Kootenay Road Trip – Day 2 – Martha Creek


After a 15km drive up a sometime sketchy hydro access road we get to the top of the Sale Mountain/Martha Creek trailhead at 2100m! The trail starts just N of the Martha Creek Provincial Park and descends almost to that same park. Be aware that as of this year, the maps handed out at the Revelstoke Visitor Centre still don’t have accurate descriptions of all the various twist and turns on this road. There is also a winter and summer variation of the road up to the trailhead – take the summer variation if you want a less bumpy ride. Download the GPS file for the road up and the trail down here.

Here we get ready for our 1600m descent in 8km of singletrack. Yes – it is a bit steep. A car with good clearance should be able to make it up this road. Trevor’s Civic could not.

The Volvo that gets you there!


Start of the Alpine descent.

 

Sharon


Sweet alpine singletrack looks onto Mt Revelstoke National Park.

Heading to the trees.


Technical subalpine singletrack starts at about 1900m. You don’t need a big bike to get down the trail but it sure makes it more fun

The Norco Six can handle this much better then the Rocky Mountain Element! Sorry Rocky!

 


The trail cuts across some old access roads at about 1720m. Then it changes character – now we’re getting into some buffness.

Trevor railing loam


We followed Martha Creek for most of the way down so some crossings were inevitable.

Sharon and Trevor


Now the trail benches as we ride further down – the forest changes character as we drop down past the subalpine.

Mark


Switchbacking down the trail, this is a pretty fun descent.

Mark, Sharon and Trevor


The Green line is the drive up. At the section of the driving up track where we went off the main road at the sale3/4rdjnc waypoint, you can choose to ride a spur road to the Sale/Trl*rd waypoint access to the Martha Creek trail if you don’t want to do the whole descent or if conditions make the alpine access problematic (eg snow or excessive rain).

We chose to drive all the way up the road to the alpine access trailhead but as mentioned – the road gets pretty rough.

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