Finding Stillness in Motion

BIKEPACKING B.C.’S FAMED LOWER SUNSHINE COAST

“Cyclists board down by the black fence. Follow the signs for pedestrians. Ferry loads at 4:30. I’d be down there around 4:20 if I was you.” The ticketmaster winks at me behind a smudged pane of plexiglass. “Not a bad time to be in Canada, eh?”

He slides two ferry tickets through the notch in his cubicle. My friend Nate Shearer chuckles. We take our tickets and wheel our loaded mountain bikes out onto the streets of West Vancouver.

It’s a white-hot Friday afternoon in mid-July and summer is in full swing. Streams of tourists and second-home-owning Vancouverites swarm the sidewalks that wind along Horseshoe Bay waiting for their respective ferries to Nanaimo, Bowen Island, or Langdale. Nate and I are bound for Langdale, a small village on the southeastern end of the Sechelt peninsula and B.C.’s popular Sunshine Coast. Stretching for 112 miles through Tla’amin, shíshálh, Coast Salish, and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (or Squamish) Nations’ land, the Sunshine Coast is technically connected to mainland B.C. but is only accessible by boat or floatplane. It is precisely this remoteness—and the vast network of singletrack that traverses through it—that has lured me and Nate 3,000 miles northwest from our East Coast homes to the fjords and mountains of B.C.

It is precisely this remoteness—and the vast network of singletrack that traverses through it—that has lured me and Nate 3,000 miles northwest from our East Coast homes to the fjords and mountains of B.C.

Born and raised in the shadow of Washington, D.C., Nate has lived many lives during his 51 years on Earth. He’s apprenticed with fundamental Christian welders, delivered documents to U.S. senators, and styled runway models’ hair for high-end fashion shows the likes of Vera Wang. But all of that has come second to his first true love: the bicycle. From BMX racing to bike polo, Nate has spent the better part of five decades riding every style of bike on every type of terrain. His lifelong love of the sport became the subject of a scrappy video we filmed together in the fall of 2022 and entered into Presents, Freehub Magazine’s mountain bike film festival. When Nate and I learned the magazine had accepted our five-minute documentary short into the film fest, we decided its Bellingham premiere was the perfect excuse to piece together a B.C. bikepacking trip.

I bitterly recall the touring cyclists we saw on the ferry with their nimble road bikes and their fast, skinny tires. I might as well be pedaling a Mack truck by comparison.

The incoming Langdale ferry blares its horn. We join our place among the vacationing masses and roll our bikes onboard. It’s the first time Nate has taken a ferry and at first, it is wholly overwhelming. Packs of screaming children run wild around the cafeteria. What little conversation we can hear over their primal screeching is mostly relegated to adults complaining about the heat wave, the traffic, the price of fuel, the price of anything anymore. We slam some food, hardly tasting it, desperate to escape the noise, and find a little relief outside on the viewing deck. Nate parks himself next to the railing and soaks it all in, the big blue sky, the craggy mountains that seem to rise straight out of the sound. Squamish twinkles in the distance like a mirage.

Forty minutes later, the underbelly of the ferry yawns open its bow at the Langdale terminal. Scores of pedestrians and bike commuters and road touring cyclists pour out of the boat. There is an urgency in the air, as if the oncoming ferry traffic will mow us over if we don’t hustle. It feels surreal, like a scene out of some post-apocalyptic movie. As soon as we are clear of the chaos, we hop on our bikes and begin the pavement climb from the ferry terminal up into the Coast Mountains.

With few interior roads on the peninsula, and even fewer roads with shoulders, we are forced to share the road with ferry traffic. For the next 15 minutes, Nate and I ride single file on the white line while a steady parade of roaring engines buzz our handlebars. Doubt creeps up my spine. What if we traveled all this way to the other side of the continent only to never find the quiet backcountry that we both are seeking?

The setting sun bakes us as we slug up the pavement. Sweat seeps from my helmet and stings my eyes. I bitterly recall the touring cyclists we saw on the ferry with their nimble road bikes and their fast, skinny tires. I might as well be pedaling a Mack truck by comparison. With food, water, and gear, my full suspension Transition Smuggler probably weighs close to 50lbs, and I am feeling it.

Still, I am grateful for the climb. The further we recede from the coastline, the more the noise dissipates. Pavement turns to gravel turns to dirt. Save for the sound of my heartbeat thrumming in my ears and the churning of my cranks, I hear nothing. As dusk settles around us, even the birdsong grows muted. We push and pedal in silence, savoring the quiet embrace of the forest, slowly making our way up switchback after switchback. The grade is punishingly steep, averaging 13.8 percent for over a mile. But as the scrubby deciduous forest gives way to a towering canopy of Douglas fir, Western cedar, and Western hemlock, it feels as if we have finally arrived.

