The Nanaimo Mountain Bike Club celebrates the opening of the area’s first provincially approved mountain bike trail on Sunday (April 21).
The trail, called Fine China, is built on Crown land in the Doumont trail network area with permission of the woodlot manager and the provincial government. It is a downhill trail designed specifically for mountain bikes.
On Sunday, begining at 1 p.m., the club opens the first section of the trail, a 900-metre, one-way downhill track featuring more than three dozen berms, seven table tops and numerous rollers.
Everyone is invited to come ride the trail, meet the builders, enjoy some food and music and maybe even win a prize.
While assigned a trail technical difficulty level of black diamond, or most difficult, Fine China is designed so that riders with a range of different skill levels can enjoy it.
“This is the first provincially authorized trail in the area designed for mountain biking and we wanted to build a trail that would be accessible and fun for a broad range of riding styles and abilities,” said Mark Perdue, landowner liaison director with the club.
“The big challenge with this kind of trail is that it’s a lot of work to move all the dirt needed to build the features, but we wanted to ensure a sustainable, safe and all-season trail.
“The club has been working on this trail for about a year and a lot of people put in a lot of hard work to get it to this condition. It’s hard to ride this trail and not have a big smile at the bottom.”
Fine China is managed by the Nanaimo Mountain Bike Club with liability insurance obtained through the International Mountain Bicycling Association of Canada, which stipulates the trail must be built and maintained according to certain safety and environmental standards.
The second phase of construction will extend the trail a further 300 metres and long-term plans are to submit an application to extend the trail even further.
The club estimates that the trail will be used by thousands of riders annually.
For more information on the Nanaimo Mountain Bike Club or the grand opening, please go to www.nanaimomountainbike
club.com/new.
To find the trail and the grand opening on Sunday, follow Biggs Road past the motocross to where the pavement ends.