Category: General

Truth and Reconciliation Day, fairly recently made a statutory holiday, landed on a Wednesday this year. I don’t take this day lightly, as much as I try to be mindful and supportive of indigenous rights and the harms they’ve endured and continue to endure throughout the year. In addition to donating my pay for the day I wanted to do something that honoured the day while also being a very “me” thing to do.

It didn’t take long to realize what I wanted to do: I wanted to ride up the Seymour valley, a place that I feel a deep connection and sense of belonging with, and visit my favourite old growth trees all in one go. Since this area was logged almost entirely in the first fifty years or so that the area became widely colonized, these trees are sometimes referred to as survivors. A stark parallel to those who’ve survived the residential school system.

So my plan for the day was pretty ambitious, hiking up to the huge red cedars near Seymour Lake that sit upon the steep hillside below Gibbons peak, then visiting the old Sitka in the valley just south of the lake, and then hiking up to Temple Giant, the most notable Douglas fir in the Seymour valley. But also, I wanted to appreciate the small things as well, and take my time.

Autumn’s colours are well underway around here, though once you get into contiguous forest, it’s mostly green year-round. Still, the big leaf and vine maples as well as the less hardy ferns were giving off beautiful yellows and oranges.

My ride of choice was once again the Stooge Rambler, a bike that’s seen a lot of saddle time in the less than two months I’ve owned it. There’s nothing I’m really looking to change, either – will probably swap the older 11s XT derailleur and 11-46T cassette for Deore 11s stuff once these wear out to gain a little more low end range, but that’s about it. These Rene Herse Umtanums have about 3000km on them across three bikes now, and I would say they’re only half worn, so I don’t expect to worry about tires until at least next summer, same as the half-worn drivetrain.

I didn’t take a lot of photos along Fisherman’s since this is a trail I’ve ridden countless times, but did stop for the photo below of a particularly nice foliage gradient – the banana slug pictured above is from right by my front tire in this frame. The next photo is at the mid-valley marsh, an iconic spot for those who ride this valley and quite a unique ecosystem around here.

After the mid-valley marsh it’s on to Spur 4, the gravel access road that flanks the east side of the river, versus the paved parkway on the west side. I had noticed this old skidder road before but never bothered to explore it until today – interestingly, it leads to what is very much a trail, but then trail ends at a stump at the top of a steep slope. Not a bad place to hang out, in fairness.

Near the north end of Spur 4 is a grove of old trees that were spared during logging – Bigfoot, below left, is marked and right along the roadway so most people who frequent this route will be familiar. Nearby is another big tree without a placard but with a heron nesting tag, pictured below right.

I also noticed that mushroom season is well underway, and was happy to see a violet web cap. I parked the bike and hiked up to the pair of red cedars about 150m up the steep slope. The trees I was heading to are pictured a little ways down:

Next it was back down the hill (slipping too many times) and onto the bike to cross the river to where the ancient Sitka are. My favourite bit of woods in the valley and no hiking required – though it’s at the far end of the valley.

Then on I went to visit the Temple Giant. Located almost halfway back out of the valley, it’s a 15 minute hike through the woods to get to it – not too steep until the last 50m or so. There’s not really a trail, though sometimes you can make out a vague path, but there’s flagging that helps.

At this point, my goal was achieved, and I made my way out of the valley. I took the photo below on a new-to-me little trail near Inter-River park and didn’t notice the falling leaf in the foreground until I uploaded it here!

Niki and I have been saying we should ride together for a long time now, and today we finally did. We chose to do a Burnaby loop that followed a lot of my 2026 iteration of Burnabop XL , albeit a shorter loop. It still ended up being about 50km door-to-door though.

I chose my now-trusty Rambler as Niki was riding her gravel bike too. The Rambler’s proven to be exactly what I’d hoped for; a very capable bike on the rough stuff while still feeling good on pavement. It’s a bit heavy but I don’t notice it. With the knobby 2.2″ Rene Herse tires it’s pretty much perfect for my needs, but I do look forward to trying bigger tires next summer for some bikepacking routes.

One of the reasons for doing this Burnaby loop, the same reason the Burnabop XL event happens in October, is that these trails are at their peak in autumn since they have largely deciduous trees along them.

