The Great Canadian (dualsport and adventure) Roadbook Rally. Route setting weekend, tyre pressures and where we won’t be going…
- Jonathan Binnington
- May 5
- 5 min read
Updated: May 5
The first weekend in May marks the start of VIME rally season. The first opportunity to get out and see what kind of consequences the winter has had on carefully laid plans over the cold dark winter months.
Compadre Stuart (he of the sexy bin-liner waterproofs) and I took the first trip of the year up to Gold River from Nanaimo to begin converting vision into reality.
Richta verification route around the village - four Richta Control Points.
First job was to reset the Richta verification route around the village. The purpose of this is to give event participants the opportunity to demonstrate to their own satisfaction that their Richta phone systems are working.
The roadbook for this route is here:
Download Rally Roadbook Reader (RRR) from where you get your apps.
Open the roadbook from the Dropbox link above.
Once it is open, save it to your device, telling it to be saved in RRR.
The roadbook pdf can also be saved and displayed in other roadbook apps.
The Richta login details are here:
Download Richta Competitor app onto your good phone that you will keep in your pocket. Free download.
Open the app, scroll down the list of events, find Gold River Test, tap it and the event sign-on details will appear.
The event password is ghoulies
Next page pick a “car number” somewhere between 17 and 99. Enter the password (ghoulies)
Next page Enter your class (1). Enter your email that you have used to enter the GoldRiver XXV (the one that I have). Enter your first and last name. Enter your phone number.
I will receive a notification on my RallyMaster app that you have signed up successfully. You won’t be able to “make it work” without being on the ground and if this goes viral I can delete spurious entries and if it goes totally bonkers with a DoS malware attack I can simply change the password to keep the “little grey men” away! Haha! World denomination (for the dyslexics…)
If you would like to have a go at getting this information into your phone, please do. You will need to be in Gold River in order to make it work but, you can get your smartphones in order from the comfort of your own home.
Getting down to business
Having set those four Richta control points, attention turned to the principle task of the day, riding the route of the first day, proofreading the roadbook and setting the Richta timing marks.
No more than 20km into the route, my bike had a flat back tyre. Deflated! Both me and my tyre…. I was ready to pack up, send Stuart for the car and trailer and go home. But no! Stuart had all the wherewithal to fix it!
40 minutes is all it took to get the wheel off, find the problem, fix it and put it all back together. Helped by a backcountry jack (see photo) and a new tube, the repair would still be good 200 miles (320 km) further.
Where we won’t be going…
In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t tell you where we are going - but I will tell you where we won’t be going.
The north of Vancouver Island may be our playground but it is very much a workplace for those who live there. The disused Englewood Railway forms part of various VIME routes but the disused stretch between Vernon and Maquilla Reloads is now firmly gated - so we won’t be going there!
With growing confidence in the repaired back tyre, your intrepid duo struck out for the Schoen Lake loops. A favourite in previous editions, the two viable loops have been closed because of winter blow-downs. Not piddling saplings mind you, chuffing great mature trees. Perhaps the 4WD trail fairies will take their large chainsaws out for the day, perhaps they won’t… but that will have to wait for another event.
Scary bridges, Lunch rain and fuel
Lunch at the Shot In The Dark cafe at Woss and a fill of Four Star (uk petrol grade) and we went off for the next bit. This bit “goes” except for the snow at the summit which will be gone come the end of June.
There are three “thrill rides” immediately after lunch. Deactivated railway bridges over deep gorges. The bridges each are about 50 metre spans over gorges that are between 25 and 50 metres deep. The structure of the bridges is secure and sound with good surfaces. The sense of exposure comes from the absence of guardrails and railway lines running down the centre of the bridges.
In practice, the perception of scary is greater than the reality. If you ride slowly keeping your eyes firmly fixed on where you want to go and not allow yourself to look to your left or right, it is no harder than riding down a singletrack trail. If you steadfastly do not wish to ride these three bridges I can give you the bypass route….
This was the third time I has ridden this mountain section. The first two times I had made a bit of a muddle of it and needed to use Gaia to find my way out. This time I paid particularly close attention to the roadbook and the odometer and it all worked out nicely - right up until we found shin-deep old snow.
Turned around and trying to find a quick way down we were stopped again by the biggest old-growth blowdown I’ve ever seen.
Back to Woss for more petrol and bin bags then back to Gold River dropping timing pins along the way.
All in all it was a good engineering result, an imperfect but perfectly usable set of data with which to reconstruct the event route into something that can be ridden.
The roadbook will be edited to reflect all of the findings and the Richta timings worked out.
So tentatively, we have our first day sorted all bar some desk work to get the details right.
Edit: now sorted and ready to go!
Roll on summer!
Oh, the tyre pressures…
This bit will probably be contentious to some and tyre pressures are of course, something that you choose for yourself…
One of the accepted wisdoms is that for dualsport and adventure riding, tyres are “aired-down” to maximise grip.
I’m principle, this is true. The tyre is then soft enough to deform over surface irregularities and maximise engagement of the tyre knobs.
However…
The roads in question are almost exclusively granite blast-rock chips and what isn’t is either grassy/shrubby vegetation or a short amount of tarmac.
The roads are potholed (unsurprisingly) and it is entirely possible to reach highway speeds in places on these backcountry roads (not that I am encouraging or condoning speeding).
In my experience, hitting potholes at highway speeds on soft tyres invites bent rims and pinch flat punctures. My preference over these roads is to run the tyres at or near highway pressures.
If you have the option of choosing your tyres before you come, I would suggest hard compound rubber with a big blocky tread. Motocross tyres are not out of place but go for hard compounds. Otherwise, any dualsport-intended tyre choice will work as the road surfaces are hard and sharp.
I look forward to seeing you in Gold River
Jonathan Binnington
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