October 3rd, 2003
Chilcotin - SPRUCE LAKE - Descent
Beginning the descent from Windy Pass; Chai and Gina are dwarfed by the mountains
Lee descending from Windy Pass viewed looking out to mountains in the west.
Panoramic spread of Gina and triplets descending from Windy Pass looking north.
Peter on the descent through what looks like the surface of the moon
Gina carving down the singletrack. Just a short distance from the top of Windy Pass, we are already into grasslands.
Chai descending viewed from the south looking north
Spectacular and distracting view of the Southern Chilcotin mountains as we wind our way through singletrack through the river valley
More views as Chai speeds downhill
After losing about 100 m downhill Lee hits arboreal alpine. The hump of Windy Pass is in the background.
Viewpoint showing the narrow ribbon of singletrack benchcut into the hill as we boot downhill. Very distracting views cause you to cartwheel off the sideslope if you don't pay attention to where you are going as the surrounding soil is very soft.
After about 150 m of descending Steve hits a flat alpine meadow where the trail joins Gun Creek.
More narrow singletrack for Lee to carve down.
As the Windy Pass descent ends, we turn off on to the high trail, not even bothering to make the trek on to Spruce Lake. Right away, the terrain and trees change - where there was alpine there is now deciduous trees changing color and golden in the afternoon sun.
Peter descending
Steve with Mt Sheba in the background.
Gina on the grasslands with Gun Creek's valley far below and the Southern Chilcotins providing the backdrop.
Chai enjoying the fast downhill descent
More Chai on a switchback looking west towards the Tyaughton valley
Gina descending, heading due West.
Steve and Chai on one of the many switchbacks. This descent seems to go on forever and the views were consistently gorgeous.
More Steve and Chai continuing on the switchback
Steve
Chai
Lee
Gina again as we near the bottom of the climb. The golden trees are getting thicker and closer together as we have now dropped about 200 m of vertical from the Windy Pass descent/Spruce Lake junction.
Gina again with scrub oak and golden larch providing a backdrop.
Yet another picture of Gina
This is the last picture I take before we drop off the high trail and the grasslands into Gun Creek. We have covered about 25km of a 45 km ride and its taken about 5 hours and we still 15 km to go and about 200m of descending. The rest of the trail is in the Gun Creek valley and the views, while spectacular, are not comparable.
Chai descends through the switchbacks.
The Southern Chilcotins in the sunset at the end of the trail at km 43. We are back to the cabins 15 minutes before sunset.