Above the BMX track a winding ribbon of dirt, dust and (at times) mud connects with the Bryce trail through the trees over rollers and around bermed corners, making a roller coaster on which you can ride a bike.
The trail starts from the first 90 degree corner of the Bryce and meanders down the hill side and under the power lines to connect with the horse trail behind the BMX track and the swimming pool and from there onto the BMX track.
The idea for the trail sprung from the mind of Lori Carifelle, prompted by her desire to make mountain biking more accessible.
“I really wanted to make this trail so Landon (McGauley) could ride it,” Carifelle said.
The idea was to make a trail that would accommodate a four-wheel bike that people in wheelchairs could ride. To make it navigable for the wider bike, the trail is wider than the traditional single-track and doesn’t feature huge jumps or tricky bridges.
The decision to make the trail more accessible has, as a side effect, also made the trail perfect for riders who have a hard time on the private trails, with their fast single-track, large jumps and difficult obstacles.
The new trail, instead, offers a ride that beginners can enjoy without fear of crashing constantly dogging their wheels.
“It’s like a beeline at Whistler,” Tony Cole, one of the volunteers and a trail user, said.
“There’s no real jumps, just rollers and berms.”
For those more familiar with ski hills than mountain bikes, Cole compares it to a blue square run at a ski hill.
That, however, doesn’t mean it’s boring for the riders you might find dropping off cliffs and navigating 20 cm wide wooden bridges and teeter totters on their weekends.
“There’s lots of variety. People can go really fast on it, or you can ride it at your own pace,” Clay Chisolm, a volunteer and trail user, said.
Not only is it more accessible to people who can’t ride the private trails because of the degree of difficulty, the trail also offers a choice closer to home and thus easier to access for riders who don’t have the time or vehicular access to drive bikes out of town to a trail.
While most mountain bike tracks thread their way through pristine forest in secret enclaves dotting the countryside, the new track, which remains nameless for the present, is a quick ride from both South Quesnel and the Johnston Subdivision, allowing riders to drop by after school or after work for a leisurely ride.
This convenience has made it a popular spot for students on their summer break to come for a quick ride. Cole, a regular user of the trail and track, estimated the track sees 30 to 50 people a day using it already.
The trail was financed through in-kind donations with plenty of the grunt work supplied through volunteers, though some of the work was farmed out to Dream Wizards, a mountain bike trail building company. The second trail, currently in the planning phase, will be funded through the Northern Development Initiative and will be built by volunteers.
Carifelle gives a lot of credit to the volunteer workers spending their time digging and shaping the dirt, specifically Chisolm who she says has been an integral part of the creation of the trail. The volunteers, who are the same ones that spend time on the trail and the BMX track, are just as impressed with her work as she is with theirs.
“I just did the funding. I didn’t do any of the hard work,” Carifelle said.
“The hard work’s getting the money,” Cole responded.
“That’s a big, big part of it.”
The next section of track should be done by the end of August if everything goes as planned. Now Chisolm, who will be doing a large portion of the shaping of the track, has to find out where there is open land. The plan is to create another trail connecting the Bryce and the BMX track which will be similarly malleable to rider’s skill levels. The second trail should start in much the same place as the first one.
Chisolm, who has done a lot of work on the trail is happy with how it turned out. The next one, however, he has big plans for.
“It’s going to be better than the other one cause the local guys are doing it,” he said.
After the trails are done, Carifelle hopes to raise donations for a four wheel bike that would stay at the track so people in wheelchairs would be able to borrow it, as the bikes are prohibitively expensive.
