75% Survival Rate, or, The Gang Goes Backcountry Bike Camping

I had a desire to do some bike-camping. I did some research, including reading my friend Ben Massey’s guide to Golden Ears (recommended). I discovered that there was a backcountry site at Viewpoint Beach, which, unusually, was accessible by a designated “mountain bike” trail.

A scouting ride on a lovely summer day, on an unladen cyclocross bike, left me bravely claiming that the trail was very rideable except for a few creek crossings, easily handled on foot. I may have gone so far as to claim that, in the dry, I’d be willing to ride the route on my SuperSix with 25 mm tires.

(For non-enthusiasts, those are pretty brave words. 25s are, more or less, racing bike tires. A Cannondale SuperSix is, more or less, a full-on, carbon fibre race bike. In retrospect, this assertion is only true for a fairly expansive definition of “ride”, and would be just stupid with camping gear.)

My raw enthusiasm and comic over-selling of the ease of this adventure (plus the temptation of adding prestigious #backcountry tags to various ‘grams and such) was enough to spark the enthusiasm of several people, and now I will introduce the key players:

Tobin: experienced frontcountry camper, never bike-camped before, has the fitness of an asthmatic middle-aged man (specifically me, an asthmatic middle-aged man; Tobin is younger and breathes just fine). Sneaky-good off road, though.

Aidan, aka “Mocha”: young, enthusiastic (AS YOU SHALL SOON SEE), had stories of camping in the Scouts system that included making winter camp in deep snow, and building an ice shelter. He had never bike-camped before. Not out of shape, but not actually healthy.

Michelle: was in Guides, actually knows how to camp. Actually knows how to tie all the knots, and can do so faster than your eyes can follow her hands, accurately predicted our travel time, owns a “PROVINCIAL CHAMPION” jersey, is actually fit. Has never bike-camped before, has ridden on gravel about six times.

The Writer: an idiot. 

None of them can say they were not warned. The Messenger group where this event was planned was called “People dumb enough to bike-camp with Ryan.” 

After I made several false-starts over the Summer, Michelle finally made the call: she was free this weekend, she was in, let’s do this. That was enough to drag Mocha in, and Tobin has a standing declaration that he will join me in stupid things, despite everything. 

Crucially, Michelle made some very necessary fixes to my optimistic timelines, we sorted out the logistics, and after a cycle of planning that would have shamed Napoleon’s Russian adventure [OMNIOUS FORESHADOWING], we were a go.

The plan was to rendezvous at a pie shop in Port Moody (recommended). Tobin and I live near Dageraad, and since we like to set off with a beer, we did. Then we took a leisurely roll to the place the locals never call “PoMo,” the long way around Burnaby Mountain, and waited for Mocha and Michelle. As we purchased pie, I joked that my goals for the weekend were “we all have fun, and a 75% survival rate, or better!” 

Tobin thought that was a bit dark.

Minutes later, our friends arrived, and Aidan announced that the ride from Vancouver had not gone entirely to plan, he was NOT recovered from a recent hamstring injury, and there would be no more riding for him. No worries, SkyTrain has made it to Port Moody, and he had a relatively painless option for getting home.

Aidan then bravely announced he thought he could still hike, though, so he would go home, dump his bike, get his car, drive to the trailhead, and hike 5.6 km to our camp site. 

This was theoretically possible before dark, but if you’re experienced in such adventures, you know that generally, once you’re back home, the temptations of a warm bed pull HARD on the heart. We wished Aidan well, and quietly assumed that we were now three.

And off we went.

If you know how to go, and it’s a nice sunny day, the ride from Port Moody to Golden Ears is lovely (let this Strava track guide you). We had a route that I worked up from a previous ride with Tobin that we called “minimum suck.” It’s a meandering route along gravel dyke paths and pleasant bike routes through the Tri-Cities, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge that will get you to the park entrance feeling happy with the world. Some of the bike paths would be annoying at 30 km/h, but we were lugging considerable loads on our no-longer-aero bikes (my disreputable cyclocross bike, Michelle’s very new gravel bike, and Tobin’s very old, well, it’s a Kona Sutra, so a steel, off-pavement, touring…thing), and 20 km/h was the rolling pace we averaged.

