Canada has an incredible system of maintained trails that were old railways that have been converted. However only few allow motorized vehicles, this is thankfully one of them!
Sadly this one may be taken off the list of officially supported trails by the organization. This is due to the (absolutely incredible) bridges that are over 100 years old, and degrading. But this is one of the best trails I've ever seen, it's only 30 minutes from my house, has absolutely incredible history, great development and is extremely popular.
Being an old railway, it's very flat, and has very gentle curves. It's excellent for beginners, walkers, cyclists and the whole family
As our final adventure for the season, I got some friends and family together, and we had a group ride of about half of this particular section of the trail.
Admittedly I didn't take as many photos as I should have, my friend was taking and recording some the whole way. I was simply enjoying the ride.
This trail has significant history to the city of Castlegar BC and the doukhobor population as I learned. Every 10k or so there is a covered stop with an outhouse, tables and signs telling you the history of the particular spot. The amount of effort that went into this trail is incredible.
The trail starts past the local pulp mill. It's actually quite difficult to find any info about this epic trail, or even where it starts even with the extremely high level of development the trail has had. It seems to be removed from the Rail Trail website now too.
The trail is smooth dirt with some gravel covering. My understanding is they just simply buried the rail tracks. It slowly climbs the mountain at a very gentle 2% grade, the "summit" lies underneath a famous bridge for a local highway pass which is where we turned around. This is about 50k from the start of the trail
Along the trail are covered picnic areas with large signs giving you the history of the railway and the particular spots along the way, where some buildings were, what the railway was used for, even where a famous doukhobor person was assassinated with a bomb on the train.
Aside from the incredible wood trussle bridges, another main feature of the trail are the tunnels. The longest tunnel was about 1km long and DARK. Our headlights were completely useless. My brother-in-law with the extra light bars he put on the SxS drove behind us just so we could at least see a bit. This was the most difficult part of the trail for me. The lack of vision, the awkwardly rounded road, and the large almost perfectly round rocks with stock tires it took ever bit of concentration I had in me to survive the tunnel.
My friends were on much larger bikes. KLX300, CF300L rally, and even one was on a KTM 450 race bike. I could only manage about 60km/h or so with my little trail with stock tires on the gravel bed. That was pushing it even with the smooth trail and gentle curves. So they would take turns hanging back with me to make sure I was ok, being the least experienced by far.
It concluded with a climax of riding through a washout, followed very short by having lunch under the blue bridge. I wish I had more pictures but at least my friend took a great one of me riding through the washout.
(I can only attach 10 pictures apparently)
Sadly this one may be taken off the list of officially supported trails by the organization. This is due to the (absolutely incredible) bridges that are over 100 years old, and degrading. But this is one of the best trails I've ever seen, it's only 30 minutes from my house, has absolutely incredible history, great development and is extremely popular.
Being an old railway, it's very flat, and has very gentle curves. It's excellent for beginners, walkers, cyclists and the whole family
As our final adventure for the season, I got some friends and family together, and we had a group ride of about half of this particular section of the trail.
Admittedly I didn't take as many photos as I should have, my friend was taking and recording some the whole way. I was simply enjoying the ride.
This trail has significant history to the city of Castlegar BC and the doukhobor population as I learned. Every 10k or so there is a covered stop with an outhouse, tables and signs telling you the history of the particular spot. The amount of effort that went into this trail is incredible.
The trail starts past the local pulp mill. It's actually quite difficult to find any info about this epic trail, or even where it starts even with the extremely high level of development the trail has had. It seems to be removed from the Rail Trail website now too.
The trail is smooth dirt with some gravel covering. My understanding is they just simply buried the rail tracks. It slowly climbs the mountain at a very gentle 2% grade, the "summit" lies underneath a famous bridge for a local highway pass which is where we turned around. This is about 50k from the start of the trail
Along the trail are covered picnic areas with large signs giving you the history of the railway and the particular spots along the way, where some buildings were, what the railway was used for, even where a famous doukhobor person was assassinated with a bomb on the train.
Aside from the incredible wood trussle bridges, another main feature of the trail are the tunnels. The longest tunnel was about 1km long and DARK. Our headlights were completely useless. My brother-in-law with the extra light bars he put on the SxS drove behind us just so we could at least see a bit. This was the most difficult part of the trail for me. The lack of vision, the awkwardly rounded road, and the large almost perfectly round rocks with stock tires it took ever bit of concentration I had in me to survive the tunnel.
My friends were on much larger bikes. KLX300, CF300L rally, and even one was on a KTM 450 race bike. I could only manage about 60km/h or so with my little trail with stock tires on the gravel bed. That was pushing it even with the smooth trail and gentle curves. So they would take turns hanging back with me to make sure I was ok, being the least experienced by far.
It concluded with a climax of riding through a washout, followed very short by having lunch under the blue bridge. I wish I had more pictures but at least my friend took a great one of me riding through the washout.
(I can only attach 10 pictures apparently)
