Archive for the ‘adventure’ Category
Cabin fever
Snowshoers make their way to Mount Steele Cabin, one of four cabins built by the Tetrahdron Outdoor Club in 1987. Reynold Schmidt photo
“We came in by the light of the benevolent and gibbous moon waxing to near fullness. The skies were clear and the spirits were high, peeling laughter for 48 hours and sleeping for six.”
– An entry in the Bachelor Lake Cabin, Tetrahedron Provincial Park
Some people move to the Sunshine Coast to get away from it all. The Tetrahedron is where Sunshine Coasters go to get away from it all. Six thousand hectares of mountains, lakes, streams, wetlands and forest, the Tet, as it’s fondly known, has long been cherished by backcountry enthusiasts.
In 1987, a group of those enthusiasts banded together to mobilize more than 200 volunteers, 45 businesses, schools, community groups and several levels of government: their mission, to build cabins linked by a trail network.
Back then, they called themselves the Tetrahedron Ski Club. A quarter of a century later, they’re the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club, a group justifiably proud of the legacy created northeast of Sechelt. Last summer, club members marked the 25-year milestone with dances, parties, pancake breakfasts and numerous trips down memory lane.
Tannis is one of 10 beautiful lakes in Tetrahedron Provincial Park. In June, the lake was still partially frozen.
Now they’re enjoying the snow.
“Early December, after that first big dump of snow; that’s my favourite time to go,” says club president, Reynold Schmidt. “I usually go with club members, friends – before the crowds.”
It’s June when Reynold and I visit Bachelor Lake Cabin, a one-hour hike from the trailhead up Grey Creek Forest Service Road. With snow more than a metre deep in places, I’m grateful for snowshoes. Partially frozen Tannis Lake is a testament to the cold, wet spring endured down at sea level, 1,100 metres below. At least the mosquitoes are still asleep.
Tannis is one of 10 beautiful lakes in Tetrahedron Provincial Park. There are three mountain peaks – Panther, Steele and Tetrahedron – and some of the oldest trees in the country. Amabilis fir, mountain and western hemlock, yellow cedar and white pine can all be found here. So, too, can the club’s four rustic, two-storey cabins each built to accommodate 16 people – first-come, first serve. They can be reached via a 25-kilometre trail network and are located at Bachelor Lake, above Edwards Lake, between McNair and Chapman Lakes, and below the summit of Mt. Steele.
A 25-kilometre trail network links the cabins in Tetrahedron Provincial Park. BC Parks photo
Inside Bachelor Cabin, we stop for lunch, seated on a long wooden bench at a metal table. There’s a wood stove and firewood. Above us is a sleeping loft with foam mattresses. From the kitchen window, looking across frozen Bachelor Lake, it’s hard to imagine “crowds”. We haven’t seen a soul all day. But weekend and holidays during the winter can be busy at the cabins, confirms Reynold, a natural resource officer with B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
“We’ve had our problems with vandalism over the years, people coming just to party and not cleaning up after themselves,” he says. “There has been a lot of debate within the club to create a reservation system, but some members are adamant the cabins remain for everyone’s use.”
This year, the club has appointed stewards, two people per cabin, responsible for maintenance and regular monitoring. “They’re regular backcountry users who get to use the lockboxes to store their gear, so they don’t have to carry stuff in each time,” says Reynold.
“It helps dispel the sense that these are party cabins,” he adds.
Naturally, the cabins are there to be enjoyed. How they came to be there is a different story, far removed from pristine mountain air – below sea level in fact!
A basement in Franklin Road, Gibsons, is where George Smith pitched his idea for a cabin and trail network. In 1985, George had skied Mount Steele with his friend Ian McConnell on June 1 weekend. He was struck by the quality of the snow and the potential of backcountry recreation in the area.
Bachelor Cabin, the closest of the four cabins to the trail head.
“The Sunshine Coast was in the midst of an economic depression,” recalls George. “People weren’t exactly light and breezy, but I thought this idea made sense.”
George approached his Franklin Road neighbor, Wayne Greggain, the titular head of the Tetrahedron Ski Club. After a heyday in the late 1960s and 70s, mostly skiing Mount Elphinstone courtesy of a Tucker Snow Cat and 600-foot lift purchased from Hollyburn Mountain, the ski club was all-but defunct by 1985. Wayne agreed to host a meeting of ski enthusiasts in his basement where George explained his vision.