We also did the Chines descent, which is deeply rutted and only partially rideable (see below) but has enough beauty along the way to make it more than worthwhile (if you don’t mind some underbiking).

The vine maples are becoming more chartreuse, but still hanging onto their leaves for a while yet it looks like. The same cannot be said for the big leaf maples, which have already covered the ground along the TCT near Capitol Hill! I hope they keep enough leaves to thoroughly cover the ground for Burnabop XL Day, still almost a month away.

Not a particularly interesting ride; this was just after-work errands on the old Raleigh. But some cool photos, I thought, so here is a post.

The main errand was picking up medication for Leia from the specialist vet in Olympic Village, but just so happens that Sollys bagelry is only a block away, and not too far from there is Beer Island – where I enjoyed, you guessed it, a beer.

While enjoying said beer, I watched across the water where a parade of kayakers, dragon boaters, and water taxis made their way. I also noted some relatively new artwork on the steps across the channel, as well as the autumn colours on the nearby trees:

As dusk approaches, the skies always fill with crows headed to roost in Burnaby. Today’s dramatic clouds added to the effect nicely:

Cyclocross season is upon us, and after being cancelled a couple times it was nice to see the Vanier Park event happening this year. I realized I had a friend racing at 10:15am while I had my coffee at 9:30, so hastily made my way across town on the Stooge Rambler to spectate.

The 10:15 races included entry level mens and womens, as well as the single speed and fixed gear tracklocross groups. Some very sweet bikes! And a tandem?!

The day was pretty dry and therefore dusty; probably good for the health of the grass, but not really in the spirit of cyclocross racing.

This off-camber, hard packed corner took many victims; here are a few I saw:

The uphill barrier jumps were entertaining as well; below are a couple racers in very close quarters. I am not much for bike racing, but the technical nature and close-quarter racing is something I would really enjoy.

I also did a fair bit of dog watching:

Here’s Tom in a classic Tom pose (right) and a surprising amount of lean on the off-camber turn by an unknown racer.

The elite women’s group was small but fast. The elite men’s group was also quite small; not sure why the event drew a relatively small number of fast folks out this year.

I was quite impressed to see a couple racers who did jump these tall barriers – on a steep uphill after the aforementioned off-camber slippery corner, it didn’t seem possible to me. But I was proven wrong as noted below. The final photo is of the wispy clouds on my ride home from the event.

There are three local mountains when it comes to both skiing and MTB, though the middle one is not the same between the two. Cypress, at the west end of them, is unique in either case. When it comes to MTB, it is the most challenging and unforgiving. I simply rode up the access trails this day but the difficulty shines through.

Also worth noting it’s the furthest from home for me, so a Cypress route will always exceed 50km and a good bit of elevation, mostly concentrated at the far end. The first 15 km or so are pretty typical of many of my rides, then there’s the gradual ascent via some connecting trails and side roads.

Then, of course, is Rob’s famous (not really) fence line. I didn’t take any photos worth sharing on this ride but I’ve documented it a few times in the past. After a bit of hike-a-bike from the end of that fenceline up to Chippendale I was rewarded with the first (and last) good views of the day:

From there I climbed Fern Trail, which is brutal to start but eases off after a bit, and then BLT – which is the gravel access road for the variety of MTB trails in this zone as well as service vehicle access to the power lines. It’s steep, it’s loose, and it’s rocky. Spinning out was an issue on the bike and slipping out was an issue when pushing on the worst parts, but dang, it’s beautiful in these woods. My photos make it look at lot more pleasant because I only took photos on the beautiful parts!

My destination was this clearing at the third switchback of the paved road, which at this time was being repaved and bikes were not allowed due to the lack of space. Despite being higher up than the lookout on the second switchback there is no view to be had here, the trees block it entirely. I came here hoping to see some hawks – I even lugged my big camera and zoom lens all the way up to what was now 650m elevation – but didn’t see much.

