Adventure Recap: Tyax Float Plane Drop in BC

When your friends invite you on a float plane bike drop, despite having little mountain biking experience, you don’t say no.

I got a last minute flight to BC earlier this summer, and after an epic weekend on Anderson Lake at a friends cabin, followed by working remotely in Whistler, we started planning for my first-ever float plane bike drop… and second-ever trail ride.

We started the morning eating oats, having a coffee, and meticulously packing lunch, water and gear… all feeling pretty sure we were forgetting something important. And when you’re getting dropped off on a plane in the middle of the Chilcotin Mountains, you can’t really forget anything — especially bear spray (and an extra bike tube).

Our pilot Paul picked us up at 8am. Because we had five people, we had to take our bike tires off so everyone would fit. I was thankful there were far more experienced pals with me to help with that task (thanks, Dylan and Ben 🥰). Our packs went in the plane rudders (bear spray going off in a plane is not a good scene), and off we squeezed into the cabin.

The views were spectacular, as they are in the middle of nowhere in interior BC. We told Paul our plan: we were getting dropped off at Spruce Lake and taking the Lower Gun Creek Trail. 12km, 264m climb, 634m descent. A blue, easy! I could handle that.

But Paul had other plans, and told us Windy Pass was a far better route. He didn’t really say much else other than that…

We got dropped off after a smooth landing, popped our bike tires back on, got organized, and off we went. After a super lax discussion, we decided we were doing Windy Pass.

Being the least experienced rider, I went with it, and knew my friends wouldn’t get me into a situation I couldn’t get out of. Ignorance is bliss, because what I didn’t realize is that the trail profile was 1200m elevation, 22km, and 1,595m descent. Just a bit different than Lower Gun Creek Trail. By 1,000m or so 🙃😳.

The ride started nice — along an easy path in the woods, despite me being out of breath and still a bit nervous. I dropped off a fairly steep curved bridge early on, and had an extremely graceful fall… and realized I loved my rental bike — the fall was smooth (a 10K Yeti Lunch ride is sure to please).

Then the ascent began! My naivety on what was to come worked in my favour here. We climbed, and climbed, and climbed. The guys in our group rode quite a bit of the ascent, but we knew we had to conserve energy, and I truthfully wasn’t skilled enough to ride up quite a bit of the way. I was secretly happy my friends were getting spent, because while I may not have been the most skilled mountain biker, I definitely had endurance given I was about two months into my half Ironman training.

We came to our first meadow after lots of uphill, wet, rooty forest climbs. It was dreamy… we took a quick break, had a snack, then off we went to what we thought was the last climb, then we’d descend.

We came up over the tree line and saw the view. There was a bit of snow left, and beautiful green hills matched with bigger snow capped beauties in the background. Dream.

Once we came over the crest we saw a group of guys who were doing a multi-day trek — carrying all their food and camping gear. We had some laughs about how ours would have been “easy” without the packs… and they asked if we wanted to take some gear. No thanks!

The group did motivate us to climb even higher (on foot) to get the full panorama view, and while we cursed their names for hiking further, we were thankful for the view.

It was made all the more special because my close friend’s partner proposed to her at the top. I cried, she cried, we all cried, and it was a really nice, special moment that I’m happy I got to witness.

After being on a complete high from the exciting news, we started our descent!

We had our first experience with the single-track ditches that were inevitable on a well-used track like Windy Pass, but also, the epic feeling of descending after what felt like days of climbing. The descent felt good, though I was still getting used to my bike and legs, so took it a lot easier than the rest of the group. It truly felt surreal; like we were the only people for hundreds of kilometres. Which… was kind of true, other than the group of guys who would have been well ahead of us at that point.

We passed fields of wildflowers. We passed rivers. We had fairly sketchy traverses, and we had tons of absolutely sick views.

And then came the second pass. We thought surely we can’t be going up again, but yes, we were. At this point we were all pretty tired, the bugs were getting bad, and we were all nearly out of water. But luckily, I was all of a sudden useful for something…

My friends planned this entire trip. The plane. The logistics. The groceries. The gear. The endless list of things to do and remember and take note of. For me, I had zero value on the trip, and was beyond thankful for my friends hard work. But luckily I had grabbed my water purification tablets from our backcountry kit back in Toronto, so we were able to fill up our bladders with water from a nearby stream, safely, with the use of these tablets and electrolytes to mask the chemical-y taste. (I have a fear of running out of water, so likely why I packed the tabs).

Once we were rehydrated, we continued onto our second (and final) descent, which featured some gnarly sandy burms, but more-so, some super fun in-forest terrain with nice root and rock features. I was holding strong at the back of the pack, but was pretty stoked to not be falling too far behind, and able to go over many of the features. It was my first time on a small frame, with 29inch tires, and it felt exactly right.

I won’t even try to add in the kilometre markers, but we were nearing the end when we came to an old logging road. We knew it likely wasn’t the end-end (that’d be too good to be true), and the guys assured us it wasn’t. Actually, they specifically waited for us to strategically say, in a calming voice, how it wasn’t the end (worried about us much? Hah). The next few kilometres featured what I like to call sand and loose log riding: skidding over the sand and dodging loose logs. Recipe for disaster after being exhausted, though somehow managed to pull it together. My index fingers were killing me.

My friends and expert planners had read in Trailforks that you should leave a shuttle vehicle closer to the trailhead, which I was so thankful for as it cut out probably 6km of hilly road riding to make it back to Tyax. Seeing the truck was a euphoric moment, and I was so proud of myself and the group for staying strong, having fun, and specifically, for Dylan to have kept an engagement ring safe for such a gnarly ride.

Definitely one of my top five adventure moments, and I hope to make it back to Tyax soon, with a bit more mountain biking experience under my belt to truly enjoy those epic trails.