I’ve been lucky enough to live in Squamish for close to 20 years. Originally from Toronto in Eastern Canada, I transplanted to British Columbia’s coastal mountains for the incredible mountain biking and [sometimes] pretty good skiing. Over the last 20 years, I’ve seen Squamish evolve from ‘the rough logging town you didn’t want to stop in on your way to Whistler’ to ‘the town where the riding is so good, why bother driving the extra 45 minutes to Whistler’.

Now old Squamish, with its rougher edges, Sthil suspenders and cork-boots-in-the-pub certainly had its charm, while newer Squamish is a vibrant community full of committed and passionate mountain sports athletes. The loggers are still here and shred super hard too. No matter your sport, be it Mountain Biking, Skiing, Rock Climbing, Trail Runner, Hunting, Moto, Snowmobiling, or Kite Surfing, there is someone here who is better than you, left earlier, went further, went faster, and rode it/skied it/climbed it before you did.

I’m not complaining here. Being surrounded by people and a culture built around ‘getting after it’ is inspiring, forcing one to look a bit further to find ‘unique rides’.

The Premise

Summer 2022 was abnormally hot and dry and, with a large community of shredders and visitors, to say the trails were a bit ‘blown out’ would qualify as the understatement of the decade. Berms turned to piles of talcum powder and you’d need to leave a 20-30 second gap between riders just for the dust to settle.

To find decent conditions, and avoid ripping the valley’s trails to shreds, required a different approach to ride planning. Bonus points if we could do an epic ride that didn't require any driving or truck shuttling… enter Mount Habrich.

The Ride

Habrich is a granite tower that sits at 1800m/5900ft above my house and is crisscrossed with hiking trails, climber access trails, and trials moto trails. From 800m down to 200m(ish) is a mountain bike trail network built primarily on granite rock. Linking something up from my house through this area and back through the mountain bike trails directly to the Backyard Pub had the potential to be an incredible day in the hills. Granted the route was a bit unorthodox…

The plan was to link up a mish-mash of portions of different routes; fire road climb, ski touring ascents, ridgetop hiking trails, climber access trails, and trials moto trails, which would lead us right to the top of the mountain bike trail network.

On the map it looked great, and in reality, it was great… but just a bit harder than we expected, in fact, we ran out of light by the time we got to the actual bike trails and ripped the fire road in darkness directly to the pub.

4:00am - Leg 1

A weird ride calls for a weird crew, so arriving at my house at 4:00am were some of the weirdest. Joel Ducrot, shredder and Swiss transplant to Squamish. One time Joel rode a 115km Chilcotins day, off the couch… granted it laid him out on the couch for a few days when he returned but if it was me I’d probably still be out there dead at KM 86. Jason Ammerlan, J is my neighbour and the only guy on our team confident with ropes and vertical rock environments… more on that later. Peter Wojnar, another Squamish local who’s known for his fair share of big hair brained rides. For instance that 115km Chilcotins day was Woj’s idea. Margus Riga, infamous mountain bike adventure photographer who’s never afraid of a big ride or a good time. He’s been hogging up hills longer than Woj has been alive and seems to get fitter every year.

4:45am - Bridge Out

Although we had thought about driving a portion of the access road, we knew that a bridge construction project was slated to start any day and there was a chance our vehicle could get stuck on the wrong side of a missing bridge. Most of the bridge was still in place, an easy hop on and off with the bikes.

6:45am - Sunrise Ski Touring Route

After a solid 2 hours of fire road climbing, we entered the first singletrack portion of the day. A ski touring route up to ridgetop. What is a mellow skin in the winter is a bike-on-the-back root filled stairmaster in the summer. Off to a good start… at least the sun was rising.

8:00am - Ridgetop to The Brain!

Sublime rolling alpine singletrack, a few punchy climbs and some killer descents. Viewing ‘The Brain’, our first known vertical ascent, from across a micro valley made us question the viability of the plan. The sustained two minute long rock roll we rode to the base of it was incredible. If more of that laid ahead, we were getting up The Brain one way or another.

8:30am - Vertical Rock eh?

Our approach to ‘The Brain’ included a few sections with fixed ropes, some we could ride, two in particular where the fixed rope was essential to descending on foot. ‘The Brain’ was a 30ft vertical puzzle that Jason put his rock climbing history to quick use. While we left harnesses and ropes in my shed, we all brought a piece of webbing and a carabiner to fashion alpine harnesses from. Using the existing fixed rope, we climbed then hauled each of the bikes up, getting smoother with less scratching every lift.

10am - Under Habrich

Incredible alpine singletrack with the occasional huge chunk of granite to ride and not another tire track to be seen. Below the Habrich massif felt like we were riding through the Alps. At least that’s what Joel said, I’ve never ridden in the Alps…

2pm - Granite Plateau

After a few challenging fixed rope ascents and descents, we found ourselves off the Climber access onto a hiking trail that traversed the ridge. We could see the point of land where our final descent would begin, which was nice. We were perched on a massive rolling section of granite just begging to be sessioned a few times… which was nicer.

4pm - Where’s Al’s trail?

Ridgetop was rolling, mixing more steep ups and downs with phenomenal bike riding. A solid 70:30 biking to walking ratio. On top of the final descent, we’d connect a few different trails to get back to the access road and into the mountain bike zone, as soon as we found them…

4:45pm - You Can Call Him Al

Searching and snacking ended up burning some time, but lined up for our final descent which was a blur of sub-alpine singletrack, granite rock rolls, natural berms, doubles and the occasional climb to keep everyone honest.

7:30 - Gassed

Racing the final bits of daylight we dropped into the bottom of the trials moto network down to the access road. Donning our headlamps, I’d love to say we were hardcore enough to ride the mountain bike trails in the dark by headlamp… but the honest truth was after a 15 minute blast down the fireroad we could be at the pub drinking a beer, so obviously we did that.