Mount Habrich - Chasing Trail Ep. 38

Changing trail conditions and hordes of visitors force Kevin Landry and Joel Ducrot to experiment with a new approach to route planning in Squamish.

Seeking unridden paths, they embark on an epic adventure on the challenging terrain around Mount Habrich. LIVE NOW!

BC, Canada. Squamish BC is an epicenter of Mountain Biking in North America, no doubt you’ve heard of it. But the question is: are there any trails or loops that haven’t been ridden by the committed locals or the hordes of summer visitors? Challenge accepted for Kevin Landry and Joel Ducrot on their adventure to find new routes on known terrain.

The Premise 

Summer 2022 was abnormally hot and dry and, with a large community of shredders and visitors, to say the trails were a bit ‘blown out’ would qualify as the understatement of the decade. Berms turned to piles of talcum powder and you’d need to leave a 20-30 second gap between riders just for the dust to settle.

To find decent conditions, and avoid ripping the valley’s trails to shreds, required a different approach to ride planning. Bonus points if we could do an epic ride that didn't require any driving or truck shuttling… enter Mount Habrich.

The Ride

Habrich is a granite tower that sits at 1800m/5900ft above my house and is crisscrossed with hiking trails, climber access trails, and trials moto trails. From 800m down to 200m(ish) is a mountain bike trail network built primarily on granite rock. Linking something up from my house through this area and back through the mountain bike trails directly to the Backyard Pub had the potential to be an incredible day in the hills. Granted the route was a bit unorthodox…

The plan was to link up a mish-mash of portions of different routes; fire road climb, ski touring ascents, ridgetop hiking trails, climber access trails, and trials moto trails, which would lead us right to the top of the mountain bike trail network.

On the map it looked great, and in reality, it was great… but just a bit harder than we expected, in fact, we ran out of light by the time we got to the actual bike trails and ripped the fire road in darkness directly to the pub.

4:00 AM - Leg 1 A weird ride calls for a weird crew, so arriving at my house at 4:00am were some of the weirdest. Joel Ducrot, shredder and Swiss transplant to Squamish. One time Joel rode a 115km Chilcotins day, off the couch… granted it laid him out on the couch for a few days when he returned but if it was me I’d probably still be out there dead at KM 86. Jason Ammerlan, J is my neighbour and the only guy on our team confident with ropes and vertical rock environments… more on that later. Peter Wojnar, another Squamish local who’s known for his fair share of big hair brained rides. For instance that 115km Chilcotins day was Woj’s idea. Margus Riga, infamous mountain bike adventure photographer who’s never afraid of a big ride or a good time. He’s been hogging up hills longer than Woj has been alive and seems to get fitter every year. 6:45AM - Sunrise Ski Touring Route  After a solid 2 hours of fire road climbing, we entered the first singletrack portion of the day. A ski touring route up to ridgetop. What is a mellow skin in the winter is a bike-on-the-back root-filled stairmaster in the summer. Off to a good start… at least the sun was rising.