The route in is more or less flat right up until you approach the gates of Golden Ears Provincial Park, and then our route to Gold Creek, well inside the park, becomes about 15 km of somewhat irregular climbing. The grind is never very steep (you will gain about 225 m in 15 km), but it’s enough to sap all the speed out of the ride, at least for Tobin and I (Michelle, never taxed by our pace in the least, was basically loafing while I legged my fat and aging body up the road, and Tobin was handicapped by a season of not doing that much riding, and a heavyweight rig that included a rack and panniers, plus almost enough stuff to fill his rack and panniers).

This climb is steady and completely paved, though inside the park there are bike trails paralleling the road that offer an alternative. On a popular summer weekend, I would SERIOUSLY consider using those trails, despite adding a bit of time to the trip, to avoid what can be some ridiculous car traffic on a park road that makes no accommodation for bikes. But on this overcast almost-Fall Saturday, car traffic was light and caused us little concern. We arrived at the trailhead a little later than we hoped, but pretty much as Michelle’s estimate had predicted, and with enough time to make camp before sundown.

Viewpoint Beach is 5.6 km up East Canyon trail, on beloved Gold Creek. The trailhead is easily found, right at the parking lot for Gold Creek, used by both day-hikers and campers hiking in to various backcountry sites. We were the only cyclists we saw in the park that weekend, either on the trails or at the campsite. 

A 200m jaunt up a gravel road, and we picked up the trailhead, actually one of two, as there’s another trailhead in the parking lot itself [OMINOUS FORESHADOWING]. 

Away we went, and, well.

The last time I had faced this trail, it was on the same bike, but utterly unladen by anything that wouldn’t fit in a bike jersey pocket, and with less riding time in my legs. Loaded up and tired, the trail was a different sort of challenge. I stand by my claim it was “mostly rideable,” but for Tobin it was hard going with a heavier load than I had, and for Michelle, six gravel rides into her off-road experience, it was a series of invitations to get in over her head on relatively technical terrain that promised exciting ways to lacerate your body on rocks many miles from proper medical care (Tobin and I faced the same danger, but we did so with much more off-road riding experience, and much less common sense). Between our loads, fatigue, and the fact the trail was mostly uphill, even I was hiking a lot more than I expected, and during the middle section of the trail, Michelle was beginning to wonder what the hell kind of bike-walking nonsense she had been dragged into.

Mercifully, the trail mostly gets a bit easier at the end, and just before an outright mutiny ensued, we arrived at Viewpoint Beach.

Viewpoint Beach is pretty great. Rather than describe a very normal piece of Pacific Northwest second-growth forest running alongside a pleasant creek, please enjoy this actual photo.

In terms of camping, the “beach” is a nice spot to drop a tent. It’s truly an unimproved site: there’s no tent pads, you’ll be scouting out a decently flat bit of dirt all on your own. On the other hand, a pit toilet is tucked 100 m up the trail from the creekside, so you don’t have to dig any poop holes. 

We arrived about 45 minutes before sunset. There was one group with three or four tents already set up, taking what was pretty much the prime spots, and the second-best spot (partly dictated by my hammock tent’s tree requirement) was just a little cozier with them than we would have preferred, and had there been a second group  occupying the spot we were in, the third-best options looked a bit grim.

The usual trope of such camping experiences is that you crowd up against a group of half-wasted campers blasting Norwegian Black Metal at eleven, until two. Our neighbors were playing incredibly tasteful jazz at a very reasonable volume, were discreetly convivial, didn’t interact with us after Tobin went over and introduced himself, made little noise before we headed for bed, and shut down whatever party they had going not long after that. Here’s to you, tasteful shoulder-season neighbors, we hope you found us as uneventful as we found you!

