Comp...Night Ride on Kirkup.

 There's something about touring up and riding down at night. Everything seems quieter, more peaceful and almost make believe. On this particular night the stars were shining bright and the new snow was deep. We headed up to the Rossland Range. Being that it is closest place to Castlegar (where we are working right now) it was an obvious choice.

  For ease of night riding we like to keep to straight forward tours (Mt.Ymir being our last) mostly for ease of travel. Mt.Kirkup offers an easy way up, a summit, and a sweet run down the dog leg. We parked at the typical trail head and followed an already broken trail all the way to the summit ridge where the trail disappeared. After some easy ridge walking with the lights of Trail below, we topped out. As per usual the clouds rolled in before I could set up a good pic. Too bad. The views at night are very cool. The main entrance to the dog leg run was fully windloaded, prompting us to skirt the trees until the dogleg turned. From this point down turned out to be some of the lightest, deepest snow I've rode in the Rossland area. Every face shot was lit up tenfold by our high powered lights, making for an awesome experience. Once at the bottom we hiked back to our car and headed home for some sweet, sweet sleep!

Possibly my favourite pic ever. Taken at the first clearing on our way up Kirkup.

The lights of town made for a cool ass sky.