But the journey is the real gift anyway, right. The descent was a bit sketchy at times but a heck of a lot less sweaty than the climb. Somewhat ironically, the best views opened up when I had dropped half the elevation I worked so hard for:

It has become tradition for me on these big Cypress rides to stop at the Ambleside concession and get fish n chips, washed down with a Fat Tug IPA purchased along the way. The sun was close to setting making it all the more pretty.

By the time I was back to the Lions Gate bridge, the sunset was in full swing. I was still about 45 minutes from home at this point but the route becomes uninteresting and I’m on autopilot the rest of the way – no need for photos. I got this stunner of the mouth of Capilano river though before the bridge:

A bit of a photo dump from the week. There was a swap meet organized by some friends where I took a handful of bits from my parts bin, and managed to sell a couple of the bigger ticket items too! I made three (three!) trips to the Maplewood Flats bird sanctuary on the other side of the bridge – twice after work, where I didn’t find a lot going on, and then once on Saturday morning to try to catch a little more action – and while it was not exactly teeming with birds, I did see some good stuff (and got some decent photos)!

As can be seen above, the swap meet was well-attended. It was followed by a parkbagging ride a few kilometres south. I don’t share enough dog photos on the blog considering how much of my time is spent with them, so here’s a couple from one of the mornings. Around 8am every day we get out for a 30-40 minute walk followed by 20-30 minutes at the dog park. The walk portion is to ensure Leia gets enough activity, since she just stands around awkwardly at the park.

A month ago, August 15th to be exact, I bought a Bike Friday.. again. I sold the last one because I came to appreciate that I simply didn’t have space for it. It was a good bike and fit the bill well, but did have some quirks – like a really high BB and heavy duty tubing; it was clearly built for all-terrain touring and overkill for my needs. This one feels considerably lighter and the geometry is better suited to my purposes. I’m still not sure how it is going to fit into the quiver, but it folds quite small, so for now it’s just stowed away until I figure out what I’m doing with it. For now I put on a handlebar, grips, and saddle from the stash:

The girls again at Pandora, next to the dog park:

I noticed that a couple rare birds had been seen at Maplewood Flats, which is about an 8km ride from home, so I took the Twenty over to look around. Evenings aren’t a great time for birding really, and it was pretty quiet. I did get a photo of the elusive brown creeper though, below.

Two days later and I went back again to see if I’d have better luck. I didn’t, but it is a nice way to spend the evening while the daylight hours are still long enough. This time I took the Bombadil, stopping along Lynn river on the way home.

My third trip to Maplewood was Saturday morning aboard the Bombadil again. Feels a bit wrong to lock it up out-of-sight for a couple hours, but bird sanctuaries have got to be particularly safe places for such.

Here are some photos I managed. I’m shooting with an old entry-level DSLR, a Nikon D5100, with a cheap 70-300mm lens. It doesn’t produce stunning photos but it works. I am actively saving up for a more modern setup; the auto-focus of today’s cameras will make bird photography so much less frustrating!

A first for me (new lifer, as the birders say) was this red-breasted sapsucker: not a great photo but enough to positively ID the bird.

I watched this chestnut-backed chickadee for a while in this tree, constantly moving around. Very similar in appearance to the much more common and curious black-capped chickadee, these chestnut backed versions are a lot more shy and quiet, and tend to stick to coniferous forests around here.

This song sparrow was not at all concerned about my proximity, I walked within a few feet without it flying away, allowing me to get a close-up shot:

And my favourite part of the trip was watching a couple downy woodpeckers work this area of woods. They are quite small and very neat looking.

I’m planning to do another Burnabop XL day in late October this year (24/25th), and mixing things up a bit with a new single loop route. It’s a bit shorter than last year’s double loop version (53km instead of 74, approx) but the elevation is only slightly less and most of the extra miles were flatter and paved. So it’s still pretty challenging!

The route now starts at this gazebo at Confederation Park, providing shelter in the event of precip, and washrooms nearby as well. Doesn’t quite have the ambiance of the green gate, but it’s overall an upgrade.

The first section is still somewhat work-in-progress; for this iteration I kept it simple but found it to be a little too boring. Regardless, it will lead to the trail network in Discovery Place Park, which feels a lot bigger than it is when riding through.