Dinner was a set of three camper meals procured by Mocha from MEC, and handed over to us in Port Moody before he abandoned us for home. We had all raised our eyebrows when he presented us with three different meals, as we had one stove and one pot, and feared meal-prep hell as we serially cooked up three meals. But no, Mocha did right by us. All three were designed to successfully cook by adding hot water to the pouch, so a cooking disaster was averted, and we ate well. 

And just in time for dinner, well after dark, Aidan returned. 

His heroic commitment to the trip was impressive. He had returned home, taken a short nap, and then, in an event unprecedented in the annals of camping, got up, headed out a second time in his car, driven to Golden Ears, and hiked 5.6 km with a decent pack, at twilight. Our warm greetings for him were even warmer when we realized he had brought his extra tarp. We were eating in the dry, but the forecast was for rain late in the evening, and rain the next day. We set up the tarp, enjoyed a pleasant meal, and just about the time we had drunk most of the booze and eaten our fill of desserts (Tim-Tam s’mores: recommended), the rain started, and we headed for bed.

And now, let’s talk tents.

Your author, an idiot, likes the idea of camping, and hates getting wet. Enter the hammock tent. It offers the promise of a sleep shelter that never touches the ground, and thus never has to get wet. It suits my tendencies enough that I bought a very nice one a few years ago, a Hennessy Hammock. Hennessy is a local brand, widely considered one of the best hammock tents available. It has numerous nice features which others can tell you about. I’ve set it up several times, but not enough to be casually adept, and as tent setups go, this hammock is potentially very quick, but it has to be done correctly or you’re going to have a bad night. If you buy one (and with several caveats, you maybe should), practice setting it up, and read up on them.

I fell into two traps. I awkwardly set up the head end a little too low, and I was sleeping with my feet above my head all night, not great. I also had a slightly constrained choice of trees, which included a third tree close to the hammock, but I figured it would be fine. In fact, the third tree fouled my rain fly just enough that I never really got it set properly, despite two night-time attempts to fix it, and I got a bit wet, oh the actual Greek irony.

But the real problem with hammocks is thermal management. Without turning this story into a hammock review, it’s easy to lose a ton of heat out your back side in a hammock tent. There’s several options for dealing with this, I was using a reflective bubble pad (which looks like a car windshield heat deflector cut specially to fit in a hammock, because that’s exactly what it is), and, well, I woke up in the morning with the pad somehow turned almost 90 degrees under me, thermally protecting me from basically nothing.

Full credit to my down mummy bag though, 1 kg of well-designed camping gear, sold at MEC for a slightly painful price, but acquired by me, off Craigslist, for the kind of heavy discount you’d expect for a used sleeping bag, despite it showing no signs of prior use when I bought it.

Anyway, a fitful night later, I got up as soon as there was enough light to allow, and started to prepare breakfast for the gang.

Breakfast was intended to be pancakes and omelets, with Greek coffee. To this end, I brought a small thermos full of egg (this worked out, but weight is weight) and some pancake mix.

I also brought 80 mL of cooking oil, which was far too little. 

What ensued was a fiasco centered around a crepe pan. In order to make omelets, I’d need a frying pan, as I figured the pot bottom wouldn’t be enough to do a decent job with omelets. The crepe pan was nice and small, but made of cast iron, and very, very heavy (I just weighed it: 660 g, which means it was something like one tenth of my total backpack weight, including the backpack). The gang tried to dissuade me in the planning chat, but they figured I’d learn a valuable lesson. I did have one other half-assed rationalization, which was that it would help simulate the heavier load of a multi-day expedition.

Anyway, I had multiple minor disasters with the pancakes that amounted to this: cooking pancakes on an unfamiliar camp stove is hard, cooking them with too little oil is ridiculous, and trying to cook them with no oil is just stupid. 660 grams of cast iron crepe pan could solve none of these problems. I squeezed out a few feeble attempts at a pancake, which were pronounced disgusting by those who tried them.

