March 13, Penticton B.C. Mountain Biking??

Off to find snow.  We were headed to Silver Star Mountain in Vernon, BC to ski for the week with Kristin/Lenny and the three kids, Maddie, Jack and Jim.  Jim is on spring break from University of Idaho.  Maddie flew in from New York.   And Jack is in Seattle.

Had a nice easy drive on Friday, March 13th.  With warm and dry temperatures predicted for our week, we brought the mountain bikes.  We hit Penticton BC around 4pm, and made it to the Poplar Grove parking lot to ride the "3 Blind Mice" trail system by 4:30pm.  Rode the Lookout Loop for 11 fun miles in 2.5 hours.  The trails were skinny and fun.  They worked the terrain to include techy rock sections with great smooth dirt.  Not sure how they would be in mid-summer, but they were great today.


From the parking lot, rode the Kettle Valley Railway for half a mile.  Then hit Ridlle Road and climbed to the Pearly Gate trail head.  Managed to find the Lookout Loop markers and followed these for our whole ride.  Once we made our initial jeep road climb, we found the trails to be well marked.

White Tail to Mice to Three Witches to Cougar to Bobcat to Lynx to our far point at about 7 miles where the trail made a turn back to the car.  We hit Yellow Brick road to Three Witches to Narnia to Jack&Jill.  Turned around on Jack&Jill and rode back to Narnia to Roller Coaster to Three Witches to Tsweet Tsue. Down Riddle Road to the KVRailway to car.

Tsweet Tsue had corners similar to Flowtron at Tokul West, which caused Francine to do some walking.  Kevin thought the corners were a blast.  Great trail system, and we only covered a very small portion of the lower part of the "3 Blind Mice" trail system, maybe 15%.  We had great views of the lake.  Seems like it would be brutally hot in the summer.  Looks like we started at 557 Meters and climbed to 820 Meters.

Jumped in the car and after a funky dinner in Penticton, made our way to the condo in Silver Star by 9:30pm to meet Kris and Jim.  Len, Jimmy and Maddie flew into Kelowna, and had an eventful trip via a cab driver that could not find the house.  I think he drove them around the village for about 40 minutes.