Math Belange Rides the Entire Mont-Sainte-Anne Trail Network in One Day

If you are a mountain biker, you know Mont-St-Anne. This legendary race venue held a UCI world cup for 25 years straight. It is one of the very few places to have held multiple world championships and most of all, a track that is known to be one of the most challenging on the circuit. The race course is renowned worldwide, but the trail network… not so much.


Literally existing in the shadow of XC and DH world cup tracks, the MSA trail network goes far East and North of this legendary mountain. It has been on the backfoot in terms of quality standards for years. But with the efforts of a few stubborn locals and an ever growing community, MSA is now one of the largest and most varied trail networks in eastern Canada. The network is so vast that it should take a few days to ride all the trails… except for Math Bélanger. "This is where I learned to mountain bike."




20 years ago, a young kid watching the cross country mtb world cup randomly asked his parents to try mountain biking the next week. He was instantly hooked. ‘’I remember crashing every corner. It took us a few hours to get down the hill. We did 2 chairlift run and that was it.’’

Fast forward a few years, more than 100 XC races, a few world championships, world cups and BC Bike Races plus a lot of time on the saddle, Math Bélanger is still riding around Mont-St-Anne. ‘’ For many years, most trails were often muddy, with rocks and roots all over the place. Plus, they all looked pretty much the same with very few exceptions... It was either the rootiest cross country trail you have ridden or a top speed DH world cup track… no in between.’’

With now more than 130km of trails of all kinds, Math wanted to give it a go and rally them all… in the same day. ‘’ I guess it’s a way to pay tribute to different generations of people that rode and built trails here. Trails that were made 30 years ago, or ten years ago or even last year do not offer the same riding experience, and that’s the fun part of the challenge. Now that they’re all well taken care of, I guess it’s the right time to showcase how great of a network we have by including all of them in a single day challenge. I’m ok with riding a lot but MSA is a beast, trails are spread out far into the forest and they are very physical’’



Anybody who rode in Mont-Ste-Anne knows that mileage does not go up easily around here. There’s a lot of climb and lots of descending that comes with it, both being very steep and technical. Add the cold temperatures of early October in Quebec into the equation and you may obviously ask yourself why would someone do that.

This is the kind of “off-season” stuff that Math relishes. Throughout the last few years, he famously achieved many similar outstanding feats, such as crossing the Parc the Laurentides in a single day riding on the old Raid Pierre Harvey course, a 3 day stage race held in the 90s. He also linked the whole mtb trail network in Burke, Vermont, and the whole Quebec City fatbike trails in the winter. But since there is nothing like home, he finally decided to add up to the MTB everesting he did a few years ago at Mont-Ste-Anne by trying to ride the whole network in his backyard in a single day.

Voluntarily doing such a challenge is almost madness. Math calmly and simply explains it is a way to elevate the work from the Trail Builders MSA community.

‘’It is impossible for the resort to maintain such a massive trail system. We can count on volunteers to maintain and build trails here. We have a huge community with weekly digs and I’m lucky enough to call this trail system home. Doing this challenge wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of these people. I’m doing it to honor their work and show people that we have a great trail system and a great group of people behind it!’’.




Trail building has been going on for decades in Mont-Ste-Anne, but not always legally or in an organized way. Most of the singletracks that are in the trail network have first been built illegally on private lands by local riders who wanted to diversify what they ride day in, day out. Obviously, it is not the nicest way to get your point and keep the trails open in the resort. So instead of building trails at night and keeping the entrance secrets, the local community built an organization simply called Trail Builders MSA.

Between all his racing, training, walking the dog and working full time, Math is also involved in Trail Builders MSA. ‘’I’m riding A LOT on these trails, it just makes sense to me to put in the work, build some trails, help promote the community and find sponsors to finance the organization.”’’


The group of volunteers wants to maintain and build trails for the mountain biking community in symbiose with the MSA resort. ‘’We ride the trails here, so we know what we want. Do we need a climb to access a certain part of the mountain, do we need some drainage in some sections? etc.’’ The resort is directly connected to the trail building community, so employees or managers can call for some trail work that needs to be done in some part of the resort where it is just too complicated to send a team of employees.

‘’We have a very good relationship with MSA resort and we want to keep it like that. It is hard to win trust from such a big company. Now that we have it, we plan on working on some greater projects’’





STRAVA

9 hours, 4800m of elevation gain, 125km covered, a few hard moments later, Math was done. From his side, there was nothing to really complain about: ‘’It was a hard but very nice day. I kept a good pace all day and didn’t have any issues'’. But when we talked to the photographer and quad driver trying to get shots of Math during the day: ‘’We were barely able to keep up the pace with him. It is the first time I’m actually rushing to get the quad somewhere before a cyclist, it was insanely fast’’


As the autumn leaves now falls all over the trails and that the season nears its end, Math finally seems ready to relax and reflect back on his journey so far in Mont-Ste-Anne. “As a kid, this was a place to dream about riding like the world’s best, as a teenager it became the place where I wanted to achieve my best race every season. Now it’s home and these are the trails I ride and help built. Apart from achieving a great cycling performance on that day, I had many thoughts making me realize that mtb trails, especially those in my backyard, are not only a place to ride faster and better. It’s also a place to think, relax and re-energize for life’s next challenge. Knowing that friends will always be around trails to build new jumps and turns and then enjoying some beverage afterwards is a fantastic lifestyle.”

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