Chilcotins

….Hastily Prepared

Words & Photos – Gary Perkin

THEY MET IN A CROWDED BAR

As with most good stories, this one starts in a bar. A bar in Whistler to be precise. It’s not the usual “I partied too much and ended up hungover after spending too many hours underground,” as usually happens in Whistler.

Nope, not this time.

Monday morning, after poring over maps flanked by Saturday night drinks and lit by the ubiquitous iPhones, I found myself on a dock on the shores of Tyaughton Lake waiting for a Tyax Air floatplane to take myself and seven of the Enduro World Series’ finest for a three-day self-guided, self-supported escape led by Kiwi adventurer/bike racer Jamie Nicoll.

But before we get down to the actual three days in the wilderness you need to understand the how, why and what for being in Whistler. You see it was Crankworx, where every racer, photographer and video maker worth his or her salt is there to prove themselves on quite possibly the biggest stage of the mountain bike calendar. I was there for the Deep Summer photo competition and client work, while the racers were there in full race mode for the sixth round of the Enduro World Series. We weren’t really expecting to be riding/hiking all day, sleeping in cowboy camps in the frost at 1800m above sea level just a few short days after all the Crankworx shenanigans.

Now we all knew the Chilcotins have been done many times before, but Jamie had other plans than riding light and having our gear float planed from luxury camp to luxury camp. We were packing it in and out ourselves.

Our preparations were limited to a hastily arranged shopping spree in the Whistler village arranged on WhatsApp on poached Wi-Fi. I managed to round up some suitable kit from my Deep Summer riders and Whistler locals Craig and Jason, who are used to and fully prepared for these backwoods adventures. This consisted of a -20C sleeping bag, a leaking air mattress, a down jacket, a head torch and a hip flask full of tequila – they were all out of whisky thanks to us drowning our sorrows after Deep Summer.

Then, from fellow photog Paris Gore I borrowed a larger F-Stop pack, as there was no way I could fit all the sleeping gear and clothing plus food, spares, tools and camera gear for three days in my small riding-specific camera bag.

And that was quite literally it. Next stop was getting the group together at Tyax Lodge. And the group was a mixed on for sure: Jamie Nicoll; Anita Gehrig; Carolin Gehrig; Ines Thoma; Julia Hofmann; Katrina Strand; Yoann Barelli; and yours truly.