The Bush Mountain massif has been the secondary objective of a few trips now. Last year, we were going to ski some of its three peaks (Rostrum 3284m, Icefall 3195m, Bush (peak) 3081m) after Arras peak on the other side of the valley, but ran out of weather window.\u00a0 Then this April, Ian and I decided we would abuse the sleds on gravel one last time to do a long trip, skiing as many of the plethora of 3000m+ peaks in the upper Valenciennes River and Icefall Brook logging road systems over a full week, but were turned back by the state of the road, not enough snow to get the sleds over a large washout no matter how much roadbuilding and sweat we put in. So, with a short weather window, I decided to bike it now and concentrate my efforts only on Bush Mountain.<\/p>\n
I started biking from the truck at one of the many slidepaths on the first few clicks of the Valenciennes FSR where the snow hadn’t melted back far enough yet to continue with the truck. After a click or two on the bike was the massive washout that stopped me from reaping the harvest of a big storm last September, which was the cause of this and many other washouts in the area. The power of the water coming off the west side of Bush Mountain was so great it erased all sign there was a road for 200m, replacing it with coarse river rock and leaving the far side of the road stranded 6 feet in the air. Even wrestling the bike up was a challenge. Then I continued along the road, across the Valenciennes River until stopped again by another new washout, where the major yet unnamed creek west of Navy Creek has claimed the bridge that used to span it. Then after a couple more seasonal washouts off the west side of Arras, I was looking up the Rostrum Valley at my quarry, taking a mere hour and a half of cruisy biking to get there.<\/p>\n