Mountain biking in the white clouds

‘I’d Rather Be Biking the White Clouds’ (local bumper sticker tells it like it is)

Trei’s tattooed arm reaches out and hooks the barbed wired loop of the gate off the fence crossing the dry singletrack. It’s the first interruption to the high-alpine singletrack world we have inhabited for the last four hours and 2000 vertical metres.

“This is where we have to turn around and go back up!” he jokes. We look behind us to see the White Cloud Mountains’ snowy peaks reaching skyward. We have barely pedalled since crossing the pass poking above the steep pine forest nearly an hour of flowing descent ago. Trei is a Stanley, Idaho native who answered our queries to shuttle this ride, and has led us from the alpine scree slopes above 3000 metres through snow patches to plunging into thick forest with its mix of roots, rocks and buttery trail into the open valley. After climbing and descending through fields with alpine lakes and past the foot of the sheer walls of Castle Peak this downwards swoop has capped off what locals and interstaters have told us repeatedly is “the best damn mountain bike ride of your life. Period.”

We had found this claim pretty hard to believe. My brother and I had ridden for 14 consecutive days in the high altitude singletrack paradise of Sun Valley and its more humble neighbour, Stanley. Each day had provided a mixture of every type of riding. Gruelling granny gear climbs led to epic views and rolling ridge riding to fold into descents containing technical steeps and outright speed. While we had made a dent in the area’s eight hundred kilometres of singletrack, it was a small one. How could this ride be so much better?

Riding before the White Clouds

It had begun a fortnight earlier when we arrived to find the decomposing carcass of the Ride Sun Valley Bike Week. We had missed the festivities of burning log sprints, Gravity Enduro races, drinking, fat tyre criteriums, drinking and the US Marathon Champs by a day. We had haunted the town and trails for high-jinx missed, capitalising on the buffed trails of riders recently gone and dropped in on the PowerHouse, the festival’s unofficial waterhole. Its keg lines were dry and a handful of washed up mountain bikers lay face down next to an early 90s Salsa on display in the beer garden. With nothing to be seen but the odd advertising banner hanging in the hot sun we rode out of town and up the myriad of trails, returning to dip into the icy river rushing through the valley at day’s end. My brother and I had managed to carve out a window for a fortnight of pure riding in our obligation filled lives. After a day of up and down on the trail we laughed at old jokes, pondered the silence of a house without kids and created memories to add to the four decades worth already made.

Our early rides had revealed just what a line on a map in Sun Valley can be. Topo lines must be analysed; elevation being more important than distance. Once initiated, the area’s mountain biking maps are more exciting than the invite to your first high school ball as red dotted lines loop over passes and down close contour lines. We had sat at 1500 metres in Sun Valley’s burger joints reading off the names on the map; Chocolate Gulch, Mars Ridge, Greenhorn Gulch, Fox Creek and Edge of the World, ogling over the rides ahead. Beyond our table America passed by as Winnebagos as big as apartments wheeled through town, towing a 4WD, towing a boat. Massive fifth wheelers dwarfed them all as they tow boats with ATVs on the back, and a trailer for good measure. As large as the local riding is, America is larger still.

“Oh, that’s a hateful climb,” said Greg ‘Chopper’ Randolph, local MTB guru, Olympian and godfather of the Ride SV Festival and the area’s emergence as a backcountry riding mecca. He is responsible for the Singletrack Deficit Disorder campaign that celebrates the area as a perfect place to medicate against this illness. And singletrack there is – in spades. The trails are occasionally maintained but far from manicured as they have grown from the hiking network that is now shared amongst all trail users. Chopper sat with us to give further beta on which of these trails to savour during our fortnight.

“You come around the back of Oregon Gulch and you think you’ve knocked that ascent off, and then it really kicks you in the balls.” Climbing here is an essential component of each day. Lung busting hauls with occasional hike-a-bike but plenty of vistas to enjoy on your way up. Gravity earned. Chopper indicated the areas closed due to last year’s heavy fire season. Fires are as much a fact of life as climbing, and a topic that must be broached in every local conversation. The destroyer of trails by eradicating undergrowth that keeps the surface solid and dropping logs across the trail, they are a feature of an area of high daily temperatures and virtually no summer rainfall. “It’s a bit eroded through here,” his finger snakes along a red line running ominously through 400 feet of topographical descent, “make sure you don’t take no digger over the bars!”

“Oh, you’re going to Stanley too?” Chopper’s eyes lit up. “That’s where the real riding is.” The real riding? Before meeting him we had done a 50 km loop that had taken us over 1800 metres in elevation over six hours. That doesn’t count as real? He scribbles more lines on the map, describes insufferable climbs involving more metaphorical damage to our testicles but offering up views and descents to amply reward. Words like gnarly, sketchy, long ridgeline, buttery, miles of rock garden, loose and flowy pour into his excited descriptions. In our riding we had already found plenty of flow, the joy that an open, narrow trail of dirt through nature provides, and he outlined where we could find more.

“Oh, and this one, the traverse of the White Clouds from east to west. If you can pull it off with the shuttle, and it’s a bitch of a shuttle, this is the best mountain bike ride you will ever do. Period.” This idea was repeated to us by those in the know; local mechanics and bike bums’ eyes went dreamy when we had mentioned this ride. For another fortnight we rode flowing, buttery trail, climbing, descending, grinding and whooping. We rode a steep ascent up to Prairie Lake, a pristine pool surrounded by forest and jagged peaks before flying on a carpet of tyre width trail back to the valley floor. We had ridden to saddles that unveiled switchback riddled trail dropping away in front of us, hooked into descents that had us clinging to the bars for half an hour, rocking back in the saddle and letting our feel and reflexes negotiate the trail. We rode on everyday, exploring rides that then became an echo of memories, not believing there could be a ride at another level again.

But there at the end of the trip, after two weeks of vertical, empty backcountry riding, we found ourselves deep in the White Cloud mountains. Fourteen days of riding that made every other two-wheeled experience pale. Two weeks of riding where arm pump on the way down had replaced oxygen deprived lungs on the way up. At the gate Trei’s joke is laughed off and we point down the valley to the East Fork of the Salmon River where our shuttle out awaits. “So, that’s where our shuttle’ll be waiting,” he announces confidently and the ride feels over. We have climbed through forests, sat by a handful of alpine lakes of every blue, ridden along and down scree slopes. Climbing, descending, climbing, descending, over two saddles and then the perfect descent, through snowdrifts, rock gardens, creek crossings and flowered meadows.

Then we drop towards the road. The trail down had mixed technical skills with switchbacks, loose and firm; now it reveals the final ecosystem of the day, of the entire trip. A high altitude desert of sagebrush amongst hard packed dirt. A line of trail flows away down the valley and the perfect ride becomes transcendent. I hook in behind my brother and release the brakes as the wheels grip into the corners. It is a swooping glide down to the driving whitewater of the valley. Paradise found.