Hot riding in Invermere, B.C.
From April to November, you can take to the trails in the Columbia Valley
Our afternoon ride changed gears at the Kicking Horse Café in Invermere, B.C. We were just finishing lunch when a friendly senior citizen dropped into our conversation. Despite being limited to a three-wheeled recumbent bicycle since suffering a stroke, he was still an authority on the local mountain bike scene. After overhearing our plan to squeeze in a quick ride on the Juniper Heights trails, he suggested we skip the cross country ride and explore the trails at Mount Swansea. Although Mount Swansea is a small peak, rising only 750 m above the valley floor, it’s home to a network of hiking and mountain bike trails. We hadn’t planned to ride there. Trailforks had described intermediate and advanced downhill trails that were only accessible via shuttle or gruelling uptrack. It seemed to cater strictly to the Dh-only crowd. It turned out that information was outdated. We’d just missed the grand reopening by a few days. “The uptrack has been renamed the Swansea Trail now, and we’ve really put work into it,” says T.J. Neault, director of trail development for the Columbia Valley Cycling Society (cvcs). “It was a grunt before, but we’ve rerouted the steepest sections. We’re doing laps on the trail now, instead of shuttling.” The recent trail developments are plenty of fun. South Park is the signature trail. It is a 4.6-km-long machine-built flow trail that sends riders
screaming past stunning views of the Columbia Valley. The downhill thrills continue below South Park, too, as the trail leads directly to the top of Hula Girl, which offers a mix of machine-built flow with fast rock and root sections. While both of these trails have an intermediate label, they’re just plain fun to ride, no matter the rider’s skill level.
“We weren’t focused on building a blue run,” says Neault, “but we wanted to build a trail that could handle a wide range of users. Everyone is riding South Park right now, and they all seem to love it. It’s the type of trail we were missing in this valley.”
Located on the shore of Lake Windermere, Invermere feels like a small tourist town. It is, however, the service hub for the Columbia Valley communities in a 40-km radius from Radium to Fairmont Hot Springs. It’s a popular year-round tourism destination, but it truly booms during the summer.
There are only 2,882 permanent residents, but the number nearly triples during the hot, dry summer months, when lakeside vacation homes and campgrounds fill up. Three public beaches and eight regional golf courses are the main attractions, but Invermere has more to offer. There are incredible hiking trails in both the Purcell and Rocky Mountains and the entrance to Kootenay National Park is just 15 minutes away. Hot springs abound, with commercial developments at both Radium and Fairmont Hot Springs and wilderness springs located at both Whiteswan Lake Provincial Park and Ram Creek.
The cvcs continues to improve the mountain bike scene, too, which is slowly proving itself as another tourism and economic driver.
“The valley has a lot of unique land-use issues,” says Neault, “but whenever we encounter a setback, we work hard to find a solution rather than sit around and complain. We’re working with the regional district to tap into new funding, so we can continue to improve our trails.”
Lying roughly halfway between Fernie and Golden, two iconic B.C. mountain bike destinations, Invermere can feel overlooked. Both the quantity and quality of Invermere’s trails, however, match up with its more popular neighbours. There are four main trail networks in the valley. The cvcs maintains the downhill-oriented Mount Swansea and the cross country focused Lillian Lake, both of which are on Crown land. The unsanctioned Juniper Heights trail network, which appears on Trailforks and sees plenty of use, adds a dozen cross country trails to the area. Also, Panorama Mountain Resort, just to the west, offers a liftaccess downhill bike park.
Invermere’s hot, arid climate makes riding difficult throughout the summer. Early morning rides are the rule, as temperatures often soar higher than 30 C in the afternoons. During the past two years, nearby wildfires have had their impact, leaving the Columbia Valley blanketed in smoke for weeks.
But the weather ultimately provides a unique value to Invermere’s mountain bike scene, because the season is months longer than almost anywhere else in the mountains. At my home, just two hours away in Canmore, Alta., our trails had been snowbound for weeks. In Invermere, we found trails in perfect condition. After a freak September snowstorm that threatened to
“South Park is a 4.6-km-long machinebuilt flow trail that sends riders screaming past stunning views of the Columbia Valley.”
cut the riding season short, predictably stable weather had returned in October and hadn’t just extended the riding season, but helped improve the overall riding conditions.
“Our riding season is easily April until November, if not longer” says Neault, “but the shoulder seasons are the best time to ride. It’s all hero dirt as we get a bit of seasonal weather that smooths out the trails.”
Hours before being redirected to Mount Swansea, we had begun the day with a lap of Kloosifier, an 8-km cross country loop in the Lillian Lake trail network. It’s an impressive singletrack, looping through an arid pine forest in a series of twists and turns that make strategic use of an incredible small parcel of land within sight of downtown. We knew the trail well and looked forward to riding it again. It’d been more than seven months, back in early April, that we’d kick-started our season on the same trail.