, singletrack goodness threading through pine forest. The CBT Mainline trail, which actually connects the trail system to the town of Golden, is especially not to be missed.

There may be another Golden mountain biking day in my future...

Update Sept 6, 2011:
I did manage to do another day of mountain biking in Golden. I'd headed up the CBT Mainline trail for another XC ride in the Moonraker trails, but at the top of CBT I decided to turn around since my knee had started giving me problems from all the crashing I'd done on my first downhill experience. On my way back to the Dreamcatcher, I rode by this cute downhiller girl I'd spoken to a few times on the trails; she was loading a bunch of bikes into her pickup truck. "Wanna go for a ride?" she asked. "Sure!" I replied. (Really, what else could I say?)  She and her friends took me to a little-used downhill trail that only locals go to. Let's just say that while I'm a pretty good descender for an East Coast XC rider, I got nothin' on real honest-to-goodness Rocky Mountain downhillers.

The aftermath