- The Middle Beckons – (This story was written in winter 2007 and published in the summer 2008 edition of Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine)

What happens when we avoid that which frightens us most?

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. – Robert Frost

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.   – Jerry Seinfeld

The city of Nelson is an enclave amidst many mountains. They rise from the lake like massive green furred monsters, always present, impossible to ignore. This is a story about the most malevolent section of mountain bike trail in town: The middle portion of Elephantitis. The wickedest of them all, little more than a fissure in the dirt and the rock, a crack of doom. If you stand at any intersection on the main street and look towards the lake, Elephant mountain dominates your vision, spreading outwards and upwards from the water like a sullen, moody old man. An old man that taunts riders with his trail.

On the bottom section of Elephant mountain is the most well-known hiking route in town, Pulpit Rock. This trail was built more than a century to reach the rock itself, a large lump of granite that pokes from the mountainside like a bony elbow, a third of the way up.

But that is only the well trodden last laugh of singletrack. 4,000 feet above, the summit is crowned by a microwave tower that shines bright on sunny days. If you dare to make your way up there, Elephantitis is your destiny tempting bike descent back down.

Elephantitis gets ridden, but until last summer, only by the brave few. It was much more common to ride Bed Frame or Placenta or the Paper Bag. The trail far above Pulpit Rock has always been the type of single track that swirls restlessly in the back of your mind, like a dark cloud forewarning of a storm.

Elephantitis didn’t get much attention before last summer because of the middle section. The Middle begins once you have descended the first two thousand vertical feet of fast, tight, earthy single track from the summit. After descending for 30 minutes or so, you reach an epic outlook over the city.

It’s always been a little hard to enjoy this view because trepidation festers in the brain like a cantankerous growth. The Middle awaits below.

A couple of summers ago, two locals set out to fix the fear and built a stealthy and cunning new route that skirts the ass clenching steepness of the Middle. Nobody has an excuse anymore. Instead, everyone has an eagerness to ride a world-class descent without being afraid of its granite crux.

The Middle commands much respect. It’s little more than a Billy Goat Gruff route, a scrambling route never intended for bicycles, more akin to a debris slide than a trail. It’s the steep hill or nasty creek bed or loose corner on your favourite trail that causes your pulse to quicken, but vengeful and angry. The Middle is the opposite of an oasis. Ushered at each end by pristine single track, The Middle is a black 1,000 hole of jagged nastiness.

Locals have attempted it, so have I, and some success has been had. I witnessed one rider clean many sections. A myth exists of another local madman who somehow summoned the balls to drop into the spot I call the ‘death section,’ before blowing up in the run out, like a deer getting hit by a semi truck. Tales of triumph float through the past, countered by stories of those who were defeated, who rag-dolled through a precipitous landscape strewn with granite rubble.

In the future, Elephantitis will get ridden much more than it used to thanks to the new reroute. Riders of various skill levels will get to ride a true new Nelson classic: starting high, finishing low, a long and sinuous beauty among many builders, on good earth.

They will cruise that first three kilometers of rapture and take a break at the upper view spot, blown away by the ride thus far and how high they still are above town. They will continue downwards, following the tire tracks that lead to the right, on a well-beaten path. Many will miss entirely the evidence of the other less blatant trail heading left from that same point. They will continue, smiling happily, not knowing they just passed the trail that holds destiny it its rocky grip.

Others will know but not consider veering from the new paradigm. And there will be a few, the crafty locals, the Nelson brethren, who will acknowledge and swap stories of the Middle, of the car-sized boulders, the sheer vertical, the wall of death. They will argue that it can be ridden, on the right day, with the right bike, with recent rain, tackiness, dry rocks, willpower. But in the end they will put foot to pedal, hands to bar, and continue down to Pulpit Rock on the new, very enjoyable reroute.

Those who know of the Middle, of the choice riders face at that critical intersection, will take the time to pause while strolling down the main street and turn their eyes to the looming mountain, to Pulpit Rock and what lies above. To the total plunge, the granite sneer of the face that steepens, to the old man’s drooping, indifferent shoulder. The Middle is a David and Goliath struggle. A tear-jerking, sweat and bone hardship of rider against dangerous descent, one that reluctantly gives reward to those who dare push themselves over the edge.

Riders gazing at Elephant Mountain will turn their eyes back to the street and continue on, knowing that across the lake there just may be a section of trail that is gnarlier than any other. We know one day someone will clean it. The Middle Beckons.