Designated as an epic mountain bike trail by IMBA ‘Comfortably Numb’ leaves you just that the next day. I suppose for some the title may mean differently but for me, and my buddies, it’s fair to say that our legs were comfortably numb for a few hours afterwards.

You can find the trail head slightly north of Whistler Village on Highway 99. A big green sign tells you that this is a black diamond run with an accumulated elevation gain of 809 metres and is 24 km long. The last 13 km of which are downhill with steep, sketchy drops.

Keeping in line with this summer’s unreal temperatures it was a hot, dry day with picturesque blue bird skies. Lucky for us, more than half the trail is under the deep forest canopy keeping the burning sun off our shoulders. The forest was dry from the season’s unusually long draught and mild snow-less winter. Amazingly, much of the moss covered trail held on to its vibrant green. Poplar trees however were prematurely losing their leaves reminding us of a typical early autumn ride back east in Ontario as bits of yellow and brown crunched under the tires.

Those thoughts quickly vanished as we turned a corner and the trail opened to reveal our first look at a snow capped mountain. And the climbing kept coming twisting and snaking its way upwards along a well defined beaten path that has surely seen many riders over the years. Definitely not Ontario.

 

 

 

With photo ops, snack and lunch break we successfully completed the ride in just over 7.5 hours. I loved the fact that both Clement and Neil did not object to me wanting to take photos and stop again for yet more photos. It makes for a longer day but at least we will have good memories. Our steeds for the day included two IBIS Mojo’s and one NORCO Range. All bikes ran beautifully and allowed us to ride with pleasure.

Thanks Clement and Neil for an amazing day. Maybe one day I’ll be back to tackle Comfortably Numb again but next time I think I’ll leave my big, heavy DSLR at home.