Sometimes you need to search far and wide for great outdoor adventures, and other times all you need to do is look down the street. A group of 12 Extreme Outdoor Education biking enthusiasts spent a sunny Wednesday afternoon experiencing mountain biking along Discovery Trail and in Downes Bowls. Students were introduced to the beauty of the Bowl, one of the Abbotsford’s best kept secrets, and gained confidence with mountain biking in preparation for the upcoming trip to Vedder Mountain. Highlights from the trip included Caelen “air mail” Mackenzie and Josh “fear no bump” Stewart flying off the jumps, and the epic search for Karol’s lost glasses (yes they were found). Ms. K even managed to pull off a sweet end over end roll, though the landing may have landed her in the shrubs initially, and then in the doctor’s office later (yikes). Mr. Rahe even managed to get in on the fun and coined a new move called “front tire air” which roughly translates to “old guy who is too chicken to take a jump with any real speed”! Outdoor Education students please leave a 100 word blog response below.
Mouat Extreme Outdoor Education 
This was my first time going on a Mountain biking trail trip in Downs Bowl and it was super thrilling and fun. The weather was great, nice and sunny! We did a warm-up around nearby parks and learned some new skills along the way. We had a few breaks and would also learn how the trails were made and Admire the nature around us. Everyone started out strong and some of the trails were steep with lots of cool looking roots. One of my favourite parts of this trip was one we can go off the big dirt jumps with a couple of new friends I made. I would definitely go on this fun Mountain biking trip again. 🙂
Pretty cool area very close to home!
On the biking trip to downs bowl I learned that there is a love for mountain biking that I never new. But the next time I go biking like that I need to pack more water I ran out so fast because of how tired I became but I lived. Over all I would say this trip was amazing.
The intro to mountain biking trip was great. We started off by biking around fishtrap creek. We made our way to Downs Bowl and that’s where the fun began. The terrain got slightly more difficult, after about an hour we made it to a crossroads where we split up and branched off in our own little groups to explore. Caelan and I went up and had a lot of fun doing the jumps along the main path. Mr Rahe even came up and got front tire air off the jump, a trick he invented. I learned how to ride down stairs and had a great time on this trip.
Front tire air is officially legendary!
Picture a world within a world. You might think that I am about to tell some kind of fairytale to you if so you would be wrong. Questioning what I might be referring to. Then remember that the term world is much more variant in definition than you may think. It can represent things from the earth as expected but also a person’s life or activities. Abbotsford is home to over 100000 people who have homes and operate our local economy and some even work within the city. With that we all get very busy with the lives that we have here. That we may find it hard to believe that there is a place that contains a variety of animals we might not even see within our lifetime. Yet even a bike ride over there might expose us to some of these strange wonders of it. Quickly ask yourself what the place is that I am referring to. If you can’t tell, I am talking about Downes bowl. Here are just some of the animals that are lizards and this one might scare you, snakes. The reason why I brought those two animals up is that I saw both of them while I was bike riding there. While if you are the type of person that does not want to be around other people which in a pandemic is most. You might be glad that if you head over there is a reasonable chance that you would go over half an hour not seeing another living soul. As despite its many wonders it seems to be criminally under used. The Question comes down to why does no one want to use the trail and there seem to be yet no answer to that Question. As it is not like there the park is dangerous, sends off the annoying vibes or is easy to get lost in. And if there exist parks like these around here , I just wonder what opportunities am I missing just because I do not know that they are there. The concept of current knowledge is always something that we have to push and shove to make it get bigger so that we do not continue what was once ignorants into the future. We have made many bad decisions in the past as a result of what we did not know would result from those actions. The biggest ones include not acting quicker toward that pandemic, for example putting missures into place around January and february of 2020 to prevent covid 19 from becoming the pandemic it is today. I am not saying that you should be mad at yourself for what you did in your past personal life and activities that resulted in such a thing. Just use this as a starting off point “Picture a world within a world”.
Always great when you get the chance to discover one of these local hidden gems!
This biking trip was really fun because I was there with all my friends and it was hilarious to see some of them struggle through some of the uphill parts (me included). For this trip, I just borrowed my friend Cyrus’s bike and it worked pretty well. When we were on our break me and my friends went up to the jumps and were watching people jumping off them and they were like getting 5-10 feet of air. IT WAS CRAZZY. But I was really exhausted after so I probably won’t go on another one but I’m glad that I went this time.
I was definitely at the level of getting big air, but I did achieve front tire air which was a win!
The Bike trip to Downes Bowl was a lot of fun and very sunny. I got to bike around with friends and do a little bit of jumping around while on break, It was a good day mind you besides my breaks were bad. I learned on the trip that you have to be very careful at some points for drops or some edges because I looked away for one second at one point and I almost hit a stump and fell over. Luckily I didn’t and got past it without getting hurt. I learned about myself on the trip is that you got grip the handle bars very hard and keep your hands very firm, because in the end of the biking I got a big blister on the side of my thump and it stun so much and hurt a lot. It wasn’t that bad though because I then took care of it once I got home. I wish differently that it wasn’t so hot out on that day because after we got back to the school, I was tired and sweaty in the end of it all but it was good still to enjoy the sun on a sunny and hot day and get good exercise out of it. I think for myself next time I will prepare for the trip differently by bring gloves because my hands always slipped quickly every time on the handle bars which caused me get a blister on my hand. I also as well think I should either brought a better bike or get new handle bars because the brakes on my bike were rusty and making it hard for me to use the brakes on steep hills leading me to use my feet at some points to stop so I don’t crash into someone, my bike as well had loose handle bars which caused me every time I hit a bump I had to raise the bars up to ride the bike properly and use the brakes properly to stop. Overall though I had a fun time on this trip with friends and it would be fun to do it again if I could have used a better bike next time.
I found it interesting how much of a workout mountain biking can be. Glad you learnt a lot during this trip!
This trip was fun, and also very close to our school. The environment was super nice, and it’s cool to have such a nice trail in the middle of the city. It wasn’t super difficult, but I’m not an experienced mountain biker so there were some occasional spots that were challenging. However, what’s nice about mountain biking is that you can just walk if it’s too difficult for you. I would recommend this trip to anyone as long as you are not a complete novice, as it is very local and a lot of fun.
Downes Bowl is definitely a hidden gem and I’m glad you got to experience it from a different perspective.
The Downes Bowl biking trip was much more “mountain bikey” than the Vedder loop a lot of ups and downs. On this trip, I used my own bike after giving it a fix-up. It got quite tiring but not so much that it was unmanageable. A lot of the trail had medium to large roots in the ground and that hindered the experience a little, I much would have preferred rootless dirt. During the time where everyone was off to do their own thing, there was a small jump, I got a minuscule amount of air but it still felt cool. A bus was not taken during this trip since Downes Bowl is so close. I liked Vedder loop more than Downes Bowl but I would like to go mountain biking again.
The roots add to the difficulty and natural environment; I wouldn’t change that for the world!
I’ve never gone mountain biking before, all I’ve done was take my bike around my block and go too fast food places. This was a pretty great adventure as I went into a new field of exercise and I got to see a different perspective when I was riding the bike through the forest instead of just regular walking. It’s crazy because it’s pretty much right behind my house and I never knew about it. All my friends and I enjoyed this trip very much, I even went off a few jumps and got a tiny bit of air. I would definitely go on another trip like this again.
This trip was fun, and also very close to our school. The environment was super nice, and it’s cool to have such a nice trail in the middle of the city. It wasn’t super difficult, but I’m not an experienced mountain biker so there were some occasional spots that were challenging.