King of the Canyon (KOC) is the Yukon’s only honest-to-goodness epic mountain bike race and is also the territory’s XC championship, wrapping back, forth and around nearly all of Whitehorse’s local trails. Two courses are available - the longer 50 km version and a shorter 25 km.
Start location is the boat launch area at Schwatka Lake Recreational Area. Registration opens at 11:00 a.m. and the race starts at noon.
Cost per rider is $20 for the 50 km course and $15 for the 25 km. This fee includes everything: aid stations, draw prizes and a huge BBQ at the finish. Speaking from experience, the aid stations are amazing. Nothing makes the misery of a 50 km slog go away faster than stumbling upon a glorious spread of fruit, chocolate and energy drinks in the middle of the forest, hosted by a smiling group of volunteers.
Participants must be Cycling Association Yukon members, or if you’re not from the Yukon, have insurance from your own club that covers you while traveling.
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As Montana is still pretty new on the radar, there’s not much available in the way of official trail maps. No worries though, Bike Yukon got its hands on a recent version that we’re happy to share: download the Montana Mountain trail map (PDF, 1.1 MB).
]]>After a summer spent riding in Whitehorse, I had not only many new scars but also two broken frames. Riding a hyper-light race bike is not the way to go when there’s rocky trails and fast bumpy singletrack all over the place. Whitehorse trails are pretty smooth, just not as buttery smooth as those in Southern Ontario.
Now more than 10 years later, I own two bikes: a 28 lbs. steel 29er hardtail with a 4” fork and a near-40 lbs. all-mountain bike with 6” at either end. They are awesome rides, but I don’t think either represent the ultimate Yukon mountain bike.
To me, the ultimate Yukon ride is a relatively light, but still strong, all-mountain, full-suspension setup. Something under 30 lbs., 5” travel front and back. Fast-rolling, but grippy tires, 2.3” width at maximum. Fairly upright position, but still aggressive enough to comfortable tackle the occasional race or group event.
An example bike that immediately comes to mind is the Norco Fluid.
What about you? What’s the ultimate Yukon mountain bike?
]]>Their itinerary looks good:
Day 1 - Arrive in Whitehorse. Build bikes, 2-3 hour ride - a little taster - BBQ at yurtville
Day 2 - Big brunch, shuttle ride Goat Trail, tour of Whitehorse, brewery tour, early dinner, big night ride. Epic evening/night ride (midnight sun ride) We will be shuttling up Grey mountain then hike a bike for 45 min to the top of Grey mountain and start our way down from there. From there we will be making our way down to the Yukon River and then follow the river bank for about 15km. The entire ride should be about 4 to 5 hours
Day 3 - Carcross all day, Skagway AK for dinner
Day 4 - Grey Mountain/Yukon River/Carcross - which ever is the favourite! BBQ and party with a bunch of local mt bikers
Day 5 - recover, fly home
But what’s most cool is that I bet there’s a lot of locals who’ve done the same tour themselves (sans the glamour and return flight). Man, we live in such a killer place, don’t we?
]]>Good forums are all about community participation, so please, register a account - hey, it’s free - to start posting new topics and/or reply to existing topics. Let’s make this a valuable resource for all Yukon mountain bikers.
]]>I, on the other hand, did. Or at least, so I imagined. As I’ll explain below. a lot has happened in my life over the past five years: kids, running a business, fishing.
The first year of my bikeyukon.com ownership, I put some serious effort into developing a website that, if I do say so myself, looked hot and had some good starter information.
Also, yellow.
Knowledge about the new website grew rapidly. People talked about it in bike shops, at cafes and on the trail. Many folks asked me if they could help out in any way; perhaps contribute photos, write trail reports, post information about upcoming events and so on. Clearly, there was a need for a website like bikeyukon.com in the local community.
Well, as it turns out, all that enthusiasm fell on deaf ears. Mine, to be precise. With a new baby in our midst, I didn’t have time to sleep, let alone maintain a website such as this one. Sadly, like some other areas of my life (e.g. fitness and health) bikeyukon.com died a slow and painful death. For nearly two years now, bikeyukon.com has been home to a blank placeholder page with nary a logo or line of text in sight.
Then last summer, everything changed.
Ah, last summer. I finally started riding my bike(s) again on a regular basis. And when you ride a mountain bike on Whitehorse trails, you run into lots of people. On a certain night, I ran into Mark Koepke, who, as he known to do, heckled me about the lameness of bikeyukon.com. Mark said he wanted to contribute; to bring the website back to life. Huh, I thought. With my kids now a little older, I could actually make it happen.
And so, here we are: bikeyukon.com is back.
Mark and myself will initially be running the website. He’ll be publishing new content and I’ll be adding features. We’re kicking things off with a simple journal, but more is coming.
Subscribe to the RSS feed, check Twitter or return here on a regular basis. Together, we can make this a valuable destination for all things Yukon mountain biking.
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