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There is a new, lift accessed bike park that's going to be opening in Alberta in the next couple of years. I'm pretty sure their entire trail system is going to be starting from scratch, just because there isn't really a trail network in the area. This is contrast to somewhere like Revelstoke, where there were already a bunch of unsanctioned trails on the resort that they just incorporated when they opened the bike park.
Absolutely.
Canadian resorts/hills seem to do a better job than American ones. Probably because it’s a much smaller country (population wise) with Whistler and BC in general as the perfect of example.
It would be interesting to know how many trails they plan to open with.
An example of what I would think is a bad attempt at integrating bikes is Brighton Ski Resort in Utah/Salt Lake. It is one of the four major resorts accessed directly from Salt Lake valley (immediate access to well over a million people). They started bike operations this year with a single blue flow trail accessed from the shortest, slowest lift on their mountain. I can guarantee that nobody bought a full price lift pass to ride there more than once.
Brighton does have really cool/unique terrain that could allow for awesome riding. By far the best hill for it near Salt Lake and outside Park City. Had they used a longer lift and built 4 trails, one blue flow, maybe one green, and two natural style tech trails, they probably could have brought a lot of people in, enough to justify expanding. My guess now is that lift access bikes are gone from there in a year or two.
The Canadian Enduro series didn’t run this year if I’m not mistaken.
Ooooo, finally something in the thread a professional association says I'm qualified to comment on!
This is a misconception. Whistler Blackcomb, like most ski resorts in British Columbia, are for the most part, on unsurveyed Crown land. Bits and pieces are surveyed, typically where buildings exist, and there's a bunch of statutory right of ways registered on it (with confusing descriptions because, well, unsurveyed), but like 99% of the resort is provincial land. Whistler Blackcomb has stronger property rights and than other resorts because their tenure is a lease which gives them similar (but not quite as strong) rights to exclusive use and occupation as if it were private for a fixed duration. It's somewhat more common for Crown licenses in British Columbia to be for a specific activity or activities, such as grazing, skiing, etc. This type is not exclusive use, but is exclusive to that activity and others can't enter in a way that interferes with that activity.
Love when someone on here has way more deep knowledge or a random sliver of bike world! Dive deep brother!
Also saw this last night: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/10/08/peopleforbikes-urges-industry-action-guardian-calls-%E2%80%98crushing%E2%80%99-increased
Didn't have a bike industry pro-tariff stance in the cards. Protectionism at it's best- save one company for the industry to crater.
WRONG. Whistler and Blackcomb are not private property. It's built on Crown Land, in 2017 they signed a new 60 year agreement.
They also can't fully restrict you from Crown Land or crossing their tenure to access the greater park land around their tenure.
Canada is probably much closer to Europe in how many of our resorts are set up (at least in BC) compared to the US. But even in the US there are plenty of resorts on public parks lands with similar long term tenure agreements.
i stand corrected, but the outcome is the same. some company decides what happens on this mountain and what not. one side for walkers, one side for bikers (and a shared top, but DO NOT RIDE UP THE PEAK OR YOUR LIFT PASS GETS REVOKED!)
i rather the Graubünden way:
The Whistler Blackcomb Master Development Agreement if you want to see what they can and can't do. Vail files it with the SEC. I dug into it last spring looking to see if they could just decide to start doing pay parking without gov approval. There was lots of rumour and chatter of them going pay parking for 2025-26 season. Turns out they can't without Gov approval and it has to be based on what other resorts in BC are doing.
Because you can do well over 3000 meters of descending with a shuttle. An ebike won't cut that. A lot of people thus still shuttle. And they shuttle with their primary bike, which is an ebike.
You can also do a single or dual uplift and combine it with riding uphill in between to get you into the sticks. A few years ago we usually drop up to the top (gained about 1000 meters of altitude) then rode a big loop back down to the apartment by the seaside doing about 1000 to 1500 m of climbing along the way (this was not with ebikes 😜). It's also easy to reach Pietra Ligure from the top and then pedal back to Finale or the other way around if needed.
The network of trails over there is insane.
Also helps that people in Europe generally have a lot more time off than their North American counterparts.
thats what i do right now in Finale, single uplift per day and then riding till i depleted the main battery and the range extender
From the Bird owners group on Facebook. Kinda looks like they are shutting down own bikes and are becoming distributors?
They've been moved to the tab "the big sale". They still have a couple of their own bikes not on sale, but I do see where you're coming from.
