Old man winter is getting closer, the sun is getting lower, and, worst of all, my insurance runs out in early December, so today Mother Nature provided us with a respite between systems and me with a bonus ride, albeit a short one. Andy was locked inside in a self-induced purgatorial work-binge and Ryan had no oil in the KTM's sightglass, Ouch. So it was a lone ride today. I like solo rides, and thought I'd stay local (Lantzville Foothills to Nanoose) and look for some new trails. Found some good'uns!
Sundew Main: having a slash when I see three dirt bikes heading north-east, way below. They take a curious trail that I've never seen before. The elevation lets my eye follow them, and I listen to the throttle blips. It sounds good. I follow.
Their tracks and lead to this gate, after passing several looking juicy looking trail junctions on the way. Curious as to where I am, I get the trusty iPhone out. Sywash Ridge Road it tells me. Never heard of it. But handy if you need another route into the foothills/Sundew main...Below, the gap is adequate...
Backtracking from the gate for 80 metres or so, and taking a partially hidden single track path to the right you hit some hydro-lines. I turned left (north-east) and came out to Lorenzen Lane in Lantzville (I know, never heard of it either, but it's off Superior Road). Could've gone right, but it had a more "civilized , dog walking look" , so I decided to leave that for another day.
Turning back, and taking some alternative routes into the woods on the west side of the hydrolines, you get into some great trails with some very tasty side routes...This is FAR steeper than it looks from the wide-angle elevation-flattening iPhone cam....
And another.
Above...Ingrid peeks over the ravine trail...You can see the memorial off to the right. Below, Ingrid-eye view from the top down. There's a slight right hand descending trail across a creek and up the other side. It's a great ride (vid at end of this drivel).
There's a little footbridge across the creek.
Footbridge with trail down from the memorial
Above: Overview of the route; Below: Close up of the Lorenzen Lane and Sywash Ridge Road access routes
Side note. I have to mention the memorial for a young man that I came across. It's a moving tribute to newly married man (August, 2011) called Garrett Paquette who passed away 6 months after his marriage, on November 11th, 2011. He left a grieving wife and an obviously loving family. If you take this route, you will see the moving memorial to Garrett. The memorial was erected for two reasons: one to remember Mr. Paquette, and to "safeguard others not to fall into the ravine below". The ravine is the one I rode down, pictured above.
The fenced entrance, maple tree, and bench serve not only as a tribute to Garret Paquette, but it was also designed to shepherd others across the ravine safely. You can see that without it, it might be tempting ride straight on towards the gently rising and curving trail on the other side of the ravine. This is what Garett did. It cost him his life.
Be safe out there. Ride on the right, and slow down. See you next season.
Ok, it took me a nearly a week to produce this video as the much vaunted free software I raved about last week (GoPro Studio) has developed a bug. I lost the entire 3 hour production two days ago as it crashed. Since then, and while re doing the video, it crashed every ten minutes. I have re-installed, rebooted without success. Like me old step dad said, "you get what you pay for"...Don't forget to turn the settings up to HD. If you don't like the music, no complaints...just mute it :)
So, yesterday my iPod decided that it didn't want anything to do with my time lapse movie app. I tried everything I could think of to get them to make up and start cooperating with each other, but after completely re-conbobulating my iPod's memory and polishing it's norgon adapter plate module, the app still refused to even copy onto the device. $4.99 down the pipe! Time for a new app!
I downloaded five different time lapse aps from iTunes and then buckled down to begin an intense workout of filming trail rides using each one, (phffff).
Here they are... the little darlings:
1. This was the one that I was using, "TimeLapse." I really liked it before it decided to cause me so much grief. It's easy to use, relatively quick when processing movies and the final product is very good. I liked that this app allowed you to get really close to 1:1 speeds, so you could create well-detailed movies that were only slightly speeded up. All the others do the cloud moving or flower opening thing, but this was perfect for filming rides and hikes without making them too fast. BUT IT STOPPED WORKING ON MY IPOD! Stupid app!
