Dropping Down Golden Trails
Take the challenge of mountain biking around this B.C. town
It had felt like hours had gone by since we left our car at the top of lsd. And we were still dropping. My riding partners – Sean Allen, a recent Golden, B.C., transplant, and Andy Brown, a longtime local – both knew the trails well, so they descended with a confidence that eluded me. I merely hung on, squeezing my brakes and reacting as the obstacles appeared before my front wheel. I managed to ride the double up and over cleanly and kept hanging on as I plunged over several mandatory drops.
After a very creatively built split-log feature that had a handlebar-snagging skinny section that carried us through beautiful old-growth B.C. forest, we pedalled onto the Canyon Creek Trail. As a full-throttle doubletrack, it was much better suited for my fast but not-exactlyfinessed riding style. But caution couldn’t be completely cast aside as Canyon Creek isn’t a place to go wide on a corner; the trail runs down the ridge edge. It’s more than 100 m to the valley floor.
From the bottom of Canyon Creek, we had a short climb back into the heart of the Moonrakers trail network, before gravity took over on one of Allen’s favourite trails. “The Mighty Quinn is such a rad trail,” said Allen. “It was one of Golden’s first new-school flow trails, so get ready for a few kms of jumps and berms.” A few connector trails took us from the base of the Mighty Quinn back to town. All told, we’d descended 1,400 m from lsd to downtown Golden, in just a little more than 15 km.
Traditionally thought of as a Canadian Pacific Railway town with strong ties to forestry, Golden’s booming tourism industry is reshaping the small town’s reputation as one of British Columbia’s leading adventure destinations. Located between the Purcell and Rocky Mountains, Golden is within a two-and-a-half-hour drive of five national parks – Jasper, Banff, Yoho, Kootenay, and Glacier. The Kicking Horse and Columbia Rivers offer whitewater rafting, while Mount 7 is home to a smorgasbord of activities from paragliding to backcountry skiing, not to mention some exciting downhill bike trails.
The town’s biggest attraction, undoubtedly, is Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Although primarily a bigmountain skiing paradise from December through April, Kicking Horse is open year-round. Throughout the summer, the DH bike park is home to some seriously long descents. The total elevation is just less than 1,130 m, while 30 trails provide a weekend’s worth of variety. Off-thebike activities include a new via ferrata and mountaintop hiking trails. The resort’s most famous resident, Boo, an orphaned grizzly bear, lives mid-mountain in the world’s largest enclosed habitat.
While Kicking Horse might be the town’s biggest attraction, the Golden Cycling Club is working hard to make sure its XC trail networks are the No. 1 reason people return again and again. “With a little help from the Golden Eagle Express Gondola,” Allen said, “you can be in the alpine very quickly. The unsanctioned T4 trail is so good. It’s got views all around and technical riding all the way down to Moonrakers.” The 9-km trail isn’t for the faint of heart, as it involves plenty of steep exposed terrain that adds 1,100 m descending before connecting with the Moonrakers network via lsd.