To celebrate National Tourism Week in Canada, we thought we would share ten recent Destination Showcases and Local Flavours articles to celebrate some of the top mountain bike destinations in Canada. What a place to be a mountain biker!
Please follow the advice of health authorities to keep yourself and others safe. Now may not the time to travel, but we can't wait to head back to some of these spots in the future.
Big White
British ColumbiaBig White brought plenty of great action last year during the Big White Slopestyle with the world's best throwing down some insane tricks. Bike Big White is the official location partner of Pinkbike Academy and we can't wait to get out there this summer. (
Read more.)
Silver Star Mountain Resort
British ColumbiaOutside of Whistler, Silver Star has by-far the most established mountain bike trail network in the province. (
Read more.)
Kootenays
British ColumbiaWith iconic landmarks such as the Yoho National park, the Purcells, the Rockies, the Monashees, and the Selkirk mountain ranges, the scale of the terrain in the Kootenays is incredible. (
Read more.)
Whistler
British ColumbiaWith its world-class bike park and over 300km of singletrack in the valley and a ton of other stuff to do, it's tough to know where to start. Well fear not, we designed a perfect four-day itinerary for Whistler, BC. (
Read more.)
Okanagan
British ColumbiaWhile the Okanagan may be best known for its wineries and orchards, there's still plenty of room for mountain bike trails to criss-cross the region in Penticton, Kelowna, Vernon, and Kamloops. (
Read more.)
Sun Peaks
British ColumbiaEverything you need to know before you head to the bike park just outside of Kamloops, BC. (
Read more.)
New Brunswick
MaritimesAndy Vathis headed to New Brunswick on Canada's East Coast to check out what the local communities are doing to develop fat biking in the region. (
Read more.)
Quebec City
QuebecA huge variety of trails, a vibrant cultural scene, and a whole lot of croissants will make you want to head to Quebec City. (
Read more.)
Sunshine Coast
British ColumbiaBrice Shirbach headed to the year-round riding destination on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia last summer and was struck by the beauty of the place, and the amount of loam on the trails. (
Read more.)
Kicking Horse / Fernie
British ColumbiaYou're going to want to add Kicking Horse and Fernie to your BC Road trip itinerary after reading this article. (
Read more.)
Where are you excited to visit once things open up again?
Also, it's Okanagan. One 'O,' no 'E.'
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A lot of the smaller trail centers like Valemount etc. are incredible but for people looking for a lift-accessed park with at least a few things to do after the ride and decent weather Silverstar is pretty awesome. Plus, I love Bugaboos pre-ride and hanging out with the doggo on the patio of the Bulldog afterward.
Although I'm sure Oklahoma has some sick trail.
To which I say: pinkbike, as the world leader in mountain bike e-journalism, I think it is incumbent upon you to actively seek out that Oklahoma tourism money to promote mountain biking in the heartland of our great continent!
But in the interest of compromise, maybe we can agree that pinkbike should be promoting mountain biking in Oklahoma AND Canada.
in a good way
- Kananaskis / front range of the Rockies near Calgary
- Jasper National Park
- Eastern Townships of Quebec (Bromont / Sutton)
I'm from Sask, lived in Calgary for a bit and live in SW Ontario now.
It would've been nice to mention somewhere in between Calgary and Ottawa, but I get it.
Probably the most surprisingly good area, to me, was the in-city riding in Edmonton. There was great riding and lots of singletrack within the city limits. The river valley and surrounding areas were beautiful and awesome.
Or I’m just old and bitter. Probably both true
Looking at these amazing trails and places to ride has me severely regretting that decision.
By blocking US zombie contagion we're offering ourselves up as a control group of quasi-communist, health-care-loving, trail-building, mountain-biking beatniks. This way there'll be different data points. Aren't real-world experiments grand?
"we don't care" "summer without international tourism will be great"
Facts don't care about your feelings. The fact is most of these bike destinations are tourism based. Do you understand how international tourism creates wealth in these communities?
