Bike trips to Canada usually follow a fairly similar route: fly into Vancouver, taxi to Whistler, and embark on three weeks of party laps at Whistler bike park. Now while we’ve got nothing against railing the world-class A-line and Dirt Merchant trails, there’s so much more in this vast land that’s worth riding. We headed to British Columbia’s eastern region to get better acquainted with three amazing places.

How do you plan riding trips? TripAdvisor and other travel platforms might be the obvious first port-of-call, but you ultimately end up with the same tips as every other tourist. For our trip, we had a different approach from the start, which is why we’re beginning with ‘the background’. We – my girlfriend Antonia and I – had got to know a Canadian, Tucker Braund, while at an enduro race in our hometown of Aschau. Tucker was left disappointed with the official race stages, so we took him out on the following day to ride the far better, hidden trails in this idyllic patch of Bavaria. The day ended with dinner in a beer garden and sparked a year’s worth of social media contact. When Canada later became our summer holiday plan, we began by shooting a message to Tucker. From there, the planning was easy: first stop, Panorama Bike Park in Invermere where he works as a guide. Instead of the standard Sea-to-Sky highway route towards Whistler, we’d leave Vancouver and go north-eastwards.

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