Hope, B.C.’s unique new mountain bike trail to welcome riders in 2025

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It’s an exciting time to be a mountain biker in Hope – or one planning a visit to the eastern Fraser Valley community.

After a whole summer of construction, the new signature mountain bike trail on Hope Mountain only needs a winter “to set” before it’s ready for its grand opening in 2025.

“It’s going to open up next year,” Thomas Schoen, CEO of First Journey Trails and First Journey Consulting, said during a council meeting on Oct. 15. “It’s almost ready. It’s 95 per cent complete, we just need to wait for one winter. It will help settle everything. It will help with the trail placement, and it will make it more sustainable long term.”

The new trail is more than 5,000 metres long and is connected to access trails, skirt trails, and high key trails. The crew also opened up a path that makes it easier to access a waterfall in the area.

A look at the Hope Mountain Trail Network project. First Journey Trails/Hope Community Forest

“This was the toughest project we’ve ever had. We really didn’t think it was possible to build on the hillside. That’s why it cost a lot of money. But it’s so unique that people will definitely come here.”

Schoen said construction of the new trail — which is part of the Hope Mountain Trail Network project — had a total cost of $416,450 and took 21 weeks to complete. The project aims to build an intricate mountain bike trail in Hope that will put the community on the map in the mountain biking world.

“People are looking for something very unique,” Schoen said. “In the last five to seven years, a lot of trails were machine built trails. They all have the same feel and flow to them. So, travelling mountain bikers are getting tired of these so-called flow trails.

This new trail, hand-built and at a more advanced level, is what people are travelling for. “You’ll get riders from all over the province. And people will come just to ride this one trail… Even now, it’s already producing a lot of buzz and interest within the mountain bike community.”

Trail construction was done by Schoen and his company, First Journey Trails. After starting building trails in 1998, Schoen got his “big break” in 2009 when the company constructed the District of Wells’ multi-use trail network. Since then, the company has specifically catered to trail design and construction, especially with regards to mountain biking.

The idea was first brought to Sarah Brown, Hope Cascades & Canyons Visitor Centre’s Operation Manager and Curator, by Michael Woods, past-president of the Fraser Valley Mountain Bikers Association. For five years, Woods had been behind the project working diligently to bring a mountain bike trail to Hope.

On July 27, 2020, Woods spoke with council about the project, updating them on the trail development, and citing the benefits of having an intricate and multi-purpose trail network. In his presentation to the council at the time, Woods explained that having a mountain bike trail would draw in a younger crowd, help increase tourism and address the needs of a multiple outdoor communities in Hope.

However, it was only when Woods approached Brown that the idea truly began to find its footing. After speaking with Woods, Brown said she found herself agreeing that a comprehensive trail network would increase tourism in Hope and add to the local community.

The project received a grant of about $60,000 from the Rural Economic Diversification and Infrastructure Program for planning in the summer of 2023, with First Journey senior trailer planners doing surveys and conducting site visits to determine possible trail routes.

This spring, the project received another $425,065 REDIP grant for trail construction. The completion of this trail, Schoen said, is the first step toward Hope getting a trail network.

“A signature trail doesn’t make a network yet,” Schoen said. “It needs to keep expanding and adding on, now that we’ve got the big project out of the way.”

Six other potential trail network locations in Hope include: Dog Mountain, Hope Lookout, Thacker Mountain, Sucker’s Creek, Othello Tunnels/Coquihalla Canyon and The Core.

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