Fact is Canadians home prices have dropped up to 29% and is expected to reach 50-75%. Anyone here work in home construction? www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Real_Estate/Canadian_housing_market_will_see_a_historic_recession_in_2020_reports_CMHC
You can enjoy your grand experiment all you want. but I encourage you to reach out to your tourism departments and ask them how they feel. You really think Vail is going to pour money in to the Whistler bike park when a large part of their cliental can't get into the country?
Honestly, ask yourself, are Canadians wealthy enough to support their own country?
"Tourism is a $102-billion industry that employs about 1.8 million Canadians, according to government statistics."
I am aware it's not a fun conversation. but avoiding all risk is a little rich coming from people who ride their bikes down forested trails at speed.
The border won't open for a long time. Eventually I can see Trump wanting to for showing people things are actually normal when its not but I hope we keep it shut for a year. Hell we probably need to shut the border between Ontario and Manitoba too! ;p
100k out of 330million. 90% of that number had underlying conditions.
The average age of death is 81. Higher that the average life expectancy in the us.
And 40% of that 100k happened in nursing homes due to failed policy.
50-80% of people are asymptomatic.
So based of of this, we can assume that elderly people with underlying conditions are the highest risk. Sooo we can make policies that don't crush tourism because we know what group needs to be protected and what groups can travel around.
You know what other virus has infected 3/5th of the world, 90% of those infected don't know it, and has an infant mortality rate of 60% for those babies infected with it? Herpes, but I don't see radical anti sex policies being pushed in Whistler.
Reading isn't a strength of yours is it.
According to that article
Prices. 8-19%
Number of sales will drop by: 19-29%
Number of starts starts by 50-75%
The loss of Tourism is going to hurt us economically. But we are at a really good starting point and will be able to handle things better then most of our neighbours.
Plus when you live in the best place in the world you just don't need as much money because well you don't have to travel to find amazing riding.
Suffice it to say that approximately 80+% of Canadians (IpsosReid poll) agreed with the conservative approach being taken by their public health officers). There is remarkable United social consensus on this.
By reasonable inference many look askance at the patchwork US response. And there will likely be disagreement between the countries as to how re-emerge, CFR, IFR, public private sector roles, public-health measures etc. And disagreement is fine. But we (referring to that large plurality of Canadians) do not want to be part of the grand US real time laboratory experiment hence the border controls.
Of course Canada can not be autarkic. Of course there will be economic impact. But in the calculus of (pandemic-causal) loss of life vs (economic-impact) loss of life it seems Canada and Canadians want to walk their own path.
And perhaps the US, Sweden, Brazil, Belarus, Nicaragua (select countries taking a more economy-focused approach) will be "right" and that other countries have been too risk-averse. So be it. Time will tell. And collectively we will learn from the different approaches.
But until then most Canadians are satisfied with the border controls. Best wishes to all Americans and to everyone in the world of all creeds, colours, and wheelsizes
The point of lockdown is not to stop the virus. You cannot stop an extremely contagious entity like this. The point of lockdown was to slow it (flatten the curve) so that healthcare is not overwhelmed.
The US had/has really mixed messaging. Lock downs only work if people actually listen to them. I suspect the mixed messaging caused a lot of your citizen to not take the social distancing as serious as they should have. As an outsider it looks like the US is having the worse possible out come, a lockdown that caused great economic pain but failed to stop the spread of the disease.
In BC we did not have a lock down, some businesses were closed but a lot stayed open. What happened here is by in large we had most of public buy into the messaging from our public health office. Last week we average less than 10 new case per day. Now we are in a position where things are starting to return towards normal.
Interesting tid-bit for you. BC has a huge Chinese population, we restricted travel from China pretty close to the exact same time we restricted travel from the US. Yet, we have faired way better. Italy like the US also put a travel ban on China really early....
Travel bans are only effective if a country is already doing the other hard work (testing, contact tracing, asking citizens to make the difficult decision to social distance, ect...). The travel bans that countries like the US and Italy made early on were about politics not about effective health policy. And that should be obvious from the case and mortality counts in those countries.
From: Undisclosed location. haha
Might be moving there...
But, let me correct you. Canada is our best national park that allows bikes. We working on getting that singletrack in yosemite though. USFS will bend the knee!
No but really, Canada is great! Lighten up guys