You are my Sunshine

Buzzing from a double espresso and with a belly full of breakfast burrito, I help Jan—our boat operator—strap bikes to the inflatable. It’s a 20 minute ocean cruise from Lund Harbor to the trailhead at Sarah Point, on mainland British Columbia across the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver Island. The morning sun glistens optimistically, but not everything is cheerful. Before twisting the throttle, Jan surveys our gang of four mountain bikers. “Eagle,” he says ominously, “is not going to be happy with you.”

THE INSPIRATION

Jan is not the only source of my apprehension, however. The Sunshine Coast Trail (SCT)—a 180 km point-to-point route running from Sarah Point south to the lonely ferry terminal of Saltery Bay—may have me as excited as a kid on Christmas morning, but that still hasn’t negated all anxiety about our quest for singletrack El Dorado. The unease is a result of this journey’s inspiration: just a miniscule 2.5 km sample of the SCT next to the plunging pools of Appleton Creek that I’d hiked the previous summer with my wife and two daughters. While Zola and Sabine chased toads in a side pool, I visualized traveling this narrow, technical singletrack the way only a mountain biking obsessive can.

I’m a sucker for wiggly lines on a topo map. They bore their way into my imagination like worms into apple cores. And if Appleton Canyon was this good, could the rest