Competitors in the Singletrack 6 are 2/3 of the way through the race! Stage 3 saw the race move an hour west from the start in Fernie, to Cranbrook. This stage covered 42 km with 1,200m of elevation gain.
Stage 4 was just up the road from Cranbrook in Kimberley. This year is the first time that the race has visited this town. The stage started with a tough climb right out of the gate, ultimately covering 36km and 1,250m of climbing.
Recaps of stages 3 and 4 are belowm with photos courtesy of John Gibson for Singletrack 6.
Stage 3
New to the Singletrack 6, stage three was hosted today in the City of Cranbrook. After waking up in Fernie, riders were transported approximately one hour to the city of Cranbrook. Surrounded by majestic peaks on all sides, Cranbrook is emerging as the newest hot spot in the region for killer mountain biking, after years of relative anonymity. The active local cycling community agreed to let a few of their coveted trail secrets out of the bag for today’s stage.
The stage consists of two completely unique loops. Starting with the inner loop and rolling out from the Community College, the course climbed gently on road, giving riders a proper warm-up. Off of the tarmac and onto Loggers Lane gave riders their first singletrack climb of the day. Continuing through Community Forest, smooth singletrack gave way to some tighter climbs and descents and the high point of the day. The pattern of short climbs followed by rewarding descents was the norm and took riders to checkpoint 1 at Kettle Lake.
Upon tackling the second major climb of the day, riders encountered steeper and more technical riding on “Hobgoblin.” After some high-speed, sometimes grassy descents on Migor, the final climb on Bonehead was up. From this point, racers only had a couple short climbs followed by fast and fun descents to finish out the day. The final high speed descent on Roller Coaster left riders pretty pumped on the day as they rolled back into the finish at College of the Rockies.
Stage 4
Stage four brought riders to Kimberley, BC, where they started and finished in the town Platzl in the heart of Kimberley.
The day began with the riders heading up the road to the ski area before hitting the dirt for a proper warm-up, as well as ticking off the biggest climb of the day. It was just Kimberley’s finest dirt offerings from there on out. Once at the ski area, there was a bit more climbing on the hill before the course entered Kimberley’s extensive singletrack trail network, with a challenging bit of rocky climbing through Moe’s Canyon, and on into the handcrafted Magic Line singletrack.
After a series of fast descents and shorter climbs, riders found themselves at the top of the timed descent. With over 300 m of descending over 5km, the descent promised to be one of the longest and thrilling timed descents of the week. Starting off with the signature “Thunder Turkey” and leading into “Shapeshifter” and “Hoodoo View”, riders hit the lowest point on the course, requiring a hard effort on the 2nd biggest climb of the day to repay the gravity gods for their 300m offering. From there, another moderate descent and climb took the riders onto the town pathway system, and back into the town for a Platzl finish.
