TYAX AND CHILL

By Kona Ambassador Euan Camlin

No queues, no boarding passes, no X-ray machines or security searches. The safety demonstration consisted of a single sentence; “There is the door handle if you want out.” With a touch screen GPS being the only thing in the cockpit that looks like it is from our century this feels more like time travel than what we are used to when it comes to modern air transit.

We leave Pemberton behind us and the signs of humanity’s impact on the local geography decrease with every mile we roar north. It now feels like we have gone a thousand years into the past. Looking out the window there is nothing but brutally beautiful peaks for company.

 

A few passes further on and the headset crackles into life again, this time our Aussie pilot isn’t giving us facts about the mountain ranges below but is telling us to look to our right. In a small clearing at the bottom of a massive scree slope we can just about make out a cabin and a collection of small white tents. This is Bear Paw camp where we will be spending the night after our first days riding. 

After a quick disembarking of our bikes and kit the plane rumbled off into the clouds and just like that the most amazing shuttle journey of my life was over. Now the real fun began, three days of riding in the Chilcotins.

Living like the gold miners who populated this area in the early 1900’s, eating in cabins and sleeping in tents.

Bear Paw camp living up to its name, a grizzly sending some scree slope lines at dusk.

A massive thank you to 7Mesh and Tyax Adventures for the trip and to Brian Goldstone for these riding photos. To read more about the trip and view even more of Brian’s photos check out the link below:

Flying High Riding Low