The things I miss about group rides

Mountain biking on a growing network in B.C.’S Monashees

“I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.” Not only did the Ozzy Osbourne classic song skip through my head as I dropped into Crazee Train, one of the trails at Sol Mountain Lodge’s alpine singletrack network, but the lyrics came true. Trying to hop my bike onto a granite boulder while also preparing for a quick turn, I missed both and crashed off the side of the narrow singletrack. My knee was bruised, but my mood wasn’t spoiled. This was some of the most entertaining and scenic mountain biking I’ve ever done.

The trails begin at the door of the backcountry lodge in the Monashee Mountains, south of Revelstoke, B.C., and loop through alpine meadows and up exposed ridgelines high into a sky full of peaks and glaciers. The trails are Aaron Cooperman’s attempt to attract new summer guests to his ski touringdominated business. “I noticed our hiking guests weren’t getting any younger and, it seems to me, the younger generation wants more adventure in the mountains,” said Cooperman, one of the owners and founders of Sol.

Chatting with the backcountry skiers and boarders who fill his lodge from December to April, Cooperman realized a majority spend summer on their bikes. “Build some sexy singletrack and they will come in summer, too,” he

figured. It was also an opportunity to tap into the growing number of mountain bikers visiting nearby Revelstoke, Nukusp and Nelson. Rather than compete, he thought, Sol would complement by offering alpine riding without hours of climbing and a cosy lodge to base out of. Plus, Sol is one of the few backcountry lodges with a road right to the front door, cutting out the expense and headache of heli-flights.

In 2013, Cooperman hired a trail crew to get to work. He’s added a few kilometres every year and now there’s more than 26 km looping out from Sol. My friend Chris Baikie and I drove up a bumpy procession of logging roads to check it out. It was mid-september, at the tail end of the summer season. Already snow had fallen and melted on the trail network. Fall’s bite tinged the vegetation. After a short pedal from the parking area, we arrived at the sturdy and roomy lodge, moved our stuff in and headed back out the door to sample the trails.

The network is a stack of loops. Close to the lodge they’re fairly easy, meandering through a grassy meadow and open forest that’s sheltered from the wind. It’s the perfect warm-up. Cooperman says it’s a popular option when the weather’s crappy. But it’s really only a prelude to the main event.

We turned up Beacon Check and started climbing. Weaving through rocks, sprinting up slabs, taking tight corners and riding the occasional flat, we felt it was harder than its blue rating. We huffed until we hit a T. Left led to South Caribou Pass, Sol’s signature trail. We decided to save that for the next day and headed right up Infinity. We got above the treeline, but couldn’t take our eyes off the technical trail to enjoy the view as we continued up. At one point the trail splits a pair of tarns on a backbone of rock.

Nearly spent, we finally topped out. The views stretched for a hundred kilometres in every direction. Besides a few clearcuts, there’s little sign of any other humans, except