The prevailing mood, recalls George, was: “We don’t know how good an idea this is, but if we don’t do it, someone else might and they won’t do it right.”
The group agreed that if George could secure funding for the project, the ski club would run it as a non-profit. By the fall of 1986, George – then a sometimes reporter with the former Coast News – had secured more than $150,000 in federal funding and another $20,000 from the province.
Yet another Franklin Road resident, Paul Anslow, was contracted to build the cabins at Sechelt airport. The cabins would then be disassembled and flown by helicopter to be reassembled on site. Forestry company, Canfor, and the Sunshine Coast Regional District donated timber, Sechelt Creek Contracting provided logging service, Airspan donated some air time, Gibsons Building Supplies provided crane trucks and the Outdoor Recreation Council pitched in with chainsaws.
A small army of volunteers mobilized to clear trails while 18 people during the course of the project worked on the cabins.
George describes former club president and long-time member, Victor Bonaguro, “a force of nature” who could “build anything”.
“Part of the reason we were able to get funding was because we created an 11-point education plan for the workers, so they would have the tools to go out and find work afterwards,” says George. Aside from cabin-building, workers learned valuable lessons in surveying and industrial and wilderness first aid, thanks to time donated by local experts.
By the time the cabins opened to the public in 1987, the club had raised more than $300,000 for the project. But perhaps more importantly, one great idea had united governments, businesses, and local volunteers in the midst of a recession, no less.
The Tetrahedron was declared a Class A provincial park in 1995. And in 2004, recognizing the year-round activities of its members, the ski club changed its name to the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club.”
“This resource is at least as good today as when it was first built,” says George, who’s still in love with the Tetrahedron.
“I feel lucky. When you walk in a forest that’s never been logged, it just feels different. It’s wonderful to be there.”
- For more information about the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club, visit www.tetoutdoor.ca
- Four-wheel drive and chains are essential for visiting the Tetrahedron. For more information about the park, visit www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks
- For an armchair view of the Tetrahedron, visit Coast adventurer Quinn Barabash’s website at captainquinn.com and see his video at captainquinn.com/adventure-video-blog/
Summer comes late to Bachelor Lake, pictured here in June.
Taking the plunge
Expert kayaker, Bernardo Barajas, helps guide the Sunwolf raft down the Elaho. Eric Beckstead photos
There was a time when bonding with my son Ryan meant getting on the floor and building a train track. He’s almost 15 and not really into that any more.
Chances are he’s also not into having his dad land on top of him, soaking wet, in a 16-foot inflatable raft. But there we were, a chaotic display of arms, legs, neoprene wetsuits and lifejackets – a triumph of survival over style.
The Elaho River has a way of breaking the ice like that.
The night before we’d come to the Sunwolf Centre at Alice Lake near Squamish. In a cozy little cabin, we’d fallen asleep listening to the rain and the swollen Cheakamus River roaring by. It was still raining the next morning as we ate a huge breakfast at Fergie’s Café.
At the stern, guide Bob Vranich and his five-man crew navigate Class 4 rapids on the Elaho.
“The water level’s up 40 per cent over yesterday,” says our guide Bob Vranich with a big smile. “It could get a little spicy out there today,” he adds. For a moment I wish Ryan and I were building train tracks again.
During the hour’s school-bus drive north to the “put-in,” we glimpse the Elaho from the logging road. It looks angry, all foam and froth with some mist thrown in. It feels a bit like driving into a Lord of the Rings movie.
The 18-kilometre stretch of the Elaho we’re to raft features several stretches of Class 4 rapids, Bob tells us. They have names like Cheeseball, Devil’s Elbow, 50-50, and Steamroller. The International Scale of River Difficulty spans Class 1 (easy) to Class 6 (impassable unless you’re Chuck Norris). It defines Class 4 as follows:
Long rapids; waves high, irregular; dangerous rocks; boiling eddies; best passages difficult to scout; scouting mandatory first time; powerful and precise maneuvering required. Demands expert boatman and excellent boat and good quality equipment.
“It’s OK,” I reassure Ryan. “I grew a beard for this.”
There are few more effective ways to wake up than leaping off a 40-foot cliff into the 4-degree waters of the Elaho River.
