Kootenay Road Trip - Martha Creek Aug 19 2008
words
and photos by Sharon Bader and Lee Lau unless otherwise noted.
|
Kootenay Road Trip - Martha Creek Aug 19 2008 words
and photos by Sharon Bader and Lee Lau unless otherwise noted. |
|| Revelstoke (Keystone Standard) || Revelstoke (Sale - Martha) || New Denver (Wakefield, Galena - Sandon) ||
After a 15km drive up a sometime sketchy hydro access road we get to the top of the Sale Mountain/Martha Creek trailhead at 2100m! The trail starts just N of the Martha Creek Provincial Park and descends almost to that same park. Be aware that as of this year, the maps handed out at the Revelstoke Visitor Centre still don't have accurate descriptions of all the various twist and turns on this road. There is also a winter and summer variation of the road up to the trailhead - take the summer variation if you want a less bumpy ride. Download the GPS file for the road up and the trail down here.
Here we get ready for our 1400m descent in 8km of singletrack. Yes - it is a bit steep. A car with good clearance should be able to make it up this road. Trevor's Civic could not.
Start of the Alpine descent.
Sweet alpine singletrack looks onto Mt Revelstoke National Park.
Technical subalpine singletrack starts at about 1900m. You don't need a big bike to get down the trail but it sure makes it more fun
The trail cuts across some old access roads at about 1720m. Then it changes character - now we're getting into some buffness.
We followed Martha Creek for most of the way down so some crossings were inevitable.
Now the trail benches as we ride further down - the forest changes character as we drop down past the subalpine.
Switchbacking down the trail, this is a pretty fun descent.
The Green line is the drive up. At the section of the driving up track where we went off the main road at the sale3/4rdjnc waypoint, you can choose to ride a spur road to the Sale/Trl*rd waypoint access to the Martha Creek trail if you don't want to do the whole descent or if conditions make the alpine access problematic (eg snow or excessive rain). We chose to drive all the way up the road to the alpine access trailhead but as mentioned - the road gets pretty rough.
|| Revelstoke (Keystone Standard) || Revelstoke (Sale - Martha) || New Denver (Wakefield, Galena - Sandon) ||