Revelstoke – Bikefest Revelstoke – Mt. Cartier

Organized by Matt Yaki of Wandering Wheels, we flew with Glacier Helicopters out of Three Valley Gap to ride the Mt Cartier Recreation trail. This heli flight is 20min turn round trip is incredibly scenic and saved us the 6-8hours to hike up the trail for the 3 hour descent. Note that Cartier is often done self-powered by locals so read this Pinkbike story if you want to tackle it without the air donkey

Cartier is an old trail that is 17km long and loses 2000m elevation. The top part is a bit exposed and meanders through the alpine with switchbacks across a planar avalanche prone face affording insane views. Tthe middle section is kinda side hilly with steep switchbacks and lots of technical bits and erosions surprises along the way. The bottom section is fast, rooty and has more than its fair share of pumpable duffy flow culminating with a flattish 2.5km back to the trailhead!

All in all it isn’t an easy trail and we found choices of midtravel bikes with aggressive rubber and good brakes to be good although those with the full-faces and DH bikes seem to have a lot of fun. More info on Mt. Cartier is HERE.

Mt Cartier Heli bike – Revelstoke August 2014 from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

Also of note, Ryan Leech was performing at the Bikefest Revelstoke. Great to see him still inspiring the kids!

The slope where the Cartier trail is located, photo taken from Revelstoke.

Preparing the bikes at Glacier Heli pad.

Matt brought a bunch of extra padding to ensure the bikes were not damaged during transport.

View of the Fingers on Mt. Macpherson where we skied last winter.

Panos – Click to view larger image

Incoming bikes!

View of where the heli landed.

Justin Terwiel paparazzi sighting

We hike up to the summit

Where an old fire lookout shelter sits

Nuggy Shot!

Then we hike down

As the others come up

Then we ride down the trail.

Trail is not that worn up here!

View of Mt. Revelstoke in the background

More view of Mt. Revelstoke in the background as we play along a ridge.

Matt’s enjoying his day.

Treeline trail, steep switchbacks!

Pretty nice trail!

You can ski here in the winter – if you like huge avalance paths.

Bottom of the trail, now we ride back to the helicopter pad where our truck is, pretty flat, less then an hour to get there.