More reassuring to both of us is Bob’s track record, and the fact that expert kayaker Bernardo Barajas happens to be a doctor and will be scouting and, if necessary, rescuing. Bob’s in his 10th year of endless summers – raft guiding in New Zealand and Chile during our winters, with spells in Switzerland, Guatemala, India and Nepal thrown in. He’s rafted the Zambezi in Africa, and last month was leading a tour through the Grand Canyon. He has also appeared in National Geographic movies and on Outdoor Life Network TV.
After a lengthy safety talk on land and a quick paddling tutorial in an eddy, we’re finally in the thick of the waves, leaning as far out as we dare and paddling hard. Conditions on the Elaho change daily, and Bernardo is a little way ahead, scouting for debris and signalling to Bob the best passage. Five of us respond to Bob’s steady stream of commands and we paddle our way through Reflection Waves – a knockout combination of waves where the river pummels a vertical wall of rock and rebounds on itself. Then it’s on to Devil’s Elbow, where the river takes a jarring 120-degree turn to the right. I don’t think any of us expected conditions so intense, so soon, but Bob coaches us through the worst of it and into calmer waters.
“This is awesome,” says Ryan quietly with a grin.
Bob wields two massive oars from the stern and steers us towards a large eddy and a cliff face where natural steps lead to a ledge about 40 feet up. Bob invites us to climb up and leap off the ledge. When I realize he’s not kidding, I follow Ryan and the others out of the boat and up to the ledge. I’m sure there’s a lesson about peer pressure here, but Ryan jumps before I can tell him. Legs shaking, I have no choice but to jump, too.
Me and the boy – in our element.
It’s breathtaking, charging all my senses and actually warming me to the core. I’m laughing as Ryan helps pull me into the boat and I fall on top of him. We’ve all taken the plunge and camaraderie replaces any lingering paranoia about falling in.
It’s just as well because more challenging rapids are ahead. But first there’s time for lunch – barbecued wild B.C. salmon with salad, hot chocolate and a fire. On a sandy beach, Bernardo has everything set up for our arrival and we’re glad of the shelter as rain intensifies. The food is every bit as good as breakfast at Fergie’s and welcome fuel for the exertions ahead.
On the second leg of our journey I begin to appreciate our surroundings. Above the cliff faces of the Elaho Canyon and far above the gnarled ranks of fir, hemlock and cedar are numerous silver streaks lining the Tantalus Mountains – waterfalls created by the incessant rain and snow melt. Bob points out Butterfly Falls, a cluster of waterfalls that on windy days evaporate before reaching the canyon floor.
As the mist clears we glimpse the peaks of Mount Caley and Mount Fee. Later we glide past a wall of dirty snow two storeys high, the legacy of an avalanche that carried trees and boulders to briefly dam the river earlier this spring. This trip is equal parts education and adventure.
The adventure returns and mounts steadily through House Rock, Playground, Cheeky Monkey and Little Steamroller – whitewater sections that climax in the main event, Steamroller. It’s the biggest rapid of the trip; a wall of water that Bob had earlier warned us would be as big as the boat is long. It doesn’t disappoint. After skirting an ominous watery hole atop Freight Train rapid, we manoeuvre left, and then right to hit an immense wave called Wu-Tang, head-on.
Behold the Steamroller! Resistance is futile!
As the boat crests we all seem to be paddling thin air before descending like a rollercoaster into a curtain of spray that drenches us all. We might have high-fived but for gripping our paddles so tightly. We’re soon back into rapids named 50-50, (“You don’t need me to explain why it’s called 50-50, right?” shouts Bob, laughing) Tombstone, and Aiden’s Alley. Somewhere in the mix, a wave catches us sideways and dislodges Ryan and me from our seats. Thankfully, we’re sent sprawling into and not out of the boat.
Our final minutes of the trip are spent quietly floating through “the Braids,” a gentle stretch of the river punctuated by fallen trees and gravel bars. It’s a welcome rest.
Back at the Sunwolf Centre, Ryan and I snack on goodies at Fergie’s Café and relive a day neither of us will ever forget. “We should do this again next year,” I say.
“Let’s do it again next week!” says Ryan.