2. "Time Lapse!" Really liked this one when it ran on my iPad, but it also refused to even copy onto my iPod (4th gen). What can I say... I hate it. It will take a frame each 1/2 second, which is pretty good for my uses, although the output movie runs a a bit too fast. Entirely useless on my iPod though.
3. "iLapse" Who thought of THAT name? It's right up there with ProLapse! With that said, it's the best of the bunch so far. Still only goes down to a frame every half second, which makes the final movie a bit too fast, but the interface is very friendly and intuitive. The processing, when movie crunching at the end, is a bit slow, although the quality is higher than most of the others. I like it, but I'm still looking for one that will speed up the ride just a bit, rather than turn it into a Keystone Cops episode. (This one is used in the example below).
4. "Timelapse Camera" is really clunky! I must be honest, I haven't really given it much of a chance yet. After pressing the wrong buttons fifty thousand times, I decided the design wasn't too friendly and moved on to the others. I'll get back to you on this one after I've changed the air in my tires. [edit] Okay, my bad... this one is actually pretty good: I've discovered that I can get the captures down to 1/4 second, which is the best so far. The output can be reduced to about 15fps, giving you a finished movie that runs at around 6x speed. That's perfect for showing rides and it's the best I've seen out of these apps so far. I'll append an example movie from this app when I get a chance.
5. "Lapse It Pro" is well promoted and I was led to believe, (like a sheep to slaughter), that this was the one for me. Not so--the interface is friendly and it looks good, but I couldn't stop it from working like a camera program that just takes lots of pictures which it throws up on the screen to create a jumpy horror show movie. Very jerky end product and not what I'm after. Also, this thing makes a continuous shutter sound which I couldn't stop. Great app if your torturing someone!
6. "Quick Lapse HD" was fantastic for about twenty minutes, but all I get now is a black screen with a nice movie camera logo on it. Very fancy while it lasted. Needs to be much more robust than that.
Alright, enough drivel. Here is a time lapse movie of today's brief ride from Harwood Workaround to Kidney lake. I used ProLapse., er... I mean iLapse:
output frame rate......... 30fps
take frame every.......... .5secs
total vid length............. manual
total session duration... manual
Nanaimo is lucky enough to have two Kidney Lakes. Don't ask me how that happened! Perhaps it was some cartographer's bad joke at attempting an anatomically correct map, or perhaps it was the more likely result of general confusion on the part of loggers and other visitors. Anyway, we have two--and one has remained a mystery to me for all this time since the local logging company closed off the main entrance to this region some time ago. (Why they ever did this raises a few questions too. Kidney Lk. II is such a buggered-up mess of dead logs, I have to wonder if they're saving the embarrassment of people actually finding it. Maybe not, they have gone to the effort of leaving a scabby, thin boundary around it to maintain its pristine healthy look. FfffPbwaaahahaha).
I've attempted to find Kidney Lk. II a few times using trails from the east side that run through the university's excrement infested trails, but I've had little luck until very recently. One riding friend, Sebastian, located the hidden trails a few weeks ago and his success was followed up recently by Paul who discovered Sebastian's route in from the Doumont Trail shortly before the "tank traps." I came crawling along in third place to claim my own victory, although I did need Paul's poxy GPS track to actually get in there.
Here's the route:
The Route (Click Image to Enlarge).
1. Beginning of Dumont Trail at the shot up "No Dumping" sign 2. Turned right shortly before the tank traps (This is at the first big pool in the road during the wet season. It's the road pool that most bikes avoid by taking the shortcut to the left to eliminate the pond and the entire wet corner). Actually, there's another right you can take 100m before you get to this one. 3. You have some choices here. It is possible to avoid the steep hill and the awkward trenches. I like to go right at the wreck (to avoid the hill), next left to the bottom of the hill and then just follow the serpentine along to your right until you reach the logging roads. 4. Rode through the logging roads using the old maze solution: always turn left until you're out. This brought me close to Kidney Failure Lake really quickly, so I rummaged through the undergrowth to get a photo, (see below). 5. This road passes above Round Lake. I'm not sure it's worth the hike down, since you can get there easily from the Sundew Main road on the other side. There's fish in there, but it's not one of the better local lakes. 6. I took a good look at the road block that I often pass from the other side. It's a complete mystery why they went to the bother of blocking this route through. I'm sure it was well planned and extremely necessary to ensure good environmental logging practice though. ;) 7. Stopped off to view the "lake" from this side too, (see photo below). 8. Did this loop for absolutely no reason at all. 9. Turned left at an entrance into the uni lands near the concrete pad (truck loading point) to follow a known trail that exits near the Biggs/Dumont intersection.