Mostly framesets only. Looks very much like these Birds are going south for the winter and are not coming back.
Anybody have the scoop on Haro's future vision? Seems like they went full re-boot on the strategy with the new CEO, potentially going full d2c and no longer doing shops?
I just went to a local shop and called another looking for a part for the DJer, both of them said they stopped dealing with them (or more so vice versa) like a year or so ago. Seemingly aligning with the change up. Though could be coincidence?
I also noticed an odd influx of listings of essentially new Haro bikes on the used marketplace. Kinda random, maybe a parking lot sale happened or something since I'm local(ish). Didn't hear of it tho.
The shops kinda implied like 'i think they are going out of business'... But a shop would say that when a company switches to d2c wouldnt they... dunno. (I think it's also an easy narrative after the GT situation...)
Haro doesn't seem to be on good ground right now.. A lot of BMX models not showing up on the website, the shop i used to work for is telling me that inventory on the B2B is not very good. I'm hearing about a road team they're working with that is owed money.. Maybe the jump into the high end road and MTB segments was too much, too quickly?
Pulse Bootlabs, a ski bootfitting retailer in Revelstoke, Banff, and Collingwood, just shut its doors. By all accounts it seemed successful. Grew quick, Picked up PE in 2021, seemed to face a number of challenges after that, shut its doors today.
PE and high end specialty boot fitting seems like a worse fit than PE and small margin D2C bike companies.
Topical
https://www.singletracks.com/mtb-trails/station-mountain-bike-park-is-s…
He just did a podcast with the Segment talking about his Cased venture and... Very subtly bringing up the struggle of profitability.
It's really hard to understand how this kid positioned himself as a high school teenager to get all this funding and start up multiple ventures. At the tail end of the covid timeline so already within the scope of seeing the downturn in biking and all outdoor activities at the time.
Truly moving to SoCal and seemingly random Saudi Arabia trips are not... Mission critical to business success. I suppose those 'overheads' are covered by other means.
If Cased goes under we need to get this kid into PE! He's already got the experience!
EDIT: "After spending a lot of time in prayer and having his lawyer check everything out to make sure it was all legitimate, Hooper took the plunge, investing $100K." OOF. Quite literally investing on faith. Well I hope there was a way to break even in the end. Because the 'park' cost should have only been the 350k. I'm sure whoever bought the land itself will be fine re-selling.
Station bikepark is a real simple story;
Rhett’s private school was funded by Musk(some of his spawn attend it). Musk fronted the principal the money to buy the ranch for Rhett’s project.
The principal obviously doesn’t want to/can’t afford to own hundreds of acres of property in the Hillcountry.
If you have a few million laying around… its a lovely ranch.
Plutonomics is one heck of a spectator sport !
my local lift access bike mountain / ski resort had offered trail running for people into that sort of thing for a couple of years, separate trails from the DH trails. at the ends of the bike trails there were very clear warnings that it was bikes only, no running, etc. enough of the runners made their way onto the trails it became a problem, last season alone i personally came across at least a dozen trail runners on bike trails. they didn't offer trail running this year, and while there was no official reason given, i'm assuming this is why. i once even saw a runner turn to start heading up a black diamond jump line.
PE bros need ski boots that fit well, and don't understand that not everyone wants to spend 1+ grand on new ski boots and fitting... These PE investments are so funny, has no one every talked with the bro working at the shop or the hand that's worked at the small bike park? Unless that bro has hit his head too many times(likely) they know there is no big money
Trail runners are the strangest of all!
Bike trail rules only apply to bike riders, I guess...
Local hill on Vancouver Island seems to do decent summer business but have invested to add alternatives to just mountain biking to draw in more tourist dollars with a zip line and scenic chair rides. They also have the entrance to strathcona park for foot powered exploration pretty close by that drives some good business to the food services.
Occam's razor strikes again. The private 'non-traditional' school was a huge tell but... Ya know ya try not to be judgemental but the reality comes to light regardless.
Kids don't just start business ventures for millions of dollars randomly. Hell most average kids are struggling to do the standard college to job transition nowadays. Well hope that guy prayed for his 100k back or somethin...
Not sure what you consider good business to be. I have been to Mount Washington a few times this summer. Mid July Saturday was ride onto the lift. Hill was empty, with 2 chairs spinning no lineup at either. Not sure they would have made enough from ticket sales to pay the amount of staff on hand.
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