If you don’t ride it often or hook up with locals, you’re in a world of hurt when it comes to finding your way around Galby’s maze of mostly unsigned trails. You’d better be carrying a map — or better yet, a phone with GalbraithMt.com’s new smart-phone app.

The Guru of Galbraith, Mongo (aka Bruce Brown), has just published his comprehensive, up-to-the-moment map set of the big mountain in smart-phone form. On a three-hour Saturday ride it saved our bacon time and again as we went a-wandering around Galbraith.

No more bike wandering on Galby.

As you can see from the route recorded on our iPhone’s GPS app, Motion X, we had to backtrack a number of times after going off on a trail and getting lost (the little pointies shooting off the perimeter are the turnarounds).



With the GalbraithMt.com set (available from its Web site), we simply pulled out the iPhone from our backpack, checked our bearings, and were ready to keep rolling.

Even if you’re an experienced Galby rider, you’ll find GalbraithMt.com’s set a useful tool. New trails keep popping up all the time, and Bruce is dedicated to updating his maps on an as-needed basis.

Check it out! Galby’s even more fun if you know where you are riding at any given time.

Lead-in ramp to Unemployment Line.

Bruce’s facile documentation makes me look like a real mountain biker — although as he notes in the cedar stump jump, I almost manage to take him out even as I try to avoid hitting a fresher stump right in my flight pattern. Bruce survived to tell the tale, and we all had a great time capping off Tour de Galby with Eric Brown’s fantastic new Unemployment Line and Atomic Dog (which is shaping into arguably Galbraith’s best in Bruce’s opinion, me seconding).

iPhone app Motion X GPS caught it all.

It was a great day, which we caught on our iPhone with Motion X GPS. I love this $2.99 app but it’s not without caveats, which we’ll explore in a forthcoming review. For now the word is, hit Galbraith asap. The trails are buff (Unemployment has berms the size Maverick waves) and you can spend all day riding switchbacks without ever knowing exactly where you are, let alone repeating yourself.

The trailer is tantalizing indeed, with clips from the Aptos Post Office jump park, Whistler mountain bike park, Tahoe, Vancouver Island’s Mount Washington and elsewhere. It’s cool to see pony-tailed riders in full armor skying launches and doubles. Will we be seeing a She Slopestyle event at Crankworx sometime soon? The way these women are amping the skillz, we wouldn’t be surprised.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIPsY3oERsI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

The fem freerider is definitely here to stay. We noticed it most dramatically at Galbraith Mountain last summer. Any day of the week you could find fully geared women ripping the trails. Where were they all coming from? The presence of Western Washington U undoubtedly is a contributor, but the mtb culture is so generically ingrained in Bellingham that my sense is no single factor is at work. Women have been a mainstay on the GalbraithMt.com Web site for years. All it takes is a few to spread mtb love and you’ve got a revolution on your hands.

Here’s the showtimes for “Women of Dirt” as it stands now.

Related: MTBChick’s Mountain Biking Tips for Girls