The OneUp Squamish Enduro is back for its 10th year of racing and is bringing three courses set to test mountain bikers from both near and afar.
Slated for April 27, the event is one of Canada’s largest enduro mountain bike races and has been designed to strategically test everyone from the up-and-coming rider to the World Cup pro.
What exactly is enduro racing?
Race founder and event organizer Dylan Smith explains that enduro racing is essentially a competitive adaptation of how Squamish people ride their bikes already.
“When [people here] go for a bike ride, they pedal sort of slowly and at a reasonable pace uphill or on any sort of transition sections, and then they really go for it and send it on the descent,” Smith told The Squamish Chief.
“Other disciplines like cross country are more about pushing it the whole time, or for downhill racing, you would use a chair lift or a shuttle to access the top of the trail. But enduro is fully powered by the rider.”
During the enduro race, riders aren’t timed for the whole length of the course but for select downhill trails.
“The Squamish Enduro is a multi-stage race that has racing taking part on select downhill trails, with the rest of the course being a long course, but the rest of it's a liaison stage, so racing only happens on the downhill portion,” Smith said.
“You end up basically with a race that is very long and hard and challenging from a fitness perspective, but at the same time, you just have these very exciting selections of timed downhill stages throughout the day where the racing is happening.”
The courses
The event has three courses ranging from intermediate skill level all the way up to World Cup professional status.
The Classics Course is a 25-kilometre, three-stage loop targeted towards intermediate riders.
Stage 1 is from Full Nelson’s Trail to Half Nelson, Stage 2 is Another Man’s Gold and Stage 3 is Hoods in the Woods (descent).
“It really features some of the most classic descents in Squamish,” Smith said.
“It's a great way for an intermediate rider to experience the discipline of enduro, get out there and give it a try”
The Short Course is a 35 km long, four-stage course with black diamond-focused trails. According to Smith, it is geared towards the expert rider.
The route for the course will be released two weeks prior to the event to help maintain trails but also allow for some time to practice ahead of the event.
The Long Course is a five-stage, 50 km course and has 1,400 meters of racing descent on black diamond and double black diamond trails.
“The [long] course, which is the original course that we started with, is touted by many of the World Cup athletes as one of the hardest races they do every year,” Smith said.
“It's for the World Cup pros and the advanced expert riders in town. And it's a true test of trust, test of skill and ability.”
The route for the Long Course will be released two days prior to the event to make things a little trickier for the expert riders.
“Essentially, because it's such a big course, you really only have one chance to ride each stage once,” Smith said.
Reigning champs Jesse Melamed and Emmy Lan will make their return to hold off some elite competition and retain their champion status.
The courses change yearly and Smith says no course has been the same over the decade since the race has been in existence.
“We've always got a shifting course. We certainly reuse trails and stages from other years, but it's always a different course year on year,” he said.
“I don't think we've ever had the same set of trails or stages in the race in the 10 years that we've been running it, so it keeps people guessing.”
Fans of the sport can head down to spectator viewing locations on the day and cheer on both local and visiting talent. The spectator locations will be announced closer to the event date once all the courses have been revealed.
Age limits
Can your kid enter the Squamish Enduro? They can if they’re at least 12 years old.
“You have to be 12 as of race day. We've got, surprisingly, 12-year-olds even in the full course,” Smith said.
“It blows my mind that a 12-year-old can ride 50 kilometres, but it does happen, and there's always a couple every year.
“I'm not sure what age the oldest person who's ever done it is, but certainly into their mid-60s.”
What makes Squamish so good for enduro?
It’s all about the terrain.
“In all honesty, it is just such a unique place because of so many elements,” Smith said.
“There's the climate, and there's the topography of this place that makes a huge difference. [For enduro] you need a certain sort of steepness of mountain. It can't be too steep. It can't not be steep enough.
“We just have the right grade and topography here.”
The proximity of the trails to residential living is also a huge factor.
“You don't have to drive 25 minutes out of town to get to the trail network. You can ride to the trailhead from, theoretically, anywhere you live in town,” Smith said.
“And I think that's what's fostered such a phenomenal mountain bike community here, is having access to all that great stuff.”
A 10-year anniversary
The Squamish Enduro first kicked off in 2014 with just one course and over 100 competitors.
“It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years,” Smith said.
“I think the first year, we had 160 people at the event … and this year, we'll have about 750 people. It also used to just be one course, and now it's three mutually exclusive courses.”
To acknowledge the occasion, Smith said the event will have a variety of celebrations and activities planned for the day.
“We're going to have some really cool photo booth opportunities at the race start. We're also going to have some special sort of food and beverage options as well being released,” he said.
“A lot of it's going to be announced in the coming sort of weeks and months and then some of the stuff they're not going to find out until race day.
“But we've got some big plans.”
The Squamish Enduro and Tourism Squamish also released a video to commemorate the anniversary of the race called Through The Stages.
“It is basically just a story of the Squamish Enduro to kind of commemorate our 10th anniversary,” Smith said.
“It tells people where we came from, how we got there, and paints the picture of the excitement of the race.”
Registration for the event opens Feb. 2 at 9 a.m. on the Squamish Enduro website.