If you go:
A full-day Elaho River expedition costs $155 per person and includes lunch, post-trip snacks, full wetsuit and related gear, plus a professional guide. Participants must be at least 12 years old and weigh more than 90 pounds.
For more information about the Sunwolf Centre and its other trips, services and accommodation, visit www.sunwolf.net or call 1-877-806-8046.
More Eric Beckstead photos, click here.
Whistler spring break for parents: Kids optional
No child was harmed during the creation of this obviously staged photo. (Really.)
What to do with your kids? It’s the theme of every spring break travel story. We all love our kids, but let’s face it, they cramp our style sometimes.
So how about spring break for parents? Have we not earned a little indulgence?
From the poolside hammocks at the Scandinave Spa in Whistler, yes. From the tranquil cross-country ski trails of Callaghan Valley, certainly. From the excitement found atop a throbbing 4-stroke Bombardier snowmobile, hell yeah!
The best part of a trip can be in the planning, but sometimes it’s easier to leave it to experts. Enjoy Whistler offers personalized service to ensure travellers strapped for time can still enjoy a memorable visit, with or without children. In 72 hours, I drove fast, fired rifles, relaxed in a spa and skied till I dropped. I think I may have even had a better time than my kids.
Some of it was hard work though. Take the Biathlon Experience, for example, a two-hour immersion into the oldest winter sport of them all. At the Whistler Olympic Park in Callaghan Valley, adults can try the sport, a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship. Aside from one regrettable hunting trip in Ireland 20 years ago (the rabbit got away), I’ve never done either. That was soon apparent to my instructor Antoine, who gently coached me through the finer points of skate skiing. In contrast to classic cross-country skis, skate skis are thinner, trickier, and faster.
“Tougher to learn, but easier to master,” said Antoine, who should know. He started 30 years ago, when he was 22 months old.
After some advice on balancing and edging, I began shifting my weight from side to side, achieving a clumsy version of V-skating – no poles, just pushing off with one ski and repeating with the other. We moved on to the classic diagonal stride, coordinating a forward poling arm with the opposite driving leg. Antoine made it look like ballet, all grace and elegance. I looked like Bambi with haemorrhoids.
Ignore the snow, gusty winds, racing heartbeat and the burrito you ate for lunch, and just focus on the grapefruit-size target 50 metres away.
I was exhausted by the time we reached the Biathlon Range, where I at least got to lie down. It was the part I’d been waiting for: Firing a 22-calibre rifle.
Antoine demonstrated, telling me to focus on my breathing, and pointing out that with snow and gusty winds, a racing heartbeat won’t improve my chances of hitting a grapefruit-size target, 50 metres away. I hit five out of five. Would the Whistler Olympic Park really go to such lengths to make me feel good?
“The size of grapefruits, you say?” my wife whispered to me later that evening through the mist of a eucalyptus steam bath at Whistler’s Scandinave Spa. It wasn’t a whisper of hushed reverence; in fact I detected a hint of sarcasm. Talking among guests is strongly discouraged at Scandinave, which offers hydrotherapy and massage packages. The hydrotherapy comprises outdoor baths – some hot, some cold – with a sauna, steam room and solarium.
We followed the hot-cold relaxation sequence three or four times, and aside from the occasional gasp in the Nordic plunge pools, we observed the spa’s code of silence. There was plenty of time to talk, back at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. Our kids were making the most of the hotel’s pools and hot tubs, where silence is discouraged. The hotel is more progressive than most when it comes to children. Not only do its chefs offer a children’s menu that is actually healthy (and delicious), its gym offers guided fitness training for seven to 17-year-olds.
"Yeah, it's Ryan ... wait a second, my dad's taking a picture."
On Blackcomb the next day, my son Ryan explained to me Whistler Blackcomb Live, the new Telus Mobile app. Track your runs using GPS, clock distances travelled, vertical shredded and maximum speeds. As if further proof were needed that Ryan’s cool and I’m not, the app is available on his iPhone, but not on my Blackberry. I was stressed to learn that the app logged Ryan’s fastest speed at almost 80 km/h. But then I’m a 44-year-old dad who skis: As long as Ryan’s mum doesn’t find out, he’ll be fine.
