Sunshine Coast Fall 2021

A 3 day backcountry mountain bike route on BC's Sunshine Coast with lots of single track, great vistas and quad busting hills to round it out.

Introduction

In the summer of 2021 I was one day back from riding in the BC Epic 1000 and decided to go out for a mountain bike ride on the North Shore. I was feeling pretty fit having ridden for 10 days in the heat on a fully loaded gravel bike, roughly a 100 km a day.  After a couple of laps I started my way down to my car and promptly crashed on a slippery corner where I wasn't paying attention and broke my collarbone.

My summer of mountain bike riding was pretty much finished which wasn't great but to placate myself I started planning out two rides I was interested in the fall once my collarbone healed up. The last was riding the Moab Rocks XC race in Moab in late October and to prepare as well as make sure my collarbone was healed enough I planned to ride a 2 night, 3 day 100-120 km mountain bike bikepacking route on the Sunshine Coast in BC from Earls Cove to Langdale in early October.

This would be my first time bikepacking on a mountain bike so it required a different set of planning and pack configuration than a typical gravel bike. This blog outlines the trip along with highlights and what I learned from it. 

Route

I followed the Bikepacking.com Lower Sunshine Coast Bikepacking Route via their GPX file. The route looks as below. It was easy to follow and I had no issues keeping on track - beyond operator error not believing the GPS when it said turn and deciding not to for whatever reason!

Bike Configuration

Setting up my Ibis Ripley mountain bike for this trip required different packs. The main difference was the inability to carry a full seat pack due to having a dropper post on the bike. The dropper post was pretty much necessary as several of the trails truly were mountain bike calibre with drops and steeps made much easier by getting your seat down low. I also was unable to fit a half or full framebag in my mountain bike triangle so was also limited by space there too.

The two solutions to these storage problems - aside from reducing and re-distributing gear were to first get what Ibis (my mountain bike brand) calls a Pork Chop bag for the bike frame and second get a small Revelate seat bag that worked with dropper seats - the Revelate Shrew. 

The frame bag from Ibis was a small 1-1.5 litre bag shaped like a porkchop that slid into the space available on my frame. It was primarily used for bike tools, bathroom gear - toothbrush, toilet paper - and partial kitchen gear - stove/lighter/cutlery. 

To reduce baggage, I decided to use a bivvy with a small tarp instead of a tent stored in my bar bag with a lightweight sleeping quilt. That in turn freed up space to add in some clothing like my puffy that previously I would have stored in the seat pack.  As I was only on the road for 3 days I only brought one bike riding kit. As it was expected to rain on the first day, I brought along gortex overshorts and a gortex rain jacket. 

Despite the shrew seat pack being tiny, I managed to fit in the remainder of my gear - a tiny cook pot with a small butane tank, some warmer clothing - legs and a toque, light wool long sleeve shirt, camp pants - and finally a coffee cup attached to the outside. On the front of the bar bag I had a Revelate Egress Pocket holding breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

As it was bear country I needed bear spray but because my Revelate feedbags didn't work well with my setup (where I normally store bear spray), I ended up using a rubber compression strap to attach the spray to the frame. The setup was completed by a Revelate Jerrycan holding my phone, inReach, some snacks and sunscreen.

I carried just one water bottle as I figured correctly that there would be lots of water on the route and I could make water whenever I needed to top my bottle up.

Trip Log

What follows is a day by day trip log of the trip. 

Day 1, Friday, October 1, 2021
Where: Vancouver to Earls Cove to Klein Lake Campground
Distance/Elevation: 21 km, 706 metres

Today involved mostly the logistics of getting from Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast and up to Earls Cove. I drove myself and my mountain bike to Horseshoe Bay, parking in the ferry underground lot for the weekend, and caught the ferry to Langdale. From Langdale I caught the local inter-ferry bus (with my bike packed in the back) to a couple of stops before Earls Cove where I knew I could ride to the campground I planned on staying at.  

Once I got to my campground, I setup my bivvy and partially unpacked. It was dry but looked like a high probability of rain so I also rigged up a tarp and hoped I was on high ground so I wouldn't get flooded out. It ended up working out fairly well. 

After claiming my spot, I still had a good amount of time left so I decided to bike into Earls Cove and see if I could find some lunch. Turns out there is a permanent food truck there and I had a burger and drink there before heading back to camp.  It was fun riding down to Earls Cove - some nice single track but I was to have to earn it back riding back up the hill to camp to end the day.

Day 2, Saturday, October 2, 2021
Where: Klein Campground to Sechelt
Distance/Elevation: 54 km, 1,616 metres

This was the big day of the trip. While 54 km on a gravel bike is a medium size day, on a mountain bike on single track and some serious uphill and downhill riding, it was a major day. That said, it was a perfect riding day - slightly cool and a mix of cloud and sun. 


The route was really spectactular - while there was probably at least half of it being forest service road, the singletrack mountain bike trails were quite special and felt very remote despite being 10-20 km away from several small towns. 



I did find it a challenge to navigate periodically as I was following a GPX file on my Garmin Edge 830 and it was easy to miss some of the trails that were overgrown (likely a function of an early fall ride after a season of growing) and hard to locate. Once found they were easy to follow.  


The biggest climb of the day felt like a trail called New Frogger - I was riding towards Sechelt to I think generally the not so common direction as it it is more uphill than down. After that, I entered into a maze of mountain bike trails I didn't realize Sechelt had - really well maintained and catering to all levels - exiting into downtown Sechelt. I decided to stay at a hotel in town called the Driftwood Inn. I was pretty wiped after the ride so it was great to get a room, have a shower and eat a steak in the restaurant to finish the day. 

Day 3, Sunday, October 3, 2021
Where: Sechelt to Langdale
Distance/Elevation: 39 km, 1,468 metres

This again looks like a relatively short day but had a lot of climbing and a lot of singletrack. Leaving Sechelt I went up a long hill climb into a beautiful park area above Sechelt full of singletrack. 


After that I was navigating my way toward Langdale for the rest of the day. Trails like Mach Chicken and Highway 102 (despite the massive climb up), Jammer and the Langdale Lunge were a lot of fun riding.


Eventually I made my way down to Langdale and caught the ferry back to the mainland where I loaded my bike in the parked car and headed home.  All in all a great ride!

Wrap up

All in all this was a great trip. It proved to me that bikepacking on a mountain bike is a lot of fun and quite different than gravel due to the wider variety of territory you can visit. At the same time it meant shorter daily distances due to the slower riding on more challenging territory that you are now able to take on.  It also is a lot more difficult packing your bike with the reduced room one has but with a bit of thought and planning it works almost as well as a larger kit one might use on a more traditional gravel bike. 

The Sunshine Coast, as one can see from the pictures, is incredible scenic and remote, particularly in the backcountry this particular route went through. At the same time, because the route is in the hills just behind the main highway, it was easy to exit out if one needed to for supplies or other things that were available in the small towns along the way.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, it also showed me that my collarbone was healed and ready for riding. I would head out to Moab a few weeks later and ride the Moab Rocks XC mountain bike race.

Location: Earls Cove, BC V0N 2H4, Canada

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