As I hunkered around the stove, I yammered on to Michelle, who had just risen, that my cooking kit was a marvel of efficiency, given that the pot’s lid could also double as a plate. Michelle pointed out that it also worked just fine as a frying pan. 

I contemplated the enormity of this. I had hauled two frying pans to camp (along with far too little oil to use them).

But look, bringing chopsticks instead of a spork worked out just fine, and I’m proud of that choice.

Anyway, Michelle gave me some gentle hints as to the cooking of camp stove scrambled eggs, which were delicious and enjoyed by all.

(The Greek coffee was also disgusting, but that’s how it’s supposed to taste, and so we’re going to let Tobin bring his moka pot next time.)

Mercifully, between crostadas from the stop at the pie shop yesterday, a sufficiency of scrambled eggs, and various other snacks, we all finished breakfast full and ready to go. I threw the pancake batter in the creek.

We packed in the rain, mindful that not camping for a second day meant we didn’t have to be too careful about keeping anything dry, and set out. The plan was to get to the nearest SkyTrain station and make our way home, but one of us had the brainwave that we could dump our gear in Mocha’s car, allowing us an unfettered ride back to civilization, and rendezvous at the SkyTrain to retrieve our gear for the public transit section of our multi-modal camping trip.

Mocha, on foot, was given a head start, but we caught him not far down the trail. I grabbed the keys from him so we could all go ahead, dump the gear and then return the keys to him and take off.

Because the trail was mostly a climb in, the return ride (also with slightly lighter packs from the food we had eaten) was downright pleasant. Michelle shouted, on the fast and fun ride on a still-technical trail, “I’m shredding!” and lo she was. 

In retrospect, putting the gear in Aidan’s car was one part of a logistical optimization too far, like Napoleon staying in Moscow for a whole month. Never mind that this gear dump left me with a post-expedition drive across town to get my stuff back from Aidan, it also led to a very stupid incident where, since I didn’t realize there were two exits from the trail, and Aidan had used the obvious one, all three of the gang waited in the parking lot for 30 minutes while I rode about a third of the trail figuring out my error.

After a bit more deciding and figuring out who was coldest and/or lived close to each other and/or was most responsible for everybody being a little cold and a little peeved, Michelle got into Aidan’s car, and the two of them took an express ride home, while Tobin and I soldiered on, free of luggage, but still fairly waterlogged.

Again, the nicest thing about the gentle 15 km climb into Golden Ears is that it turns into a just lovely, gliding, 15 km descent towards home. We had a pleasant time of it, and when we made a planned stop at the Golden Ears General Store (civilization’s first outpost), Tobin…was ready to pack it in. He called his girlfriend, arranged a ride home, and sheepishly explained that while the car would haul one bike and two people, there was no way it could hold two bikes and three people. 

I was more or less okay with that. I got back on the road, and took a fairly direct ride to the nearest SkyTrain station: a few jogs to get to Old Dewdney Trunk Road, ride over the Pitt River Bridge and along Lougheed until I ran out of decent shoulder to ride on, into residential Port Coquitlam to meet up with the gravel trails along the Coquitlam River, over the bike/ped bridge again, and I was back to the Lafarge/Douglas College SkyTrain station, and on my way home. The ride from the general store to SkyTrain took a bit more than an hour, it was wet the whole way, but the technically-late-Summer temperatures were just on the happy side of what three layers of jacket and jersey could protect me from, and I enjoyed the ride. 

My lovely bride greeted me at home with a bowl of pasta and a cup of tea, I took a hot shower, and all was right with the world.

The whole affair was best summed up by Michelle’s considered remark: “this camping trip met my expectations.” The site was gorgeous, the ride was only a little worse than expected, the weather was exactly as forecast, it was a good test for four novice bike-campers to mostly succeed at backcountry bike camping, and 75%  of us actually rode to the site, and some part of the way back.

But next time, I’m leaving the crepe pan at home.