Not that any of us were slowing down the following day. The biggest adrenaline rush of the weekend came courtesy of Canadian Snowmobile Adventures’ Callaghan Cruiser tour. After getting geared up in helmets, gloves and heavy waterproof jackets, our guide Morgan gave us a detailed safety talk about the Bombardier snowmobiles and the conditions ahead. The engine sparked to life, and I was actually a little nervous until Ryan leaned into my ear and told me to step on it.
The Callaghan Cruiser tour may be billed as ‘family friendly’, but I still felt just slightly rebellious whizzing around wide and winding trails in a blizzard. We followed our guide Morgan to a frozen lake near Northair, a former gold mine, where we could really let loose on the wide-open flat.
The snow fell as thick as the traffic we encountered on the drive back to Horseshoe Bay. The backcountry snowmobile route might have been quicker. Not to mention more fun!
- Enjoy Whistler specializes in planning and booking the perfect Whistler vacation. Find a lower price within 72 hours of booking your reservation and Enjoy Whistler will match it and refund the difference, or cancel your reservation without penalty. Call 1 888 882-8858 or visit www.enjoywhistler.com
- For more details about spring-ski packages at Fairmont Chateau Whistler, visit www.fairmont.com/whistler
White and wild on Dakota Ridge
If cross-country skiing is a little slow for you, tobogganing should get your adrenaline racing on Dakota Ridge.
Forty minutes ferry-ride from West Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast is better known for The Beachcombers, scout camps and verdant shorelines. People don’t typically associate this 140-kilometre peninsula with snow. But there it is, several feet of the stuff, just waiting to be played in.
You just have to look up.
There's cross-country skiing for all ages on Dakota Ridge.
Poking through the clouds about 1,200 metres above the beaches and pretty parks is Dakota Ridge, one of the best cross-country ski destinations in the last place you’d expect to find it. Between November and March, if it’s raining at sea level, there’s a good chance it’s snowing up there.
And it’s only a 20-minute drive from sea level.
“You can come up for a couple of hours and be in a completely different world,” says Craig Moore, a cross-country skier and long-time member of the Dakota Ridge Winter Recreation Society, a non-profit group working to promote the area. “For cross-country skiing it beats anywhere on the west coast.”
It’s pretty good for tobogganing and snowshoeing, too.
A 620-hectare (1,532 acres) plateau atop a working watershed, Dakota Ridge offers a rolling landscape of stunted old growth hemlock and yellow cedar. On a clear day you can see the North Shore mountains, the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island beyond – even Mount Baker down in Washington State.
There are 13 kilometres of groomed trails for cross-country skiers on Dakota Ridge.
Cross-country skiers will find 13 kilometres of groomed Nordic trails, all of them signposted and colour-coded according to degree of difficulty. Professional engineer Reidar Zapf-Gilje, who prepared Callaghan Valley’s 2010 Nordic Olympic course, designed Dakota Ridge’s trail network.
“In many cross-country skiing areas you’re skiing through woods and you don’t see too much,” says Zapf-Gilje.
“Dakota Ridge is way up there in terms of esthetics. Its real strength is its potential for recreation and citizen [cross-country] races.”
Jamie Mani hopes that potential will be realized. Mani owns Alpha Adventures, a Wilson Creek outdoor-adventure store specializing in guided snowshoe and cross-country ski touring on the Ridge.
When it's not snowing, the views from Dakota Ridge can be spectacular.
“One of the great things about this place is its proximity to so many other activities,” says Mani. “Someone can literally be out snowshoeing in the morning up in the mountains and then golfing or kayaking in the afternoon.
“And for Nordic skiing we have excellent potential because of great snowfall and a blend of flat and rolling trails. We have been skiing on the Ridge as late as May in previous years.”
Snowshoers will find their own trails and there’s plenty of room for hiking and tobogganing. You’ll find a parking lot, warming hunt and toilet at the trailhead.
The turnoff for Dakota Ridge is at the top of Field Road in Wilson Creek, about half way between Gibsons and Sechelt, and 20 kilometres drive from BC Ferries’ Langdale terminal. For many years, the unplowed access road to Dakota’s trailhead made it a ridge too far for some. In recent years the 11-kilometre road has been upgraded to allow for regular plowing, but four-wheel drive vehicles equipped with chains are still the way to go.
Or take advantage of Alpha Adventure’s shuttle service.
