Stacked at the 'Rack

It was Round 3 of the NW Cup and we were headed to Tamarack Resort in Idaho. New state, new course, and I was excited for this race. I had never been to Idaho before, and from what I had seen in photos and videos, the area looked beautiful. In real life, it was even better! Tamarack Resort is still being built, but it’s almost done and it sits above the shores of Cascade Lake in Payette Valley. At the head of valley lies the town of McCall, which is on its own lake, Payette Lake. Lots of rivers and lakes and mountains in this part of the state, a refreshing change from the high desert of Central Oregon.

I really liked the race course, which was much more technical than the ones at Dry Hill, and it featured three difficult sections. It took me awhile to clean these sections and I dial in my lines. The competition this round was going to be tough because a whole bunch of kids came up from Utah, Colorado, and California. Cat 2 was stacked and it was feeling like a Nationals event!

After practice on Saturday, my dad and I drove up into the mountains to find a lake the relax a bit. In a local brochure we found a short hike that would work well. Locating the trailhead was a bit difficult, but eventually we parked and headed up. Straight up. The hike was nasty - super steep and not at all what we were expecting. After 20 minutes and gaining hundreds of feet in elevation, we stopped. While resting a hiker coming down told us we were not on the correct trail. Ooops. But not surprised. We turned and headed back to the truck. All good though, it was an adventure and was good to get out.

My race run on Sunday went really well. I dug deep and had a clean run, even catching the rider who dropped in 30 seconds ahead of me right at the finish line. I ended up 16th out of 32 which, considering the competition, was fine by me. None of top ten kids were from the northwest, and I managed to come in ahead of a lot of kids that beat me in Dry Hill. It was great progress and am looking forward to the next race in Montana.

We stayed over an extra night in McCall and rode party laps at Tamarack. We discovered a couple of amazing trails, Smokejumper and Hot Shot, and ran multiple laps on these 1,700 ft descents before heading back to Bend.