The route then passes near Deer Lake before climbing over Burnaby near Metrotown on a bit of a funky series of connections that worked out quite well. After this the route dumps into Central Park – where the maples were already putting on an autumn show!

A leading reason for the change from the previous route was that I wanted to include Kaymar ravine, pictured below. There is a staircase into it, but then it’s just this beautiful and hidden bit of nature where you wouldn’t expect it. The creek seems to be running even in the midst of summer, and when it’s hot out you can still count on it to be cool down here. I came here during a heat wave and couldn’t believe it.

Kaymar ravine pretty seamlessly connects to a really good series of trails down to Fraser Foreshore, then the route loops back northwards along Byrne Creek. This rail track crossing is the same as previous Burnabop XL and kinda sketchy, but trains are pretty uncommon on this route.

Then the ascent of Byrne Creek ravine begins, and this one’s also from the previous route. I love how it starts out quite difficult but slowly eases into less rooty and less steep. Cleaning the south section is quite the feat.

Another reason I love the Byrne ravine climb is that it culminates with this creepy courtyard. Ideally, this would be reached around dark, but the new route places this at around the half-way mark so that’s not a good idea. Lots more sketchy trail to come that is probably best avoided in the dark.

The next bit is new to this iteration, but a section I’ve come to quite enjoy when traversing this area of Burnaby – you can follow the powerlines diagonally across a bunch of blocks. It’s quite silly. But then it turns into a descent into Robert Burnaby park which is quite fun.

Once in Robert Burnaby, it’s the tried-and-true double ravine route. I never tire of this section; it’s not entirely rideable but it’s beautiful, and there are some of the most beautiful sections of trail in all of town here.

I tried something new after this section and it worked out really nice. The route now goes over this pedestrian bridge and drops into the Inter-Urban ROW trail network that cannot be missed. A section that was uphill in last year’s route is now downhill, and it’s a blast!

I tried a few entry options to this section and rest assured, the below left photo is an example of something that did not make the cut! It was so narrow I had to walk behind my bike, and even still I was getting grabbed by blackberry tendrils constantly. Ugh. But once into what will make it, it was a super fun loamy descent down to the old rail bed.

Below-left shows the state of growth on the Inter-urban ROW trail; nearly overgrown but quite passable. Honestly, pretty much perfect.

The route then continues on to loop around Burnaby Mountain, but I was short on time this day after a late start so I opted to grab beer at Dageraad and head home from there.

As the fella behind Bike Portage Club and the organizer of Burnabop XL Day, I’ve been wanting to do a Port Moody version for a few years now. I’ve done a few rides in the Bert Flinn trail network as well as the assortment of neighbourhood trails nearby – but there were trails around Buntzen Lake which I have not personally tried. There was also a route over Sugar Mountain that connected nicely with the Buntzen loop. Today I explored a portion of these.

Riding from my place in East Van and knowing I had a lot of hard miles ahead of me, I took the path of least resistance on the way to Port Moody via Barnet Highway. This took me right past the recently re-opened and massively upgraded Barnet Skills Park, so I stopped by to check it out. It was absolutely packed, unsurprisingly.

Once in Port Moody proper, I decided to get a driveside photo of the Rambler out of the way when I saw a good backdrop. I feel like I’ve finally built the appropriate bike for my preferred rides, though I’ve happily ridden these routes on the “wrong” bike until now.

I rode past Rocky Point park on the way out to the trails at low tide, but returned at high tide. Goes to show how long I spent in the woods, I guess! This spot is about 18km from my place too, so a fair bit of riding either side of this spot.

The next hour was spent doing some trial-and-error climbing from sea level up into the Heritage Mountain community in Port Moody. I haven’t quite figured out how to best connect things, but there’s a lot of fun cheeky paths and trails to get up the hill. Only one deep ravine has no currently passable route and does require a short road detour around.

I got into the Bert Flinn trail network, which is made up of green and blue MTB trails that can largely be ridden on a gravel bike (with some MTB skills). I was having so much fun that I forgot I was not supposed to descend nearly as far as I did, and I had to backtrack back up…

But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the trail I took back up the hill turned out to be one of my favourites of the day. Here are two photos showcasing its beauty:

Getting to Buntzen / Sugar Mountain required a bit of a traverse with some rolling hills; I was very pleased to find that the dotted line with little heatmap activity was in fact, an awesome cut-through (below, right). Some sections of trail were nearly overgrown but no bushwhacking was required for the day.

