I dropped the kids off telling Bowen that he should try to get his instructor to teach him how to do Crank It Up. My intention today was to ride and have fun and not think about instruction, so I did a run on Crank it Up, and then took the Gondola up. With the Canada Day crowds, I didn't want to stay in the Fitzsimmons area, but someone on my gondola told me that the Garbanzo Express would open up, so we got off the Gondola (it wasn't possible to take it to the top before 10:30am), and we rode over to the Express and took it to the Una Moss trailhead.
From there, I rode Midgard, South Park, and Bengal Bear to Call Me Maybe. Without someone to guide me I became a lot more tentative on the bike, walking more and being aggressive less. But this time I remembered to take videos and not just photos of the various waterfalls. Call Me Maybe felt particularly hard, even though the progression chart said it was easier than many other trails I'd done. I realized then that the progression chart doesn't take into account length of a trail. I might be able to ride at a high intensity for 3 minutes, but that doesn't mean that continuous high intensity was feasible for 10 or even 5 minutes.
At the Creekside village, I bought a coke and ate two cliff bars before going back onto the creekside gondola to do Una Moss and Blueberry Bathtub again. At the intersection of Una Moss I ran into a bear and scared it.It ran off up the mountain to the right off the trail and I was shaken but I didn't want to look like dinner so I kept going quickly until the shock got big enough that I pulled off the trail and calmed myself down before going down to Blueberry Bathtub where the bath washed away my fear. I then took the Garbanzo Express again to redo midgard, south park, barking duck, and then Earth Circus again. This was so great, and I repeated the loop again and finally came down B-line just in time to pick up the kids from their class.
Bowen's instructor told me that he was ready to go to the intermediates, but she hadn't let him do Crank It Up, so I told Bowen to get on the lift. We went on the lift. I offered to buy Boen an ice cream but he chose to come with us.
Bowen did really well on Crank It Up, but Boen crashed, falling on his hip and getting some road rash. Boen managed to get down the mountain anyway despite his wound, and at the bottom we called bike patrol to get him to come and clean up his wound. Xiaoqin also came by to pick him up while Bowen and I went for another run, this time with rides of his choosing. He led me down Easy Does It to visit the Golden Triangle, which only opened a day ago so I'd never done it. He also picked some technical trails which convinced me that he could do Midgard.
We had dinner that night at the Ramen place in town, which was also the same shop as a Japanese supermarket place. The food was good and the Japanese soda pop was unique though messy in that you always had overflow whenever you opened it. I booked the scenic flight that Brad recommended the next morning and had also bought the sightseeing ticket that would let us go up Blackcomb and take the Peak to Peak Gondola on our rest day. Our rest day was much needed as my forearms and hands were sore from all the pounding from the mountain bike. The full suspension bike took a lot of beating but so did I!
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