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My Backyard : Mount Seymour, North Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Rider & Writer Adam Trotter shredding Mount Seymour : Photos by Rob Grey
The trails are legendary: Boogieman, Neds, Pangor, Corkscrew and the showpiece of the North Shore, CBC. Mountain bikers from all over the world travel to Mount Seymour to ride these trails and to see how they measure up against the trails that they have no doubt studied by watching them in videos back home.
I am fortunate to be able to ride these trails virtually anytime I want. If I look out my back window, there they are. However, at the risk of sounding spoiled, sometimes these trails get boring, and after a long season of riding and racing, I like to take a break from the bike as the weather starts to get ugly in the fall.
A few years ago, my Gran passed away. We were very close and the best way to deal with my grief was to simply go for hikes on Mount Seymour. I could get away to the forest and just think. I began my journeys hiking the trails that I usually ride. I saw some new lines that I normally wouldn’t have seen had I been riding and I also got a sense of how steep and gnarly some of the stuff that I ride really is! I also hiked some trails that I hadn’t ridden in years, the legal trails that are just off the usual lines that don’t get much traffic. It got me pumped to come back and ride them again soon.
I also began to notice the changes that these trails have gone through over the years. I began to find old lines that trails used to take. I found former built up structures that had been torn down and tossed into the woods to be reclaimed by nature. I saw trees with 6” grooves in them from years and years of handlebars squeezing by. On one old line, I found a log covered in chainring grooves. Fifteen feet down its trunk where the trail now flows, the trunk just has little slices in it. The old line was from the days before bashguards, while the new line evidenced chainguides. Soon,my hikes took me simply into the woods to see what else I could find.
Mount Seymour has a long and deep history apart from mountain biking. In the 40’s and 50’s, cabins dotted the mountain. They have all long since been destroyed or burned but evidence of their existence still remains. I stumbled upon my first old cabin only 30 feet off of one of Seymour’s most popular trails. I found a few old forks, the shell of a camp stove and some springs from an old mattress. Somehow while searching the internet that night, I came upon an old map detailing spots where other cabins used to be. I took my wife on a few of my treks into the woods, treasure map in hand, trying to find other old cabin sites.
Logging has also been a part of the North Shore Mountains since the late 1800’s. Old logging roads and “skidder’ roads criss cross the woods. By now, I had developed a pretty good mental map of the mountain and these skid roads were becoming my freeways between exploring new corners of the lower mountain. Along side these long abandoned roads, I found the remnants of old logging camps, logging equipment as well as logs that had been cut down, but perhaps too big to haul out.
Some of the stranger things that I came across were car tires seemingly in the middle of nowhere and an old crime scene in the middle of the woods –Police Line tape still intact. I also met a few deer. I loved exploring and getting to know the area and history surrounding my favourite trails. Speaking of trails, I found a bunch of those too. I found old abandoned one hit wonder that I’d seen in movies. I also discovered mountain bike trails shut down long ago and trails started but not finished, and of course, fresh ones.
Taking time off the bike and exploring my backyard trails was such a good call. I ended up learning a lot about my local mountain. I also got a glimpse into its history way before its current high profile association with the mountain bike and learned a lot about its trails: past, present, and those yet to be discovered.
If you’re interested in learning more about the goods that I call home, make sure to swing by our shop in North Vancouver. Or visit Cove Bikes via the web or telephone:
www.CoveBike .com
877 929 COVE (2683)
