My favourite trail

This is the text of an article on my favourite trail that will appear in an upcoming issue of Explore Magazine.

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I Don't Play Favourites (but I will this once)

As the owner of a mountain bike holiday company, I ride my bike a lot. A lot. In fact I’m writing this a day after getting home from 6 weeks of riding in Chile and Guatemala. I’ve also ridden my mountain bike in Peru, Mexico, the U.S., and Europe. I’ve ridden 10,000-vertical-foot descents in the Andes; on ridge tops in the driest desert in the world; on the sides of Guatemalan volcanoes.

All of these rides are dazzling in their own right; many could rightly bear the ‘ride-of -a-lifetime’ mantle. But put any of these rides up against a reticent little hometown favourite in a fair fight, and they’ll go down like a sack of P.E.I. potatoes.

Dem Bones is a quiet, unassuming mountain bike trail in my former hometown of Fernie, British Columbia. Unlike some of its bigger brethren in the Rockies, Dem Bones doesn’t serve up spectacular views (there’s one 50m section where you can kinda see the valley below); it doesn’t offer the adrenaline rush of its North-Shore competitors (no big airs or log rides here); it isn’t an all-day epic (you can ride up and down the trail in an hour).

Compared to local epics like the 4,000-vertical-foot Al Matador, Dem Bones suffers from a lack of the former’s glitz and glamour. But that might be just why I love it so much. It’s one of those trails you don’t ride often, and then after you’re done you wonder why you don’t ride it more. The Al Matadors of this world will come and go, but trails like Dem Bones will endure. They’re The Beatles of the singletrack world, able to appeal across generations.

What Dem Bones is is classic singletrack: fast, smooth, and twisty. It’s an old-school throwback to the days when mountain bikes were hardtails with 2” of front suspension and clunky cantilever brakes. You don’t need armour for this trail; heck, you don’t even need suspension. Just point and go.

Shall we?

After a challenging climb up a steep powerline, and through the pine forest of Mr. Mushroom Head, you get to an unassuming clearing in the woods that marks the start of the downhill. Put your seat down and point your bike downhill. Soon the Aspen are whizzing by and the trail is taking you on its verdant journey. Squeeze through a few tight turns at high speed and soon you’re out on the powerline again, ready for round two. A short climb brings you to the top of the second downhill, this one even faster than the first. You scream through the forest, pine branches thrashing your arms, eyes focused on the few feet of silky singletrack ahead of you. Halfway down you enter The Boneyard, for which this trail is named. Someone, years ago, has taken a collection of animal bones – skulls, leg bones, ribs – and hung them on the trees. Over the years, poachers have depleted the boneyard of its former glory, but remnants of its mystique still remain.

The adrenaline continues to flow as you descent the last thousand metres of trail, the trail finally spitting you out onto the blacktop of Mt. Fernie Provincial Park, tired and sated. You put Rubber Soul on your iPod and savour the jagged Rocky Mountain scenery as your knobbies eat up pavement in the late afternoon sun and John Lennon sings about a girl he once had.