By Andrew Mitchell
There were modest turnouts for most Harvest Huckfest events this year, with the exception of Sunday’s slopestyle which featured over 70 riders — mostly in the youth categories.
Huckfest kicked off with a jump jam in the Air Dome on Friday, and included the Earn It/Burn It on Saturday morning, the Super-D on Sunday morning and the Slopestyle on Sunday afternoon.
There was some confusion in the Earn It/Burn It competition, which involved one rider climbing to the freight cars and another descending through the bike part to the finish on a course that include Duffman, World Cup Singletrack, Ho Chi Min, Longhorn, the top section of the Bikercross, Monkey Hands, and the GLC drops. Some riders went the wrong way on the climb and at least one rider got off course on the downhill.
For the riders who went the right way, the team of climber Matt Bodkin and downhiller Matt Ryan placed first in the men’s category in a total time of 37:47, followed by Patrick Means and Chris Parrish in 38:11, and Jeff Leigh and Matt Juhasz in 39:21.
In the women’s category, first went to Charlotte Klein and Wendy Robinson in 44:28, followed by Nadine Crowe and Lonnie Wake, both juniors, in 55:42.
In Junior, Tyler Allison and Alex Prochazka were the top team in 39:16, followed by Phil Carins and Scott Halvorson in 40:28 and Justing Dale and Trevor Jones in 43:55.
The top mixed team was Angi Weston and Kevin Hall in 41:20, followed by Bett Parson and Duncan Mackenzie in 44:49 and Jerome David and Natalie Morel in 47:18.
In the Junior/Senior category, Rob and James McSkimming were first in 41:10, followed by Holly Heatherington and Eric Crowe in 42:04 and Duncan Munro and Daniel Crowe-Hutchon in 43:31.
How these results were tabulated is unknown, given the fact that the team of Phil Carins and Scott Halvorson were first to the bottom after Phil made a wrong turn on the climb.
“I was pretty surprised to see (Cairns) at the top of the downhill before I got there, seeing as how I went up the lift first and he had to climb up on his bike,” said Halvorson, who resides in Squamish. “It was a good course, maybe a bit long for a downhill, but it was fun.”
There was a small turnout for Sunday’s Super D, with just 20 riders. The course started at Olympic Station and headed up Expressway to Too Tight before heading back down to the Fitzsimmons Chair. From there it crossed up and over to B-Line and to After Atlantis, Karate Monkey and World Cup Singletrack. The next uphill followed the Olympic Road to the B-Line crossing, then followed lower B-Line down to Devil’s Club, Lower Easy Does It and Longhorn, Monkey Hands and the riders choice of the GLC drops or ramp.
The top male overall was Mike Jones in 14:31, followed by Will Dixon in 16:05 and Yoshi Tsuji in 16:13.
John Pitton was the top Master Male in 16:04, followed by Pete Lymberis in 18:50 and Andrew Moeller in 21:04.
Junior rider Kerry-Anne Hamilton was the only female, finishing in 28:01.
Phil Cairns edged Tyler Allison for top junior status by less than eight seconds with a time of 15:09, while Nick Geddes was third in 17:20.
Over 70 riders, mostly youth, took part in the slopestyle on Sunday, showing off skills and style in the Boneyard at the base of the mountain.
Those results, and the results from the Air Dome contest on Friday have been temporarily misplaced, and will be included in next week’s paper.
