I’ve come across all kinds of obstacles in my biking career: logs, rocks, car parts, even best friends sprawled across the trail. But none of it prepared me for what blocked the trail 40 metres in front of me “” 1,500 pounds of fur, muscle, and antler. I knew there were no easy options to get by the bull elk standing right in the middle of the trail.

Synapses fired. Options whizzed through my brain. Could I stop in time? Is there room to ride past him? Will it trample me to death if I hit it? Why did I choose this trail?

That was the greatest question of all. Here I was riding a trail past hoodoo formations in Banff National Park when I could easily be grinding my way into the alpine on an old fire road, spinning along doubletrack lakeside, racing over the Continental Divide, or testing my skills on technical singletrack.

The biking options in Canada’s most famous national park are far more numerous than I expected.

Over the years, the only mountain biking news coming out of Banff National Park was bad. The same old stories of trail closures and user-group conflicts were regularly repeated. But the news, as usual, only told part of the story. While some trails were closed to riding, there is still 190 kilometres of mountain biking in Canada’s oldest national park, and it is some of the most scenic mountain biking in the world.

Banff was originally made a national park in 1885 to protect the hot springs right in the town. (The hot-springs pool makes a perfect après-ride pit stop.) With the first Canada-wide railway passing through town, it wasn’t long before the stop-dead mountain scenery became a draw as well. Wanna-be mountaineers came to climb with imported Swiss mountain guides. Horse pack trails wandered up valleys, and climbing approaches split off to passes and lookouts. Over the years, the trails were improved, bridges were built, and switchbacks eased the climb. Roads opened more of the park to hikers and soon people were traveling all over the 6,640 hectares of protected wilderness.

By the time I first visited Banff’s trails “” on a horse pack trip up to Healy Pass with my uncle in 1988 “” Gary Fisher genius had arrived in Alberta. As we plodded up the rough trail towards the alpine, 600 metres above, mountain bikers came bumping down.

“Those things have enough gears to climb a tree,” my uncle muttered as they passed. Being impressionable, I tried to imagine what that would look like.
It didn’t take long for the park service to decide that mountain biking, hiking, erosion, and wildlife were not a great mix. Trails were closed.
Despite my uncle’s assurances, I soon found that certain grades were just too steep for most mortal mountain bikers. It was about this point that it became abundantly clear that the park had saved mountain bikers a lot of sweat. Most of the closed trails are at best a bike-and-hike and, in some cases, unrideable. What was left, free for all, are the rideable trails and old fire roads. When it’s all tallied, there’s plenty to be explored.

Some of the best singletrack can be found in and around Banff, such as the 60-kilometre out-and-back trail along the north side of Lake Minnewanka. The roller-coaster trail climbs and falls along the shoreline on technical singletrack. In spots, the exposure-loose rock combo can be frightening. But when the trail allows, the views are spectacular. At first, the trail crosses the surging Stewart Canyon before climbing up a talus slope high above the lake, with views of Ingismaldie and other mountain ranges between Banff and Canmore. Farther up the lake, the mountains near the Ghost River valley and the barren Rocky Mountain front ranges keep riders entertained. On the way back, the bookends of Banff townsite “” Cascade Mountain and Mount Rundle “” dominate the view.

Circumnavigating Mount Rundle is another great ride (about 48 kilometres in total) that doubles as a sightseeing trip. Starting in downtown Banff, the ride takes in the busy shops of Main Street; the elegant Banff Springs Hotel; the Banff Springs Golf Course, where elk hazards regularly slow play; the Barrier Dam near Canmore; a ridiculously high-speed downhill; and the Canmore Nordic Centre, site of the 1988 Olympic Nordic skiing events. The 48-kilometre loop is on singletrack, old fire road, and active gravel road.

Banff isn’t the only place in the park where there’s mountain biking. Near the Lake Louise townsite, about 45 minutes north on the Trans Canada, there are a few trails and old roads. One of the more interesting rides though is on the old 1A Highway between Lake Louise and the Lake O’Hara access road. It’s closed to vehicles now, but the cement is still in decent shape. The road climbs to the Continental Divide where cyclists can watch Divide Creek split. Half of the water heads west into B.C. and eventually the Pacific Ocean and the other half spills into Alberta, the Bow River, and onto Hudson Bay.
While I could have chosen any one of those fine rides, and one of many others as well, on this day I selected one of the shorter trails off of Tunnel Mountain just above Banff townsite. The compact glacial silt trail looked fun as it disappeared off the mountain toward the Bow River. I turned down it and immediately started picking up speed. The silt left by retreating glaciers and flooding rivers is smooth to ride on, with only the odd protruding rock to slow you down. The trail curved left and right around stands of trees, with fleeting views of the mountains that surround the town.

As I dropped deeper into the forest, I came around one curve and my life started to flash before my eyes. The bull elk didn’t look like he was going to move. I started to squeeze the brakes. All the while I could hear in my head my uncle muttering at my funeral, “Mountain bikers “” they’re a menace. They climb up everything and then think they can ride down it too “” and stop on a dime.

Luckily, I didn’t need to. In the split second between my seeing the elk and my uncle’s babble in my head, the bull bolted out of the way. I skidded to a stop. As I caught my breath and tried to control the burst of adrenalin pumping through my body, I contemplated my uncle’s words. Maybe I was better off on a horse.

I looked down the trail at the next section of swerving singletrack. Nah, this looks like too much fun. I pushed off under my own power. And rolled away, just a little slower this time, for another dose of riding on the range.

Working with Parks – Riding the Range
by Ryan Stuart

There were several problems with the downhill trails built off the Mount Norquay Road near Banff, and the fact that the trails were so good was a big part of it. After Skiing Louise stopped lift-accessed mountain biking, a group of local downhill demons built the trails as the only downhill option in the park. Soon word got out that they had done a good job and people started to come from Calgary to shuttle the hill. “Norquay is part of a wildlife corridor,” says Doug Eastcott, a local park warden and mountain biking guidebook author. “Trails like that effectively block the corridor for bears, cougars, and wolves. Wild bears will look at it and see all the people and go away.”

The riders were unauthorized to build the trail. “That’s never acceptable in the park,” Eastcott says. Add the philosophical issue of driving up and down a hill over and over in a park, and wardens had no choice but to shut the trails.

Out of that conflict came the Bow Valley Advocacy Alliance, a group of dedicated local citizens determined to enhance their local recreation opportunities. Along with park personnel and the town council, a huge planning process was begun for areas near Banff townsite. It wasn’t complete at press-time, but mountain bikers are hopeful that two shared-use trails will be built near town for more technical riding. The advocacy group is also working on getting a bike-jump park built somewhere near town. “These guys are doing a good job of representing the sport,” Eastcott says. “And they’re doing a lot of work to make the riding better and sustainable in the park.”

But no matter what they do, Eastcott says some people will always have issues with mountain biking in Banff National Park. “There are the same user conflicts that happen elsewhere,” he says, “and there’s the added ethical issues. Philosophically, do mountain bikes belong in the backcountry?”

By following simple rules on the trail, the conflicts and questions can be put to rest. Always be respectful of other users and yield to everyone else. Always get off your bike around horses, Eastcott says. “One person biking by and scaring horses can do a lot of damage to the whole sport,” he says.