Yesterday morning I met up with a few friends for a ride at the dump. It was a cold morning so I dressed extra warm. At the dump I decided to ditch the pants and go with shorts. Add in leg armour, and I was still plenty warm. The route we took was pretty good. It had been a while since I was on trails, so I wanted something easy. We ended up on Green Ribbon, which is decidedly not an easy trail. There are some good steeps, fun rock faces, and some big jumps. I had a blast and was pretty knackered by the end. My quads felt like jelly.

At the end of the last trail we were waiting for Sean to do the last couple drops and I thought I could see some dust falling from the trees. At first I thought pine needles, but someone else said hail. Then we all realized it was snow. 🙂

The sad part of the ride came as we were ascending fun trail. There was lots of ribbons tied to trees and we could see some stakes in the ground marked PL. Sean pointed out that the ribbons were for a fall boundary and the the stakes were property line markers. Looks like we might be losing more trails to a housing development. Years ago people used to call Victoria a biking mecca. We had a few excellent areas to ride, with more in Cobble Hill, Sooke, and Duncan close by. Now we have the dump and Duncan. A few trails at the dump have been lost to development. It is sad for me to see these trails get eaten since the trail system at the dump was a place I grew up. I strongly feel that mountain biking changed my life and helped shape me. Seeing some of this getting torn up tears me up.