Blackrock: Whistler Warm-up

Road gap after the Salad Tosser

Blackrock is one of North America’s premier freeride destinations. Go to Salem, turn west to a small town called Falls City. Here hokey and pokey combine. There are a number of shops in town but at 12:30 on a Monday afternoon, when Fiona and Symi had a wander around, only one was open. We went looking for bread – we had already dismissed the possibility of decent and were just concentrating on the bread part. They did have a coffee

Dino's Runaround

shop/café but it is only open Friday to Sunday. It’s not much of a place to go if you are not riding, one RV Park we went into did a good impression of being an RV wrecker’s yard. However the riding is sensational. Bring out the body armour and full face. Ed came up from Eugene to share some local trail knowledge, top bloke. In the end I only scrapped the surface of the riding here and rode the easiest trail, Bonsai Downhill. There are some crazy features here, the photos show just a small sample. There is plenty of youtube footage of Blackrock if you want to get more of an idea. Thanks to Fiona and Symi for tolerating the trip here at the end of a few weeks of mountain bike indulgence.

Looking into the Salad Tosser, road gap visible thru trees

 http://www.pinkbike.com/video/368483/ Dino’s Runaround

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/368484/ Top of Bonsai

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/368489/ Bonsai middle

Plenty of this