The ascent of Sugar Mountain was going to be tough, I knew this already from a friend Nathan. It reminded me a lot of the Brother Creek “FSR” on Cypress, basically hiking up a steep riverbed in terms of rock size. It would be dangerous to impossible to ride down this on anything short of an enduro bike, so I’m convinced this needs to be a climb for the route.

For quite a while, the climb looked like below. Expectedly, I did not see another human the whole time. Very few people go up this way as far as I know!

I had accepted my fate that I’d be hiking my bike all the way to the descent, but I was overjoyed when the trail surface changed suddenly to smooth dirt. At this point I was nearing the north end of the route and the descent was not far off.

One final push and I was on the Buntzen side of the hill, where a rather steep and loose set of switchbacks dumped elevation quickly.

My plan was to save the loop around the lake for next time (with a friend or two, since it’s quite remote) but I did ride the first stretch of Lakeview trail to get a feel for it. I was pleasantly surprised by its condition – rooty enough that it was partly hike-a-bike, but also a fair bit of it’s rideable as well.

I turned around shortly after passing a hiker (the only person I had seen in the past two hours) who warned me that the next section was “bear central”. I figure that was as good a sign as any that I’d explored far enough for today. I headed back and stopped at the lake:

As I started heading back south, I noticed the distance to elevation ratio was over 200m per 10 km, which is what I would define as “pretty damn hilly”.

The earlier sunsets are evident these days, but at least this was a good one.

In the end, it was about 73km with over 1300m elevation, and much of the elevation was concentrated in a tough few kilometres. It was a very successful outing and I’m certainly planning to include a fair bit of this in the final route – it’s going to be a real doozy, though!

Photos in this post are across three rides – the first was a fairly short outing on the newest bike, my Beachcomber, up to a viewpoint for an after-work beer. Then, it was Parkbagging, also on the Beachcomber, and finally, today’s short ride to watch the Trout Lake cyclocross races. Oh, that too was on the Beachcomber – the bike has a grand total of 95km on it now, and most of that was from these three rides!

I’m very happy with the bike – I should have the custom frame bag in about two weeks which will finish off the build and make it a lot more usable. I refer to it as my play bike, but it’s more than just for wheelies – it will be my go-to for mixed terrain rides that include some technical stuff and / or hike-a-bike, which is a lot of my favourite rides.

While Parkbagging has now technically concluded in terms of its original mission, a regular has created the ‘Parkbagging reloaded’ IG handle as well as website, which will keep the essence alive for the foreseeable future. We met up at one of the small park sites in Kitsilano before riding back east to Habitat Island for a pretty epic sunset. It was also nice to see Erik (truemarmalade) for the first time since his return to Vancouver for a bit,

And today was Trout Cross, a new location for the local cyclocross race circuit that happens to be a 10 minute ride from home for me. The event was a great success, racers enjoyed the course and I enjoyed watching them!

Last year, a friend group of mine all went camping at Shingle Bay on Pender Island together, taking over the bulk of the small and bare bones campground, on the weekend of their Fall Fair. We had a great time and the fair itself, while quaint by city standards, was a wholesome experience seeing everyone from all over the island and neighbouring islands there to celebrate. We did the same trip again this year, and hopefully we’ll do it again next year too.

All photos will be from my Lumix ZS300 in this post. I took a total of 223 photos, but many had soft focus – something I need to sort out with my settings, I guess.

I rode to the ferry, a 51km route I’ve done a bunch of times now. Not very exciting, no photos from that. Once aboard the ferry, before it left dock I saw some surf scoters – a bird I was familiar with but hadn’t seen before.

The southern gulf islands often require a multi-stop ferry ride; in this case it was a stop at Saltspring Island before continuing on to Pender. I was on the Salish Raven, which looked just like the boat ahead of us here (Salish Eagle).