- To learn more about Dakota Ridge, visit http://www.scrd.ca/Dakota-Ridge
- For road updates and snow conditions on the Ridge, visit www.suncoastcentral.com/outdoor-reports.asp.
- To book cross-country ski lessons, a guided tour, equipment rentals or shuttle service up to Dakota Ridge, call Alpha Adventures at 1 604 885-8838 or visit www.outdooradventurestore.ca
Vicious cycle: Biking the Big Apple’s core and beyond
You try and raise your kids right - Minutes into the Five Boro bike ride and Emma's nabbed by NYPD.
F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Manhattan. In The Great Gatsby, he described its “first wild promise of all the mystery and all the beauty in the world,” when viewed from the Queensboro Bridge.
Chances are Fitzgerald wasn’t crossing the Queensboro on a bike when he wrote those words.
With 30,000 other cyclists.
In the pouring rain.
I looked back at Manhattan over a river of bobbing bike helmets on the Queensboro Bridge and saw imposing shades of grey, the tops of skyscrapers concealed by even greyer clouds.
It was Kilometre 24 of New York’s annual TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour, a 68-kilometre celebration of car-free cycling through Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The week before, temperatures hit 32 degrees Celsius. Today, the day of the big ride, the reason we’d trained together as a family, our motivation for flying almost 4,000 kilometres to New York, the mercury was barely nudging 10.
30,000 cyclists brave the rain in New York's Five Boro bike ride.
“This is actually fun,” said my daughter Emma, without even a hint of sarcasm. “Really!” she added, registering my look of disbelief.
Emma was clearly enjoying being the centre of attention as one of the tour’s younger participants. Soon after our 8-a.m. mass start from Battery Park and ride through the concrete canyon of Sixth Avenue, she’d been noticed by three NYPD bike cops as we snaked through Central Park.
“Hey, look at that kid, she’s barely breaking a sweat!” shouted one.
“What’s your name kid?” shouted another. “Well, listen Emma, don’t be thinking of beating us to the finish line, Emma. We can ticket you.”
We seemed destined to bump into the trio throughout the day, despite the numbers of riders involved and the distance covered. Accommodating 30,000 cyclists through New York’s five boroughs and across five major bridges must be a logistical minefield.
The fact that the tour has been staged annually since 1977 surely helps, but it’s only in recent years the city has begun to embrace bike culture on the other 364 days of the year. New York has expanded its urban bicycle network by 320 kilometres since 2006 while the number of New Yorkers commuting by bike has doubled in the last six In one of the busiest cities in the world, home to seven million people and 13,000 honking yellow taxi cabs, where rush hour starts at 5 a.m. and finishes about 15 hours later, riding a bike here is not as intimidating as you might think.
The day before the Five-Boro Bike Tour we had rented bikes from Liberty Bicycles five blocks south of Central Park. With some trepidation we cycled our aluminum hybrids west to the Hudson River Greenway, the longest stretch of a series of bike paths that circle the island of Manhattan. While busy with walkers, joggers and inline skaters, the greenway with its dedicated lanes and traffic signals is a great place to get acclimatized to biking in New York.
And after our first two days spent hopping on and off open-top buses visiting the Big Apple’s more obvious attractions — Empire State Building, for example — we felt a little less like tourists. (You can hardly visit New York and not visit such places, but be prepared for long lineups and short tempers.)
Crossing the Queensboro Bridge, over a century old, much loved by F. Scott Fitzgerald and made famous by Simon and Garfunkel’s 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy).
With the eight-lane Joe DiMaggio Highway rumbling just a few metres to our left, it felt good to be setting our own pace, gliding south along the Hudson River past waterfront tennis courts, batting cages and soccer fields, piers and playgrounds. We had little trouble navigating the older, narrower streets of Greenwich Village, where we hooked up with a two-wheeled tour conducted by Levi Zwerling and Bike The Big Apple.
The company takes small groups of cyclists beyond the tourist trail through New York’s diverse neighbourhoods.
Nowhere epitomized that more than the Bedford- Stuyvesant neighbourhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where we cycled empty streets in eerie silence.
Home to a burgeoning population of Satmar, a Hasidic movement of mostly eastern European Jews who survived World War II, this well-kept community of row houses and apartments might just be the quietest place in all of New York’s five boroughs during Saturday sabbath. Conservatively dressed families, distinguished by men wearing oversized fur hats called shtreimel, ambled along the sidewalks ignoring the less modestly clothed cyclists in their midst.
