Launch of the Kicking Horse Trail Crew Blog on Pinkbike

Posted: Jun 24, 2008

The straight goods on Kicking Horse Bike Park, straight from the trail crew's fingertips.

This is the inaugural post of the unofficial Kicking Horse Trail Crew blog on Pinkbike.com.

Welcome to you and welcome to me.

My understanding of blogs is they are an avenue for one to communicate to many about something interesting. Well, the changes going on at the Kicking Horse Bike Park should be interesting to anyone with a downhill bike. If you haven’t been here since 2006, then you haven’t been here. You won’t recognize the place. (In fact, if you’ve never been here before you won’t recognize the place either, seeing as that you’ve never been here before. Now is the time to come! You can’t return to a place you love if you’ve never been there the first time!)

Before I get to the specific improvements since 2006, let me give you some background. Eight years ago the Bike Park at KHMR opened with 3700’ of vertical (I’ll use the imperial measurement here instead of the 1130m of metric because the numbers are bigger and I won’t have to add an exclamation point to make your eyeballs bulge). I don’t mean a total of 3700’ vert when you add up all the trails. No, I mean for each time you go up the gondola, no matter what combination of trails you ride to get back to the bottom, you descend 3700’. Each! Time!

Most of the original trails were etched out of the unforgiving Purcell Mtn landscape with brute force and hand tools (eg. Pioneer, Road Runner). Therefore, many of the trails took the shortest route to the bottom – straight down. The result was incredible, steep, white-knuckling single track that entertained the hardcore for a few years. However, time, weather and braking conspired together to turn some of these trails into rock-strewn, v-shaped creeks (seems water also finds the shortest route to the bottom).

About four years ago, recognizing the need for new trails and a broader appeal to the beginner and intermediate crowd, KHMR put in some serious machine time and created Kranky Pants, Buffalo Jump, Time Taker (now Magic Carpet Ride) and Super Berm and began work on Show Down. Huge improvements.


But every trail is subject to the ravages of time, weather and braking. In addition to the near constant maintenance the old trails demanded, these new trails needed a lot of rocks to be removed (if there is one thing we have in spades here it is rocks) so we could get a layer of dirt upon which to grow killer trails.


So, at the beginning of 2007, with an all-new trail crew and almost-new patrol, and a significant budget, we put our heads together to figure out how to reduce maintenance on these amazingly long trails so that we could better spend our time creating innovative stunts, smoothening the butter and riding our work. The solutions: slow riders down with berms and cross-slope angles, more drainage and woodwork.

Here’s a taste of what has happened since spring 2007 and is happening now:

- Blaster (black diamond run): After the original Blaster was destroyed to improve the winter ski run, a machine built replacement was created. Often described as “Holy *expletive*, that was *expletive" amazing!” Plans for more woodwork are on the books.

- Showdown (blue square run): After 3 years of construction, this long-anticipated trail opened with small tables, something like 17 berms, woodwork, a step-up and a step-down. The teeter-totter is in the wrong place so we are going to close and dismantle it. Too bad, but the next one will be better.

- Pioneer (black): Forests of woodwork were added over the deeply rutted steeps, including the inspired “Spiral Tap” and “Sky Berm”. The top section was decommissioned because 4 hours of maintenance would equal about 1 hour of good riding before it all went to hell again. An awesome section that will be fondly remembered, but not missed (well, the work anyway).

- Kranky Pants (green circle run): Recreated most of the berms on the upper section with imported dirt. Multiple drainages added throughout. Not butter yet, but perhaps oleo.


- Claim Jumper (black): Machine rebuild of the lower section – bermy! The upper section is still good ol’ old school single track – fast and techy.

- Super Berm (blue): This, from a construction point of view, is divided into 4 sections. The first section was built 4 or 5 years ago. Last year sections 3 and 4 were added. Mostly a roller for blue riders, but black riders who charge spend a lot of time in the air. This year the bottom of section 4 has been improved and we are rabidly working on section 2 so we can link the whole masterpiece together. Section 2 is built on a marsh, so we have a number of drainage issues to contend with, but it’s going to be sickter. Coming very soon!


- Easy Rider (green): Diverted part of this run onto a snakey ski run as part of our campaign to rid KHMR of straight, boring, brake-bumped sections.

- Dirt Jumps (black and blue): Bigger and better. Should be good to go for the Canada Day weekend.

- Stickrock (double black): Ooh, I’m excited about this one. Started last year to replace the old Road Runner, this trail is designed for slow, deliberate riding. It links 3 beautiful rock slabs with woodwork. You will barely touch dirt on this bad boy. (Do not ride this trail in the rain!) Once everything else is up and running smoothly, we are going after Stickrock with a vengeance. Open in late July?


The alpine has still to melt out, but there are improvements waiting for you up there too.

Tons of other tweaking has changed the character of the Kicking Horse Bike Park. The trail crew and patrol are highly motivated and inspired to continue the revolution. Come join us to see if this blog is just sloppy propaganda, or if it is the straight truth about the best lift-accessed riding in the Kootenays...well ok, I made that bit up - I've never ridden any other lift-accessed trails in the Kootenays.

More info at www.kickinghorseresort.com

Ride on.

Crowe