Below is an example of one of the soft-focus photos, but it demonstrates the setup for this trip: my new Stooge Rambler (just over 300km on it at the start of the trip, almost 500km by the end) set up with the same part of Fab’s Chests I’ve used for a few years now on the Bombadil but with the added capacity of the Randi Jo Big MUT’s on the fork. This is just the right volume for my current kit for a two-night trip. I had installed fenders immediately before this trip based on the forecast, but we only received light sprinkles while I was in my tent – optimal!

Shingle Bay is a small orchard, and in late August you can count on deer visiting every evening for the day’s fallen apples.

I arrived to camp along with Charmaine and Trevor, and Stephanie and her two kids were there upon our arrival. The rest of the group arriving by bike were on later ferries, but even I only got an about an hour before the sun started to set, thankfully providing a good sky in the process:

The posts sticking out of the water in the second image above are relics from a fish processing setup that once existed here; now there are bird boxes mounted to these posts that support a rebounding purple martin population. We enjoyed watching them (and their phaser-like calls) at various points on the weekend. Below, Charmaine and Stephanie hang out on the concrete portion of the old fishery:

The next morning I was out of the tent by 7am, enjoying a slow coffee and breakfast and some time around camp before we headed out to the Fall Fair. When I arrived, around 10:45, there was a speech by the minister of agriculture in progress about women in agriculture; the theme of this year’s event:

There. were performances by a few local groups, including this talented bunch of young violinists:

There was also a little petting zoo area with sheep and horses both big and small. Last year there were chicks you could cuddle, but I didn’t see any this year.

Inside the hall there was a variety of flowers and veggies that were entered into the annual competition, as well as baked goods. By this time, the judging was complete and we could survey the winners.

Once I had felt like I’d seen everything, and had a burger which supported the event, I headed off to explore – going to a part of the island I hadn’t biked before. I took no photos along the way because I was too busy struggling up intense climbs, but once in the forest on a somewhat rideable hiking trail I snapped the image below:

I followed this trail for about a kilometre before it plopped me out near Magic Lake, which I then visited from all possible angles. I made my way from there to Twin Island cidery to connect with the rest of the group, eventually working our way back to camp. Hours later and lots of fun time, I snapped this photo of the day’s setting sun over the bay:

Using only the photos from my dedicated camera means some lapses in photographic evidence that could be filled in with my phone photos, but I’m trying to be intentional about this. Saturday evening was top notch socializing on the beach until the sun had well set; many laughs and bonding time.

We were all catching the same ferry on Sunday at 3:05pm, but I was packed up before 10am just because I like to get it over with. Note the quantity of apples on the tree by my tent pad!

I snuck off to get some peace and quiet (loved spending time with three kids, but it’s also pretty tiring) and observed this red-breasted nuthatch for a bit. They are constantly flitting about, making getting a photo quite difficult.

Speaking of birds, the belted Kingfisher is one of my favourites and a bird that commonly cruised the shoreline by camp. I was able to get a decent photo as well:

I could go through the trouble of cropping and editing these photos to be sharper and more vibrant, but I haven’t – these are all straight out of the camera. It’s a future goal, perhaps, to go through that trouble.

We did, however, go through the trouble of collecting everyone up for a group photo at this concrete block, same as last year:

We had a couple hours to burn before it was time to be at the ferry terminal, so we rode over to Hope Bay where there was a literal cheesecake fridge, as well as a couple shops and a pier to wander:

Back to birds for a moment, I saw short-billed gulls on the pier as we left Pender – new one for me, though gulls are not very exciting.

Back on the mainland, everyone else in the group either had their car parked in Tsawwassen or were transiting towards home. Me, the stubborn fella I am, rode the whole way. I rode across town to Boundary Bay, where the tide was in – something I don’t think I’ve seen before. Usually it’s just mud as far as the eye can see.

The barn swallows were super active the whole way along, regularly playing chicken with me or darting right in front of my wheel.

The stretch of gravel dyke was lovely, but it was dimishing returns after that: a northbound stretch of farmland, then a river-side industrial section, then a huge bridge (the Alex Fraser), and as it got dark I reached New Westminster, where 15 km of parkway under the skytrain brought me the rest of the way home. With the various stops it took me 3h40m.