Whitehorse and the surrounding area is home to a world-class trail network, and maintenance is required to ensure trail integrity and a high quality ride experience.

The City of Whitehorse is responsible for trail maintenance within the city of Whitehorse, but CMBC is an active partner. We run a number of trail days throughout the summer to carry out trail maintenance and construction (Check our Trail Days page and watch our Facebook page for those details). While passionate individuals often go out on their own time to address maintenance issues like fallen trees, the CMBC board does not respond to maintenance incidents. We encourage all of our members to contribute to minor maintenance on their own rides/walks, report it to the City of Whitehorse, and/or report it on TrailForks. Participating is easy and it’s a great way to contribute to the trails you ride. After all, building and riding comes with stewardship responsibility.

When you ride, take a pair of garden snippers and a folding saw with you, and consider:

• Clearing any deadfall or blowdown that is blocking the trail at least 2 metres off the side of the trail, when it is safe for you to do so.
• Placing any cleared deadfall to the side of the trail and, where applicable, place to block off any “ride around” routes that may have formed so that the singletrack stays single!
• Trimming back any vegetation that is encroaching on the trail corridor.
• Making note of any significant drainage or erosion issues and their locations and report it on TrailForks.
• Packing out any litter.
• Checking for any missing or damaged signage and report it on TrailForks.

​Thanks to all users for helping to maintain our amazing trails!  If you have up-to-date trail conditions for any trails, please leave a trail report on TrailForks. Simply select the trail and click create a “Trail Report” to get started. If there is substantial damage or trail obstruction that you cannot deal with relatively quickly on your own (e.g. a large tree down that requires a chainsaw), please report it on TrailForks and notify CMBC’s Director of Trails at [email protected].

Remember to be patient with the trails as they dry out each spring – let’s minimize unnecessary damage by only riding those that are ready to go and staying off those that aren’t.​

If you have contributed some time to maintaining trails outside of a CMBC maintenance event, please help us by tracking your time through the TrailForks application. Simply select the trail and create a “Trail Report.”  Near the end, it will ask for volunteer effort, and this record of time allows us to accurately gauge the volunteer time that CMBC contributes to trail maintenance, an important metric in our partnerships and applications!

CMBC conducts trail maintenance under a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Whitehorse, which can be found here.

CHRIS McNEIL TRAIL STEWARD AWARD

CMBC takes its stewardship role seriously. We know that trails neither build nor maintain themselves. While we are lucky we to live in a city with a dedicated trail crew, we also know that they can’t do everything.  Every year, Yukon mountain bikers put their sweat equity into building and maintaining the trails we ride. To say thanks and to acknowledge this hard work, the Trail Fairy Award was established in 2013.  In 2015, this award was named in memory and honour of Chris McNeill, a long-time member of the mountain bike community who made huge contributions building trails such as El Camino and Hula Girl.

We would like to thank Challenger Geomatics for sponsoring this award.

Each season we ask mountain bikers to nominate a person they think should be recognized for his or her work.

These are the CMBC trail fairies: