Last Wednesday, the Burns Lake Mountain Bike Association (BLMBA) unveiled its new 18 km, single track trail, that connects the top of Boer Mountain to the Burns Lake bike park, called Razorback.
The grand opening of the Razorback trail, along with the upcoming Big Pig event in August caps off an incredible start to the mountain bike season that has seen the mountain bike association earn a number of firsts in its illustrious history so far.
To recap; Lakes District Secondary School, in partnership with B.C. School Sports and the mountain bike association hosted the high school provincial championships for the first time May 23-24.
Participants in Grades 8-12, from high schools across B.C. competed in two events looking to take home the championship banner.
LDSS managed to finish second overall in the event, with a number of its athletes winning individual races.
Secondly, the mountain bike association hosted its annual bike camp starting May 21 and running for six consecutive Wednesdays, ending June 25.
This year’s camp saw over 75 participants, and the number of riders was capped this year for the first time to ensure the quality of instruction.
Thirdly, the first ever ‘Babes in Balance’ women’s mountain biking retreat was held June 27-29.
Thirty-four women participated in the retreat, and communities represented at the retreat included, Terrace, Smithers, Prince George and of course Burns Lake.
“There’s no question about the diversity of participants in the ‘Babes in Balance’ women’s retreat, but we also had a world class instructor in Audrey Duvall who is unbelievable,” Guy Epkens-Shaffer, President of BLMBA said, “She can move a mountain bike like you wouldn’t believe and she is really inspired and passionate about what she does.”
Finally, came the grand opening of the Razorback trail.
The Razorback trail is the next step in for Burns Lake’s mountain bike trails in becoming an even greater destination for not only local riders, and riders throughout the province, but riders from across Canada and internationally as well.
The mountain bike trails in Burns Lake have already been awarded with an international mountain bike designation bronze riding centre designation, and was listed number three on the ‘All-Canadian Bucket List’ by Kevin S. Roth.
Epkens-Shaffer hopes that the opening of the Razorback trail, along with future projects such as the PT Cruiser trail will lead to Burns Lake’s mountain bike trails being giving the designation of an epic trail.
The grand opening of Razorback was attended by a number of groups that have had significant impact on the building and maintaining of not only the new Razorback trail, but all of the trails that BLMBA maintains.
Wayne Salewski, from the Nechako-Kitamaat Development Fund was on hand to present the final cheque of $39,750 to BLMBA for Razorback, and he was joined in saying a few words by Ben Heemskerk and Joanne Williams from Recreation Sites and Trails B.C. and by BLMBA member Pat Dube, among other delegates.
Dube said he was blown away by the number of groups that participated in getting, what he considers, a world class trail opened.
“Being in a group that travels non stop 36 hours to Utah to ride bikes, because some of us are crazy that way, you can take my word for, Razorback is a world class trail that literally is as good if not better than the trails that we have travelled around the world to ride,” Dube said.
Heemskerk added that at the provincial level the relationship with BLMBA is important, especially for Recreation Sites and Trails B.C.
“This project and the partnership with BLMBA is a flagship project and a flagship partnership with the community group for us provincially,” Heemskerk said, “It really leads the way on how the rest of the province moves mountain biking forward and it really is because of your guy’s leadership on what you’re doing and the approach you’re taking.”
So what’s next for the mountain bike association?
Current membership for BLMBA is 169, with the association hoping to up that number to 200 by the end of the year.
The Big Pig event will be held in Aug. 15-17, and always receives a strong turnout.
While there is still some debate, Epkens-Shaffer would like to see Razorback be included as part of the loop for the Big Pig event.
Secondly, in a year of firsts for the mountain bike association, Epkens-Shaffer is dreaming big.
He would like to see a Whistler slope style course built into the Burns Lake trails.
“The next first for us would be to do something like a slope style, where we get some of our gnarly trails so down the road we have some really steep wide open crazy stuff that just brings the craziest bikers in,” Epkens-Shaffer said.
“That’s one thing we’re lacking is that real extreme for those 19-25-year-olds who want to get 30 feet off a jump, we don’t have that kind of stuff.”
For now he’ll have to settle with the opening of Razorback, and the attention Burns Lake’s trails continue to receive.