Hundreds of top cross-country bike racers from around the world will descend on Powell River Tuesday, July 2, and crank their way through some of BC Bike Race’s sweetest single-track. Local trail builders are hoping the event will further promote the idea of Powell River as a mountain bike destination.
The race is described as the “ultimate single-track experience.” Spanning the course of seven days, 550 riders from 25 countries will ride an average of 50 kilometres of thigh-burning, nausea-inducing terrain per day in seven west coast communities. Starting in Nanaimo the riders will take on trails in Cumberland, Campbell River, Powell River, Earls Cove, Sechelt, Squamish and Whistler.
This is the race’s seventh year, the fourth year in Powell River and may be the first year a Powell River racer has competed in the race.
In previous years Powell River has had local residents sign up but both Graham Cocksedge and Russell Brewer bowed out due to injuries.
“Let’s cross our fingers and hope Mike [McHugh] doesn’t have to withdraw,” said Wayne Brewer, volunteer trail builder and one of the local stage organizers.
McHugh, a registered nurse who manages the emergency room and intensive care ward at Powell River General Hospital, will be representing Powell River on his bright orange Norco mountain bike, Firebolt. The bike was named by his son after Harry Potter’s flying broom.
Wayne has been working at “a fever pitch” with Ron Diprose and trail building volunteers “tweaking and making them even better,” in preparation for Tuesday’s race. “I love the fact we get to show all we got,” said Wayne.
Andreas Hestler, BC Bike Race director of marketing, said Powell River’s terrain fits well into the flow of the overall race. On day one riders have some steep hill climbs as they ride the Forbidden Plateau, and then on day two in Campbell River and day three in Powell River they face more flowing single-track.
“By the time we get down to Sechelt we’re back to coastal leg-breaking with distance,” he said. “We try to highlight the strengths of each riding community’s terrain.”
Race organizers said they like Powell River for its classic trails that lack a lot of contemporary technical trail features like launches and thin raised boards that are commonly built into trails for a more aggressive downhill riding style.
“We don’t do that because we’re retired guys,” said Wayne. “We like to keep our tires on the ground. We’re afraid of hurting ourselves.”
The race organizers solicit feedback about each stage from the riders and use that information to improve the following year’s course.
The Powell River stage, set over 48 kilometres of trail and gravel road, will take riders up from Willingdon Beach to the pole line and into the backcountry. Riders will climb to over 370 metres above sea level along the trails. Two enduro or downhill trails will plunge riders along single-track aptly referred to as Death Rattle Sweet Water and Edgehill Rip.
Organizers are always looking for ways to improve the course. “We tweak and adjust,” said Hestler. “The truth is, if we used all of the trails in Powell River the riders would be physically exhausted.”
The course this year was designed with stretches of gravel road between the single-track to allow riders a varied experience and a chance to eat and drink.
Where previously riders started the race with a mass start, this year they will be released in groups of 50 at three- to four-minute intervals to minimize bottlenecks.
Because it will take more than 30 minutes to start all the racers, the course has changed from starting along Marine Avenue to beginning along the Willingdon Beach Trail.
“We spread them out and then they get out into the forest with the nice ribbon of dirt winding through it,” said Hestler. “And that’s what they came from around the world to see.”
The race aims to be the most fun rather than the most difficult, he said, “though you do need to train and have a fairly high level of fitness.”
During the race Willingdon Beach is transformed into a tent city with hundreds of tents and facilities set up for racers. Wireless Internet is available in the area, convenient for riders who keep blogs or post to social media about their experience.
“If they’re having a blast in Powell River the whole world is going to hear about it,” said Wayne. He is encouraged by the impact on tourism that events like this have on promoting smaller communities who do not have a budget to market themselves internationally.
“We may know locally that we’ve got amazing trails,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean the outside world knows it.”
BC Bike Race has worked well to promote places like Cumberland to bikers in places like Germany and Australia, said Hestler.
Paul Kamon, marketing director for Tourism Powell River, Wayne and his son Russell attended a mountain bike tourism symposium in Sooke at the end of May and came away with renewed enthusiasm for the potential that it could have on local tourism.
“Mountain bike tourism isn’t usually thought of as a forest product, but it’s worth about $1.25 billion annually from out-of-province tourists,” said Russell.
On the coast, riders hit the trails year-round. According to statistics from the symposium about 2.5 million mountain bike tourists visit BC annually. They return up to five times and on average spend $100 per day on their average five-day trips.
Hugo Sloos, president of Powell River Cycling Association (PRCA), said that the organization is young and still developing but it is moving in the direction of developing one or two signature trails for Powell River and creating a signature mountain bike event in similar fashion to Squamish’s Test of Metal or Pemberton’s NIMBY 50.
PRCA has been working with other outdoor recreation groups that also use the trails, trying to hammer out a plan for maintenance and development.
“This is something we would love to do to attract people,” said Sloos. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make it happen, though.”
