Whistler’s reputation as a mecca of everything outdoors is certainly helped along by the trails that criss-cross the mountain sides next to the community, with hundreds of kilometres of recreational routes in the hills, and a well-established and maintained network on the valley floor linking neighbourhoods north to south.
One of the biggest players in the mountain biking space besides Whistler Blackcomb and the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) itself is the Whistler Off Road Cycling Association (WORCA), which acts as an advocate and guardian for more than 200km worth of trails, organizes events, and raises funds to build infrastructure.
Trevor Ferrao, WORCA’s executive director, told Pique 2023 was a pretty standard year—and after the last few years, that was a great spot for the organization to find itself in.
“Since the pandemic ended, we’ve been building back up to our normal events,” he said. “And this was a full year of events.”
So, what events were on the calendar? First, there was the Back Forty marathon cross country race in July, which Ferrao said was well-received.
“It was the third year, and we doubled our registration numbers,” he said.
The Back Forty is a three-stage marathon race that in 2023 used trails in Cheakamus and the West Side, with numbers capped at 250 riders, and funds going towards trail construction and mountain bike programming for the Indigenous Life Sport Academy.
“[There was] lots more participation from everyone … We had people outside the Sea to Sky racing, as well,” Ferrao said.
New on the calendar was the Witsend women’s enduro race, which happened in late September on almost 20km of trail east of Green Lake. With 100 riders signing up for the first year, Ferrao said the event was a hit WORCA wants to repeat in coming years.
“There’s definitely demand for that event,” he said. “We had wanted to organize that for a few years, and some of our volunteer directors did a huge amount of work to get that event going. We had about a hundred racers this year, and we’ll be looking to grow that as more people know about the event next year.”
Trails in 2023 and beyond
The majority of WORCA’s efforts go towards developing and maintaining trails—no mean feat, considering there are more than 200km of multi-use trails falling to the association to maintain.
It’s what the people want, too: In a recent member survey, trail maintenance was identified by more than 70 per cent of respondents as being “extremely important” for WORCA to pursue, with no other response coming close (though “mountain biking advocacy” was seen as extremely important by a little more than 50 per cent of participants).
“The majority of our work is maintenance work,” said Ferrao.
“We have 11 people on our trail crew working through the summer, and they cover work across the whole network. We try to spread maintenance to make sure all the trails are getting the work they need.”
WORCA posts regular trail updates through the season, giving members and the general public a look-in at which areas are receiving love. According to Ferrao, the regular maintenance includes major repairs and updates on well-used trails, with the intent that users don’t wear them out in a season. In 2023, trail crews spent time working on the Rockwork trilogy on the West Side, and there was also a lot of bridge work done on A River Runs Through It, an advanced trail northwest of Alta Lake.
It’s not all just maintaining what already exists, though—WORCA is slowly expanding the network, too.
“Among the major projects we’ve been constructing, we’ve had Far Out (a series of four blue trails) and Flashback (another series of blue trails looping back from Far Out) in Cheakamus,” said Ferrao, who described the new trails as a multi-year project to build out the network in the growing Cheakamus area.
“Most of our work is done by volunteers on trail nights, but obviously our trail crew needs to do a lot of work to prepare the sites and do all the experienced work required.”
A US$20,000 grant from Fox Factory was poured straight into the Flashback trail works in 2023, said Ferrao, who added it was used to make the trail suitable for adaptive mountain bikers.
“That was the first time we’ve built a trail to adaptive standards, and that was a great success. Having that money allows our trail crew to go in and do loads of work,” he said.
Ferrao said developing the trails to be suitable for adaptive riders is proving a hit, so WORCA will lean into making more trails accessible for more users in the future.
Looking ahead, the Cheakamus trails will settle into a maintenance schedule after the latest round of works, with the WORCA team hoping to divert attention to other areas.
“This was a major project. We used a lot of kilometres of new trail, and so the next project that we have that we’re waiting for our approvals for is on the west side, going from Into the Mystic down to Function Junction,” said Ferrao.
“That’s the next major one, and we’ve been waiting for a long time for the province to give approval, so we’re hoping that comes through soon so we can start making plans for that.”
It’s still a wish-list trail, but the proposed new route would be a blue run lower down the hillside from the well-loved trails above the area such as Lord of the Squirrels, which is only open for a few months over the summer.
“Having a trail lower down will provide access to people for a longer period of time through the year,” Ferrao said.
Camps a hit, even when throttled
WORCA also ran its popular youth camps (aka, Dirt Camps) over 2023, though on a slightly different schedule due to a challenge all businesses in Whistler face: Housing.
“[The camps] have been going strong through the year, with really positive feedback,” said Ferrao.
“The numbers have dropped slightly, [but] that’s mostly due to labour shortages in Whistler, related to housing and all the rest.”
He explained that, despite the challenges, “[WORCA] ran as many as we could with the number of coaches that we could hire.”
In previous years, WORCA’s Dirt Camps have been well-subscribed, with 260 registrations in 2022.
The camps run for nine weeks through the height of summer, with camps every week in July and August for kids aged six to 15. In the camps, participants learn about skill development, exploring trails, trail etiquette, and stewardship.
Working on putting the trails to bed
As winter closes in, WORCAs trail crews get busy doing as much work as they can on trails closer to the valley floor, hoping to get ahead so when the snow recedes in the new year, riders can hit the trails sooner rather than later.
“There’s a lot of work after the snow melts to make sure things are good to go,” said Ferrao, who explained the crews’ post-winter prep includes filling in holes, tidying things up, and making sure the snow cover did as little damage to the trails as possible.
While WORCA has 11 trail crew members, Ferrao said volunteer hours are vital to the health of the trail network, with 14 “trail nights” run through the season.
Ferrao estimates WORCA benefited from more than 1,500 volunteer hours in 2023.
“We focused all of that on the Flashback project, [but] we’ve still got a huge amount of work there,” he said.
“Some sections of that trail are open, so people have been riding and we’re getting really positive feedback from the community. We couldn’t do it without the volunteer work, so it’s a huge amount of support that we really appreciate from the community.”
Seeking feedback and participation
Aside from WORCA’s recent membership survey (which you can read online), the RMOW also recently sought feedback for its Recreational Trails Strategy (RTS), which covers all of the 200km-plus trails WORCA looks after, along with all other trails the RMOW takes responsibility for.
“We encouraged as many members as possible to fill in that RTS survey,” said Ferrao, who added initial reports from the RMOW from the RTS process showed the strategy is “broadly in line with what we were expecting to see.”
The RTS is currently being formulated, and the survey circulated by the RMOW was seeking feedback on a 115-page document of core content designed to identify general needs for development, preservation and management across 11 trail areas identified by the municipality from Brandywine to Cougar Mountain.
“It will be interesting to see exactly what sort of response the community have, especially for the different areas that they’ve identified,” said Ferrao.
“It will be interesting to see if people agree with what’s being recommended, because those recommendations are going to feed into a trails master plan as part of the RTS, which is where there’ll be a lot more involvement from other stakeholders, and we’ll see more detail on where new trails might be able to be created in the future.”
A more complete RTS document will be presented in 2024.
.png;w=132;h=120;mode=crop)