When it is too dark to pedal without a light, we make camp in a dry bed of fir needles. It takes a while for my legs to unwind after the punchy 2,600 feet of elevation we gained in the 11-mile ride from the ferry. Eventually, fatigue takes over and I fall into a sound and dreamless sleep.

In the morning, I choke down a water bottle full of cold instant coffee and a dry scone for breakfast. It does nothing. If anything, I am hungrier after the scone. The trail miles flow quickly from our camp at 1,800 feet back down to the town of Sechelt at 26 feet, so we grab a second breakfast and some more groceries before pushing north. With 40 more miles between Sechelt and our campsite on Klein Lake at the northern end of the peninsula, there is little time for putzing. We stay moving, eating on the bike and stopping only to filter water or check the map.

It has taken a logistically intensive combination of planes, trains, buses, and ferries just to get to the start of this bikepacking trip, and I am determined to make the most of what little time we have here.

By noon, our backs are soaked in sweat from the continuous climbing and the cloudless sky. No wonder it is called the Sunshine Coast. The air hangs heavy with humidity. No matter how hard I try to shake it, I feel hurried, as if I’m racing towards some arbitrary finish line. We have only three full days left on the Sunshine Coast before we have to begin the long journey home. It has taken a logistically intensive combination of planes, trains, buses, and ferries just to get to the start of this bikepacking trip, and I am determined to make the most of what little time we have here.

Northward progress comes haltingly. Trails crisscross so frequently we’re forced to stop and check the map every half mile, or so it seems, making it impossible to settle into a rhythm. And yet, we are wonderfully, blissfully, alone. We see one mountain biker, the only person we see in the woods all day. Nate sees a fox. Fresh berry-studded bear scat litters the trail like little landmines. Everything is dry and dusty, but the creeks that are running flow cold and clear and bright. Some trails are purpose-built and flowy, bordered by brambles of ripe salmonberries. Others are evergreen tunnels with rickety bridges and off-camber root-tech switch backing through understories of prehistoric ferns.

We make a couple of wrong turns, then backtrack and make quips about hill repeats to ease the annoyance of wasting time and energy. Nate takes occasional hits off a neon pink tube of Sour Ooze, a squeezable liquid candy. I nurse an electrolyte drink one sip at a time. Sometimes we lose ourselves in conversation and the miles pass quickly. Sometimes we go an hour without talking at all. As the day wears on, it becomes harder to ignore the piercing sun melting our brains, the lactic acid building in our legs, the fatigue settling into our lower backs. But we keep pedaling, picking our way up and over trails and power line cuts and chossy doubletrack until finally, after 6,000 feet of climbing, we crest the last hill and see the glittering waters of Ruby Lake.

It’s a ripping descent down to Ruby Lake’s neighbor, Klein Lake, where we find Dan, a friend and fellow East Coaster who is on a B.C. adventure of his own. I strip my dusty shoes and ease my trail-beaten body into the lake. The water is cool enough to feel refreshing, but not so cold it hurts. I have been dreaming of this moment all day. A rare and endangered Western Painted Turtle slinks past. She pays me no mind, but I am mesmerized by her yellow-striped head easing just above the water’s surface. There is no urgency in her gliding; she does not need to hurry wherever she is going. There is a stillness in her being, even while in motion, that makes me wonder if I’ve been doing this trip all wrong. I stay there with my feet in the water, watching that little turtle’s quiet wake dissipate beneath the lily pads, content to just sit on a piece of driftwood and watch the last golden rays sink below the trees.

The next three days of the bikepacking trip feel different. We take all day to cover 30 miles of trail, leapfrogging each other with cameras, lingering whenever the light or the view or the trail speaks to us. It feels good to slow down, to really see and feel the land, to notice everything big and small: pale-white ghost pipe wildflowers tucked under logs, old freeride features with broken ramps to nowhere, thick shags of verdant moss dripping from tree limbs, purple foxglove blooming in a berm, a banana slug crawling over Nate’s sleeping bag.

Finally, I settle into the steady rhythm of the bikepacking trip. Eat, ride, filter water, check the map, eat some more, ride some more. We make some more wrong turns. On the third night, we run out of daylight and are forced to camp between an outhouse and a highway. The next day, Nate discovers a gash in his sidewall. For the first time in over a decade, he must ride out on a tube. I nearly go over the handlebars, twice, once from a sudden hub-deep bog and another from a blind drop.

But with every mile we pedal, the chatter in my brain grows silent like birdsong at dusk. It is this, the simplicity of bikepacking, the basic routine of finding food to eat and water to drink and a place to sleep, that I yearn for in my everyday life. Bikepacking trips never go according to plan. It is the same in life. I have spent the better part of seven years touring all over the world not purely for the sake of adventure, but as a reminder to hold a little less tightly on the reins, to take everything as it comes, unhurried, one pedal stroke at a time.