Trail One List: Carcross
Epic from every angle
The Trail One List is our guide to the best mountain bike trails in the world. We know your riding time is precious and travel is expensive. We want you to finish these rides with a giant smile on your face and a heart full of stoke, knowing the juice was worth the squeeze.
When you look at Carcross, Yukon Territory, on a map it's hard to really understand how far it is from everything else. But if you fire up Google Maps and put your home address as the start and Carcross as the destination, I bet the first thing you say is "Wow" when the total drive time pops up.
And if you actually make it out to Montana Mountain and ride all of the spectacular trails I bet you'll be saying "Wow" all day every day.
The banner trail for Montana Mountain is called Mountain Hero. It's an all-day epic, massive climb with a really cool descent. My visit was a guided trip with Wandering Wheels, so we got a bit of a shuttle uplift, but it was still a long day in the saddle.
The next great ride on the mountain was McDonald Creek Trail. The speed on this old wagon trail is unreal. It's a lot of straight line screamers with a few quick turns to keep you on your toes. A few beautiful backcountry views as well, but it'll be tough to pull your eyes away from the super speed singletrack.
And then you've got the rest of the purpose built MTB trails on Montana Mountain. They're all named for the local fauna (Wolf, Grizzly Bear, Moose, etc) and hand built by the local club, Singletrack To Success. S2S is a Carcross/Tagish First Nation project started in 2006 with the mandate to develop a world-class network of trails on Montana Mountain, a sacred site of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, while providing local youth with summer jobs.
"This unique job opportunity, reconnects our youth to their land, give them life and work skills, ensuring mountain trails maintenance, and, more importantly, giving youth a sense of pride and recognition of their work throughout the community and visitors appreciation." - Singletrack To Success
Logistics
It's possible to do these trails with big climbs and big descents, but if you want to make the most of it I'd highly suggest doing the Wandering Wheels Solstice Shred guided trip. You'll get three great rides on Montana Mountain and a bunch more in Whitehorse.
Icycle Sports is a fully stocked bike shop with locations in Carcross and Whitehorse. They have trail info, rentals and answers on eBike legality.