Dunbar Summer Series Canadian National Championships

It’s not every day that a national event takes place in the town called “home”. On a more special note, it is also a sport that is new into my life, Mountain Biking. 

Photo by Tom Conway on Unsplash.

Mountain biking has always appeared to be a daunting hobby. You hop on a bike and ride a single track trail scattered with obstacles and wicked terrain, combine that with speed, and you’re asking to break something. 

That was until I first tried it after some smooth coaxing and my goodness, could you believe it, the brakes are magnificent! Successive rides allowed me to feel more comfortable on the bike and what I dare call, competent. 

I was eager to get my two wheels spinning fast, rounding berms, hitting jumps and pounding down rooty drops. Quicker than I arrived at the top, I found myself down at the bottom dripping in sweat, breathing hard and chock full of adrenaline. Okay, mountain biking is pretty sweet and it’s definitely not as harrowing as it appears from an outside perspective. 

An impressive amount of belly sweat from an afternoon ride.

My ability allows me to go down a hill without getting hurt, although particularly slow, I am wholly intact. The competitors at the Dunbar Series Downhill Mountain Bike Race are on an entirely different echelon, the summit. 

I’m not entirely sure what this stunt is called, but I’m impressed, as was the crowd.

Being able to watch the competitors race was entirely awesome. We sat in the grass next to the track and watched some crazy talented rider rip by every 30 or so seconds (on average) and would be shrouded in their clouds of dust. Spectators hollered and cheered as racers jumped the road gap nearing the finish line. A couple of folks even brought chainsaws to the event and would rev them up high and loud as the competitors raced by. 

Reviewing the finishing times astounded me. The winner of the event finished in less than FOUR minutes, four. To add some perspective to this figure, when I leave the top I don’t get back to the bottom in the same hour. Between breaks, figuring out where to go and the general speediness of my ride it typically takes me between 75 and 90 minutes to reach the gondola again. 

I appreciate being able to watch such talented riders compete at my local mountain. With the town full of competitors from around Canada, there was a buzz in the atmosphere that has long been missed. It was my initial experience of Downhill Mountain Bike culture, and I’m fully sold. The smiles were big, the stoke was high and the community was friendly. What more could a first year mountain biker ask for in a community, sport, and hobby? 

Two racers neck to neck as they enter the final two turns of the race.

Annual Reader Survey

Finding Home: A Suitability Analysis

My first quarter into my GIS certificate program at Portland Community College I had the opportunity to choose a final project subject of my interest as long as it incorporated the tools I had learned to use during the course of the class. The class, GEO 265, is an introductory course into the use of ArcGIS, the leading GIS program around the world. The idea of a suitability analysis quickly came to mind as my wife and I are moving to British Columbia and needed to find a place to live. We both deeply appreciate nature, a slow pace of life and a community that is connected. In terms of criteria that meant: being close to recreational sites such as trail systems, national parks and ski resorts; a small town that has a communal and environmental mindset.

CREATING AN INDEX

In order to “score” the potential places to live, I needed to create an index that would assign a value to each populace based on how well it fit the established criteria. As described in the map above, the criteria accounts for distances from national parks, trail systems, and ski resorts as well as the population of a community and its percent of environmentally friendly commuting. Phew.

Although those are not the only things that make us happy, they are some of the things we deeply cherish. Overall the criteria supports our health through physical activity, a positive community mindset, and most likely a place we can appreciate for its beauty.

I’m not sure the last time you looked at a formula for an index, but here is the one I developed.

Suitability Score = (DF ski area + DF trail network + DF national park + (%EFC * 100)) / 4.

Where DF = Distance From. %EFC = Percent Environmentally Friendly Commute

Woah, neat index Tyler!….But wait, won’t that index provide a score that is LOW for the most suitable place? Like golf? Hmmmm, you’re absolutely right, the most suitable place to live does have the lowest score, how will I display that on my map? Shouldn’t the best place to live have the highest score and largest symbol?

Luckily, a small number will go into 100 more than a larger number, so, if I were to divide the score by 100 I will be able to produce a number that scales with the suitability! The final version of the index is found below.

Suitability Score = 100/((DF ski area + DF trail network + DF national park + (%EFC * 100)) / 4)

Bingo!

The Suitability Index ranked the top three places to live, coincidentally enough, they are all on the eastern side of the province. Now, I’m not entirely sure why that is, but what it tells me is that we will most likely favor a town on the east side of the province versus a town on the west. The top three towns are also relatively close to one another, in fact, the time it takes to drive from Invermere to Revelstoke is 3 hours, passing through Golden on the way. There seems to be a sweet spot in this region of BC.

Now, you may be thinking “Jeez, Revelstoke scored nearly double both runner ups! Move there!”

Hold your horses! Let’s look into this a little more.

Revelstoke is ridiculously close to all the criteria, I mean 1.8km from a national park?! That’s nuts! Looking at both Golden and Invermere their furthest criteria is 14km away….how many miles is that? Ah yes, a conversion for my audience, sorry….8.7 miles! “Damn, that is close too!" you may be thinking. Well, it really is in the grand scheme of things.

So, let’s back up a bit and take a moment to zoom out.

Golden!

The place to be, a “Town of Opportunity”.

Taking a look at the third and final map, you can see that there is much more to a town than being the closest to the criteria I set. Golden is very central to several national parks and, not included above, it is also within a two hour drive of five, yes, FIVE, world-renowned ski resorts (check them out!).

Fortunately, we had a friend in Golden whom we lived with in New Zealand, and his place had an open room.

At the time I was creating these maps, we were already calling Golden home, we just happened to luck out on the coolest place to be in BC.

I hope you enjoyed my maps and stay tuned for more!