By contrast, we stopped for a noisy lunch and beer-tasting at the Brooklyn Brewery, whose 150-year-old premises have been restored to their original bare brick and timber finery.
Various estimates put the number of community gardens in New York at more than 600, with 10 per cent of those located in the hip East Village and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We paused to admire one, only for two of its creators to stop by and supplement Levi’s tour with their own version.
“That happens a lot in the East Village,” said Levi with a smile.
The ride back to Manhattan across Brooklyn Bridge’s busy boardwalk proved to be the most hair-raising part of the day. As we weaved in and out of pedestrians, clearly we no longer thought of ourselves as tourists — or at least not the kind of tourists who wander in and out of bike lanes. (Think Stanley Park seawall on any summer weekend.)
The experience helped prepare us for the Five Boro Bike Tour, which required plenty of weaving with almost 30,000 companions jockeying for space. While we passed expensivelooking Cannondales, Cervélos, Konas and Bianchis all requiring various repairs — usually flats — our trusty rentals kept us moving through the Bronx where churchgoers smiled at us in sympathy as the rain intensified.
Oh, the humanity! Bikers take cover under the RFK Bridge in Astoria Park during the TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour.
In Queens we took refuge from the elements at Astoria Park under the RFK Bridge with thousands of other soaked riders. In the trendy Brooklyn neighbourhood of DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) at Kilometre 43 we fell inside a busy Starbucks for a family meeting to answer the following:
Quit the tour here and shortcut to our hotel for hot showers and hot food, or slog on through the deluge to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the finish with everyone else at Staten Island?
“We’re going to come last if we stay in here all day,” said Emma, who clearly had decided on behalf of the family, much to her brother Ryan’s irritation.
So it was with some pride the Judd parents watched their kids high-five each other at mid-span of the Verrazano, once the world’s largest suspension bridge and closed to bikes on all but this day of the year.
Close ahead and all downhill was the finish at Staten Island.
Seven hours earlier, back in Manhattan and still half asleep, we’d cycled down Broadway and through Times Square (on a designated bike lane, no less!) to the starting line at Battery Park.
From here on the Verrazano, the city’s said to look spectacular on a clear day. Pelted by torrential rain and surrounded by leaden clouds, the view we got was lousy.
And we didn’t care.
If you go:
Bike New York organizes the annual TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour and has a wealth of information on its website (www.bikenewyork.org) for anyone planning to cycle in the Big Apple. While the Five Boro tour is the biggest event of its kind in the U.S., Bike New York also stages smaller rides throughout the year, details of which you’ll find on its website.
Otherwise, to plan a twowheeled adventure in New York, visit nyc.gov/dotnews and click on “Bicyclists” on the left-hand side. There you can download or order the comprehensive New York City Cycling Map. Not only does the map illustrate the routes to ride, it also lists dozens of bike rental stores throughout New York’s five boroughs.
We rented reliable adult and children’s bikes from Liberty Bicycles (libertybikesny.com or 212 757-2418) in Midtown Manhattan (9th Avenue and 55th Street).
Bike The Big Apple (bikethebigapple.com or 1 877-865-0078) offers several different guided tours throughout the week and can tailor tours to suit individual requests.
New York offers hundreds of hotel options, but hotels that accommodate bikes are harder to find. The Buckingham Hotel (888 511-1900), two blocks south of Central Park, is well located and bike friendly.
After a long, wet bike ride, nothing aids recovery quite like new sun glasses.
We found New York’s subway system to be safe, reliable and relatively affordable at $2 a trip or $7 for a day-pass.While Manhattan is a great place to walk and browse, with a little planning you can easily navigate via subway between the city’s major sights. Hop-on, hop-off double-decker bus tours operated by CitySights NY (citysightsny.com) hit the highlights for $44 (adults) or $34 (children from five to 11) for a 24-hour period.
In the same vein, New York’s CityPass (citypass.com) at $79 (adults) or $59 (youth, 13-17) will buy you entry to six main attractions, including the Empire State Building observatory. It will also get you to the front of most lineups. For detailed tourism information, including the city’s calendar of events, visit nycgo.com
Nev Judd: Online and out there 