Last week, i attended the grand opening of Mont-Rigaud. Located less then one hour outside of Montreal, the ski hill is now offering 10km of mountain bike specific trails. The resort invested 100k$ this year to get there and the building of trails started as soon as the resort closed off it’s trails for skiing! Sentier Boréal was hired for every step of the way: they delivered Mont Rigaud with 10km of singletrack and a pumptrack and skills area. Saturday morning, everyone was excited to finally get to try the trails offered: more then 300 visited for opening!

With tents from bike manufacturers, bike shops and others at the base of the resort, the ambiance was great! It felt like a festival, like a big happening and lots of families and riders of all ages sure made the event a success! The trails are split apart in 2 sections: On the right, family-oriented XC trails that are accessible to everyone loop around and climb gently at less then 3%. As you make your way towards the ski hill on the left, trails gets steeper and more technical. I have to admit that the trails are slightly over-built: but that’s exactly what a resort like this needs in order to keep it sustainable and avoid spending too much time maintaining the trails… they’ll be able to focus that time on adding more trails in the near future! The climb to the top is sweet: 1,6km of climbing on a big gear swooping through the trees, the higher you get, the faster you want to go, but the slope increases slightly to add a bit of challenge. Now you’re on top on the best trail down is full of berms, wooden structures and small jumps and rocks to keep things challenging!

In all, Mont-Rigaud is on the right path for making this destination a success. The biggest challenge is to make people come back… and for that, new trails will be needed as many riders will want more, but at least, you’re not wasting time by going there: in fact, you should get out there now! Trails are great; trails are fun! What is even more exciting is that there is now a gateway trail system near Montreal where you can bring kids and beginners too and they’ll have a blast! Riders of all-ages will be thrilled by what Mont-Rigaud has to offer!

For more info, check out the official page, and follow them on Facebook

Give some feedback about your visit on the AllezY.net trail directory: https://www.allezy.net/rep_sentiers/sentier.php?ID=47

Photos courtesy of Mont-Rigaud.