10. If you turn right here, on what looks like the main trail, it comes to a dead end. Go left when travelling east. (It's weird riding this trail in this direction. I always come up it the other way). 11. Found myself at the backside of a well-secured yellow gate. 12. The white bridge and exit gate to Dumont.
Some Photos:
Paul's earlier track in red and my earlier (failed) attempt to get here a week ago in pink. (There's a nasty hill where the red and pink join that made it impossible for me to get through from that direction. I walked it).
The wreck mentioned at #3. Left for the hill and right to avoid it.
(Animated gif) A 4x4 truck on his fourth attempt to make the steep hill. He did well considering his tires weren't that chunky.
Panoramic view of Kidney Lk II
Beginning of the asinine road block between Sundew Main and the Kidney Lk II area.
Peeking at the north-east end of the lake at location #7. Sorry... crap shot!
Returning at point #3. I went left.
Returning at #3. I went left again... Right is okay until you wipe out into the trench. :)
Nice to finally get in there and check the place out!
I managed to convince myself that it was only the snow at higher elevations that prevented me from blasting over Blackjack Ridge towards Lucid Lake and Mt. Benson last fall. I had my memory corrected today while facing the familiar steep and boulder strewn logging road ahead of me. "I'm not going up THAT!" I'll leave this one for Paul to sail up.
Here's today's after work ride:
1. Entered at Doumont Trail
2. "Intersection A" Left toward Boomerang Lake
3. Continued straight past Boomerang on familiar "Behind Mt. Benson" road, but turned right shortly afterwards to begin the climb up Blackjack Ridge's upper road.
4. Made the same stop as last time, turning right onto a short spur road that offers amazing views at 711m. The Blackjack Ridge road begins a steep climb where this spur begins. I rode up it for about twenty feet and decided I had better leave this one for another day. (Maybe when/if I lower my bike????)
5. Turned right, on the way back, up this fantastic narrow windy trail that leads to the Benson Trail. Followed the Benson Trail back to Boomerang Lk. (Had a quick peep to see if Paul was fishing up the lake... Not).
6. Lake intersection
7. Dropped in at Kidney Lake and fished for an hour or so. Nice trout.
150° Panoramic - Mid way up the trail that heads up Blackjack Ridge. The trail directly behind my bike winds its way along the ridge and offers amazing views. I didn't ride it this time, but it's a great addition to the ride if you're looking for photos. That's Mt. Decosmos in the distance with Mt. Hooker on it's left. (First lake lies between them).
209° Panoramic - This is the end of the road at location #4. Mt Hooker (left) and Mt Decosmos in the Background. First Lake is clearly visible in this photo in the foreground of Mt. Hooker. (If you click on the photo).
In the distance lies Mt. Whymper. (Looking left of Mt. Hooker). Crappy name for the biggest mountain out that way!
First Lake - Mt Hooker (right) - Mt. Whymper (distant left)
The power lines. Good route to Rhododendron Lake
Tomorrow's lunch from Kidney Lake. Actually there were two, but the second one is embarrassingly small and received mundo face damage from being very greedy with my hook.
After receiving complaints about my awful ipod photo posted yesterday, I decided to post an equally inedible looking trout photo today taken with my GPS. I guess I had better take my real camera with me in future. Anyway, they were delicious!!! Gotta love having trout stocked lakes close enough to ride the bike to in less than half an hour.
AND, that's a dinner plate... NOT a side plate. :)
Straight off to Kidney Lake at 4:00 today. The bite was on five minutes after I got there and it lasted for about twenty minutes, after which I fished an empty lake until 7:00. I rushed them in the door and Vicki had them in a buttery frying pan within ten minutes. There really is nothing like a fresh trout!
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