Mountain Biking in Canada

Written by Andy

If you like mountain biking, whether you are a complete beginner or an expert, Canada has some of the most incredible trails in the world. There is so much choice and so many bike parks, not to mention all the companies that you can arrange your trip with. Focusing just on British Columbia, here are some of the top Mountain Bike Parks in this area:

Snow Mountain Biking

looks fun, but the trails are more traditional mud tracks

Whistler Mountain Bike Park

This is a serious park, tailored specifically to riders of all abilities, providing the highest quality trails. Boasting over 1500m of trails, often thousands of feet up in the mountains, they are all fully accessible by purpose built lifts. This means you can get in so much more downhill riding, than if you were to try and ride up to where they start.

It costs between $12 and $16 dollars depending on which trail you choose. In addition to the trails, Whistler offers an Air Dome which is 8400 square foot of covered ramps including a quarter and half pipe, and a huge foam pit.

At the bottom you will find a fully facilitated hotel, plus a mountain bike shop both selling, fixing and servicing bikes. You can also rent bikes from here, and all safety equipment, which everyone must wear no matter which trail they ride.

Sun Peaks Resort Bike Park

This is one of the most beautiful locations, offering 595 metres of trails with 35 different routes. This park also offers a lift service to the summit. One of the park’s most recent additions, which has become an instant hit, is the Big Rock Ride XC trail. You can take the lift up to the summit of Sundane Mountain, and enjoy single-track trails down through some of the most picturesque meadows you will ever see, all the way to the breath-taking McGillivray Lake.

Sun Peaks also offers complete Free-Ride camps during the summer, teaching you invaluable skills and techniques, and helping you apply them with supervised rides along a selection of trails. The 5 day camps cost around $400, and they have also introduced weekend women’s camps for 2 days, for around $200. These are very competitive prices for how much you actually get.

Silver Star Bike Park

This is another World Class park, which uses the Comet 4 bike lift, which means there is barely any waiting time. They have recently introduced 3 new jump trails, the Pipe, Dream and Rock Star, which have become an instant success. As with the other trails it has lots of amazing Downhill slopes, XC Routes and plenty of training programmes and camps.

The scenery you will see from elevations at any of these Parks is astounding, with lots of typically Canadian snow-capped rugged mountains. The trails being built simply keep getting better, and to be able to start at the top means condensing your experience into just the fun parts. These parks have made the mountains accessible in a way they never have been before. You can’t help but fall in love with this unbelievable region.

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