Boulder & Quartz Snow Conditions Nov 29-30

[Maverick800XRS]

Rode Boulder on Nov 29, Parking at the Y intersection for Kirkup - Bezanson and a little furthur down the kirkup about 0.3km nice sized parking lot. The bigger 4 place trailers had trouble making it up the hill at the Y to go down kirkup and usually ended up sliding backwards, i made it up no problem with my GM 4X and an light weight enclosed 2 place. Don't make the same mistake we did and try and take bezanson or the veidy, Bez has creek crossing throughout and the Veidy is pretty wooped out and doesn't really follow the actual trail that gets cut in with the groomer later in the season... (wasn't my idea to go that way, i was park on the kirkup !). The trail after the cabin is pretty horrific, theres one part where the trail drops down into a little gully and you have to climb back up a little hill, this is pretty trenched out and some rocks and showing, it's pretty simple to get through it with some speed, some people tried cutting new paths along the ridge but didn't look to good. Due to lots of fog we didn't get a chance to do a whole lot of climbing but there was good untouched snow down in the bull pen, droped in their and ripped that up for a while, about 1.5 feet fresh ontop a pretty hard base, was pretty loose ontop of the base on the steeper stuff. Hit a few landmines while climbing that were deeper in the snow while climbing but only got a little bump and kept climbing. Made it back to the lakes which were still a little slushy, power turns cut some good groozes into them so we never stayed very long, was a good tour none the less. The whole day was a good first ride for the season but not a power playing and climbing day. After this week of snow it might be pretty decent out their. If your itching to ride get out their, but if you looking for deep POW or a choice of hills to climb then it's not the greatist.

Drove back to Quartz Nov 30 and rode a groomed trail up to the sign showing the moutain on a map then it got pretty interesting, trail is very beat up, a few creek crossings but they are filled in, theres about 3km of very rough stuff to get to the cabin. Once on the hill there were alot of rocks showing through the snow on most of the climbing areas with some disapointing snow, we found a hill that was untouched with rocks showing but managed to cut lines through the rocks and ride some decent 2feet soft stuff which was pretty fun. A week or 2 of snow here should really make this area very rideable, hit a few rocks climbing here just like in boulder but no damage or anything serious.

No pics ATM but i could post some later, nothing really showing the conditions though. Overall for the first time out this year it was a good ride, hope to get out again in a few weeks after the calgary snow show.