another alpine adventure

my friend chris booked a float plane in the chilcotin mountains northwest of lillooet on the long weekend. i met up with him in lillooet after a fantastic drive up north of hope into the hills. the road north from lytton to lillooet becomes a slim asphalt track through the arid open forest, and the views of the surrounding mountains were very personal. that could have been dangerous i suppose, as the western slopes in 2 sections were on fire.
we arrived at tyaughton lake, set up camp and went exploring on our bikes. we found some fantastic views and an entire hillside of purple wildflowers. we missed the top of the run we were looking for (the views and the flowers instead) but found some sweet singletrack at the bottom.
sunday morning we loaded our bikes on a plane and flew up to spruce lake, gaining about 500m in elevation.
our landing strip. the ride was much smoother than a commercial flight, and we got to see the mountains up close.

from the lake, we biked a steep rooty uphill singletrack gaining about 700m to cross windy pass.
approaching the pass.

after crossing over we whipped down an alpine singletrack descent into another valley. the scenery was stunning, but i had to keep reminding myself to watch the trail. i fell hard once in this section, i dont remember why.

above is the only picture of me on this post... thanks kevin (chris' friend kevin lugged all his camera equipment up the pass so he could take pictures of us).
some friends from whistler came along on the ride as well. these guys ride crazy singletrack every day and they had LEGS!

the cabin in the background, as well as the previously pictured singletrack, featured in the first scene of the groundbreaking bike movie "the collective".

from the cabin we climbed back up another pass, and then it was an hour of sweet dowhill all the way back to our campsite.
unfortunately, we didnt get to ride on day 3, b/c we were evacuated due to forest fires. they didnt affect the biking terrain, as you can see, there was no smoke in the above pictures, but fires did cut off both roads out of the area. the town of lillooet was evacuated and the wonderful hwy that i came in on was closed. we left in an rcmp led convoy down a forest service road right through the forest fires.
we couldnt really see the actual fires for the smoke until we reached the pemberton valley and looked back at the hills we had just come down.
after all that biking and dusty, smoky driving, a dip in the lake at whistler was the perfect end to an amazing weekend. thanks chris for organizing! we will definitely have to return to explore this mtn range a bit more.