BC Bike Race 2017 (Day 2) Powell River route

The course leads you out of town on a mix of bike path, gravel road and paved road towards a series of amazing mossy singletrack trails. Once the climbing begins you will find the course shifting back and forth between century-old logging rail beds and new trails built by retired loggers, hikers and mountain bikers. You’ll be crossing countless salmon streams on hand-built wooden bridges including one crossing Blackwater Creek just below Kelly Falls. Finally you approach the already famous arched Aloha Bridge built by the local Chain Gang especially for the BC Bike Race. Here you will first ride under and then circle around to ride across the bridge and continue up the golden Aloha Trail. Open it up along the mossy Green Road towards the highest elevation point on the course, the start the Death Rattle Trail. This custom built trail will allow you to fly, swooping and undulating down through a beautiful old growth forest. Cross the road quickly and then, too good to be true, more fast-flowing new school XC along the W8 Trail. Then full throttle along Cable Trail, an old rail bed, up and over uber tight twisty Toad Hollow, down into Frog Alley’s 400 meter cedar boardwalk and then still more ancient mossy rail bed until you reach a local challenge, the “Root Garden” a mostly flat but very gnarly set of roots alongside Haslam Lake, the community’s watershed. A small flat stint on gravel road will take you to Bob’s Your Uncle and the Cream Soda trails for some flowing fast and amazing trail, but this is leading to your final climb, cross the gravel road once more and head up 51 Dodge as you climb to the top of Myrtle Springs Trail. Well worth the reward of a sweet descent and then one more popper climb towards the screaming fast Edgehill Rip inspired by Squamish’s Ring Creek Rip. From the bottom here you will merge onto urban streets, circle beautiful Cranberry Lake and after a short paved hill climb, you’re treated to Dipper Down, the last section of singletrack in the middle of town. Dropping down a sand chute onto the same industrial haul road that led you out, you’ll fly back down through that same tunnel under the highway, and then finally, open it up the other way along that amazing ocean-side Willingdon Beach Trail to the finish line right there at base camp, steps away from the “Marine Mile” full of restaurants and shops.