BC Big Trailie Ride 4
June 19-21, 2009
Another British Columbia (BC) Big Trailie Ride was organized by Manxman and DR650BC, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride with a great collection of people and through some fantastic BC scenery. This ride has become more popular every year, and somewhere around 37 adventurers took part in this year's ride.
I road up to Clinton on Thursday, June 18. It was going to be a long ride for one day, so I just took the I-5 slab north, cut over to cross the border at Sumas, and then rode Hwy 3 to Hope, and north on Hwys 1 and 97 to Clinton, BC. I arrived about 4:30pm, and immediately saw old friends from prior rides. We enjoyed a few beers, grabbed some dinner, had a few more beers, and then hit the sack to get some rest for the next day's ride.
Friday, June 19
We woke up to a beautiful morning for a ride! Due to the large number of participants, not everybody could stay at the Cariboo Lodge Resort so many were camping at nearby campgrounds. Another change due to the large number of riders was that Manxman printed route sheets and turn-by-turn instructions so that riders could break into smaller groups to make the ride, instead of having one large parade of motorcycles. So by 7:00am, riders were getting ready and picking up the route sheets.
Up until a few days before the ride, it looked like we would have to take a detour for part of today's route due to a forest fire north of Lake Carpenter; but luckily we were able to take the original route.
Friday's Route
Everybody's starting to show up and get ready for Friday's ride
Soon, our little group of about 7 riders were heading out on the Clinton-Pavilion Road.
A train passing by on the other side of Kelly Lake
Here's Farmerger - my roommate for the weekend
Continuing on towards Pavilion
Stopping to make sure everybody's still with us
Heading into Pavilion
On towards Lilliooet
A stop for gas in Lillooet
First AdvRider salute for the day
From Lillooet, we headed for the Carpenter Lake Road and towards Gold Bridge for lunch.
We passed a mine site just before reaching Carpenter Lake
Carpenter Lake was beautiful
Lunch was at the Gold Bridge Hotel. Since they had been serving firefighting crews for the past several days, they were pretty use to serving large crowds. The food was pretty good!
Just as Farmerger and I were ready to leave, another group of riders rode up and Gary had a flat. So we stopped for a while to both help and harass Gary while he performed his first tire plug fix-up job on his GS1150 rear tire.
Then it was onto the Hurley River Road towards Pemberton.
Here's a pic of me that Farmerger took earlier in the day
Day 1 was just about perfect. Although many of the riders stayed in Mt. Currie, a few of us stayed at the Pemberton Mountain Lodge - a soak in the hot tub felt pretty good at the end of the day!