SQUAMISH GRAND SLAM SQUAMISH GRAND SLAM

Riding every trail in town

words & photography & captions :: Ben Haggar

The idea was simple: ride every trail in Squamish in a single season—the good, the bad and the overgrown. I craved a challenge, and this one provided a reason to break my routine of comfortable favourite rides and become a tourist in my hometown. On a rainy April afternoon, I began my mud-splattered mission.

First and foremost, there needed to be ground rules. “Every trail in Squamish” doesn’t quite mean every trail in Squamish (there are many “off the map” bike trails, along with spiderwebs of moto and trials trails). Thinking it prudent to stay in my lane for something repeatable by anyone, I decided to ride every mountain bike trail on Trailforks. It wasn’t a static objective, as new trails are added and others removed from the mapping app throughout the season, but it was at least quantifiable.

Rule number two: No vehicle assist. No shuttles, no driving to the trailhead, every pedal stroke starting from home.

Rule number three: Don’t die. Squamish holds a mix of every trail type imaginable across five distinct riding areas. So I’d be staring down a mix of flat and janky XC; fast flow; steep, old-school tech; slabs; alpine singletrack and innumerable one-off video-segment features built for top professional riders. (Luckily for me, most of those pro features aren’t on Trailforks.)

Also, the goal was not to clean every inch. I’d try, I’d bail, I’d try again. But I wasn’t going to wreck myself to claim every awkward climb or vertical rock roll. Finally, access roads and trails simply named “connector” didn’t count, but each actual trail must be ridden in its entirety.

Rules set, away I went. Despite spreadsheets being involved, my approach was more of a shotgun blast than a sniper shot. I started off by riding whatever I wanted and—given the wet spring—I kept it relatively conservative, knocking off moderate trails in Brackendale and Alice Lake. By linking creative routes through the valley after each ride, I was clocking big numbers early on. From home, Valleycliffe is a 40-minute spin just to get to the trailhead, so dedicating big days to maximize my time was a necessity. One beautiful June day, I knocked off 32 trails and 57 kilometres with 1,623 metres of elevation and got to check out a new Mexican restaurant and share post-ride beers with friends. Hometown tourist goals achieved.

Double-ups were inevitable. I rode Jack’s Trail 17 times, but made sure the eroded trenches and broken woodwork of Grin and Holler were ridden only once. Dry mid-summer conditions brought the opportunity to tick off slab trails both familiar and new, with most rides providing a mix of excitement and trepidation exploring unknown terrain. Even the gravel rides in the valley provided welcome relief from stressful double blacks. Some days the sheer pleasure of turning the pedals through fields of purple lupines or guilt-free mid-ride lattes made these mellow trails luxuriously satisfying.

But I paid for my procrastination in leaving a high concentration of notorious double-black trails until the end of the season. The autumn rains returned early, so a day sliding down Larvicide, Pleasure Trail and Deliverance was not ideal—but it was survivable. I made sure to save one of the best for last: Angry M. This was the ride of the year on a favourite trail, and the familiarity felt effortless as the euphoria of finishing a big project ignited my tired legs.

Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the stats. Completing 348 trails over 50 ride days, I clocked 1,376 km (the equivalent of riding from Vancouver to Regina in a straight line), 39,207 vertical metres (4.43 Everests) and spent 146 hours 23 minutes in the saddle (including ice cream breaks), all atop a bright gold Revel Rascal. My average ride was 2 hours and 56 minutes, 27.5 km, 784 m of elevation, with seven new trails scratched off my list. All from my doorstep.

A lot of those trails I’m more than happy to never ride again, but the experience and perspective shift gained from visiting new lookout spots, riding at odd times of day and knowing I can make it from my door to gorgeous alpine lakes in less than three and a half hours has been liberating. The benefits of riding every trail in your hometown are numerous: fitness, creativity and an appreciation for the vast trail resources we can sometimes take for granted are the obvious ones, but the greatest reward for me was the renewed child-like sense of exploration, pedalling past comfort zones and heading deeper into new parts of a familiar forest.

What will I do this summer? I’m not sure, but whatever goals you want to check off, I say get out and go for it. You won’t be disappointed.