Mount Brent - Rideacus Maximus! - 29.7km!

Getting a quality Alpine Fix these days; Nickel Plate Lake > West Apex Trail Network > Sheeprock > Mt. Brent... Its been sooooo nice to get some serious elevation and avoid the valley heat!

This weekend's jaunt was to an old favorite; Mt.Brent. Curt, Dino, Pierre, Neil and I headed up, dropping a vehicle at the intersection of Farleigh Lake Rd. and Green Mt. Rd., continuing to the Shatford Cr. FSR, then up to the hikers parking area / entry for Brent & Sheeprock Mt.

A stiff hike-a-bike proceeded some 'sweet-as' singletrack. We met numerous hikers enroute and were pleasantly surprises to meet a few friends taking lunch at the Brent summit. The mountain top was decked out with ladies, er, lady-bugs that is. A massive hatch found the cute little critters absolutely everywhere.

The descent found us trying out a new trail, thanks to the GPS track provided us by another hiking friend John Gullick; kudos John - you made our day! What better than good friends on sweet singletrack - especially singletrack that none of us had ever laid eyes on before! Love it!

After a massive descent we popped out at Bobtail Ranch (private property, owned by Dino's friends). From there, we did some creative cross-country riding on excellent cow-trail to the intersection where we had earlier left our drop-vehicle - and our BEER! Oh beer; let me count the ways that I love thee...

Below are a few pic's of the day's fun;

---

As usual this time of year, the alpine is decked out in color




Asters




Fungus Among Us - Couldn't figure out what this is, despite a lot of 'Google Research'




Dino enjoying a forest zen moment...




Da' Boyz' - Ready to Rock and Roll!




Zoom lens shot of Apex Resort to the south of Brent's summit




Lady-Bugs; here, there and everywhere atop Mt.Brent




Me; trying my hand at a rocky creek crossing (made it! :-)




A super-zoom shot of some people standing atop Sheeprock Mt. to the south of Brent summit




Super-zoom down to Okanagan Lake, east of Mt.Brent summit




MondoMushrooms!




Doin' the deed; we cut out quite a few deadfall enroute.




Beauty, but non-potable pond near Bobtail Ranch




What does Ullar do during the warm months? He goes Mt.biking of course!




Kurt in the fields of green; descending from Bobtail Ranch




Kurt's version of "cooling off" after a massive descent




A group of wild horses dropped by during our post-ride, creekside beer swillin' session




Quick & Dirty overview of route




Here is a much larger version of the same map


BTW: Next weekend a group of us are heading for some serious alpine; Rossland's 7-Summits trail. Wanna' join us? Speak up!


Andrew

Good ride, nice write up and a great bunch of riders!

I think the mushrooms you tried to ID are a type of coral mushroom. They are often difficult to ID.

Did anyone else ride through something that made your legs itch like crazy? Mine are soooo itchy!!!!

Pierre

Dude

I didn't ride through that batch of whatever... I do however have a couple of tubes of this special ointment (Tecnu Extreme) that neutralizes the urushiol oil from poison ivy, poison sumac and poison oak. If you wanna' drop by tonight and grab it, or if by tomorrow you find that you are still having a serious case of itchy / scratchy, let me know and you can have a tube of this 'VunderKreme'.

A.

I might take you up on that offer. Still itchy!!!

I think the mushrooms you took a great pic of above are;
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/alloclavaria_purpurea.html

Are you riding tomorrow? If so could you bring that wundercreme?

Smith Creek; wouldn't miss it for the world! Old-Guys Hit-Fest!

Will bring the VunderKreme

A.