As seen in The Revelstoke TIMES Magazine, now available at a local business near you.
by Zachary Delaney
Mountain bike trails are only as good as the people who build them. Making a course takes creativity, patience, and some guts to be the guinea pig.
Whether it’s at the Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR) or the Revelstoke Cycling Association (RCA) trails that cover some of the surrounding mountains, like Boulder, Sunnyside, or Macpherson Mountain, the area is covered with options for riders. The building and maintenance start when the snow melts and ends when it returns. It’s a job that tests those who do it in various ways. Keenan Kovacs and Katlyn Davies are roommates who work for RMR and RCA, respectively. They both spend their days working on bike trails, and their work is why so many people get to enjoy Revelstoke’s Mountain biking.
For both Kovacs and Davies, it started when they were young. Kovacs remembers building when he was in high school.
“We would go ride like the bike ranch and stuff like that. So then, part of it was just going and building our own stuff in the woods just for fun and take pictures and videos and stuff on it. I don’t know, it just kind of turned into a job,” says Kovacs.
As RMR continues to build its mountain bike trails, Davies helps maintain the existing RCA trails on some of the other mountains in the area. The maintenance work takes the whole season to work on. Davies is always on the lookout for new hazards on the RCA trails. From downed trees to loose rocks, and wooden features showing signs of deterioration, he helps keep the trail conditions safe.
While the two may do similar work, there’s no competition between them.
“I think it is really sweet like, seeing when we go riding together and I get to see like, what [Davies] and his crew have been building on Boulder or something. I get to show him what we’ve been up to on the hill — it’s kind of neat to see what each other are working on. And we probably have our own kind of unique styles of building,” says Kovacs.
The difference in style extends to the terrain that the two work on, too. RMR differs to some of the others in the area. RMR is built with more machines and equipment, so they often have big features. Other mountains like Boulder have a different style to their trails. Kovacs says there are some more tree roots exposed with wooden features maintained by Davies and his crew that make the run more technical.
For Kovacs and Davies, building and maintaining the trails comes with some built-in hazards that they both deal with. As they spend so much time in the forest, they’re always on the watch for wildlife.
“At Boulder, there will be a lot of bears,” says Davies, but to him bears are “usually pretty chill,” so he doesn’t worry about it. Davies also likes to bring his dog to work, who happily lets them know when there’s wildlife around.
Besides the wildlife, the other hazard that both builders encounter is also one of the main perks of the job: being guinea pigs.
“I don’t want the public to be the guinea pig for stuff. We try to make sure we always have bikes, and that’s how you make sure speed works and everything, too. Your kind of using your bikes all the time and making sure it’s feeling right as you’re building it,” says Kovacs.
Mountain bike trails come in various shapes, sizes, and difficulties. RMR is big. Kovacs says that a typical day on the mountain is just a few laps because of how long the runs are, whereas other parks are often shorter. When they build the runs, they must always consider how challenging the run is.
Speed, steepness, size of jumps, ability to spot the landing — these are just a few of the many things that builders must bear in mind as they try to manage the difficulty of a trail. Ultimately, it often comes down to testing. The builders constantly test their features to make sure the difficulty fits the run.
After years of working as builders, Kovacs and Davies have worked on several different projects, but they still have their preferences.
“For myself, probably making like big – wooden features, big bridges, or just packing a fat lip and just making it all look all nice,” says Davies about his favourite type of feature to work on.
Kovacs has a tough time picking out his favourite features that he helped build.
“It’s a toss-up between this line of jumps that myself and some friends built back at Sun Peaks. Either that, or probably Doomsday up the hill that was the trail we built last year that I’m really proud of,” says Kovacs.
Kovacs and Davies don’t work on the trails alone. They both lead crews of talented builders who also work hard on the trails. From testing features, to spotting bears, or lugging equipment around the trails, the members of their respective teams all work hard to help ensure the trails are the best they can be.
Whether it’s the RMR trails on Mt. Mackenzie or the RCA trails on Boulder, Sunnyside, or Macpherson, the work that people like Davies and Kovacs do helps keep Revelstoke’s Mountain biking options interesting.
For any information on the RCA trails, check out bikerevelstoke.org. For information and trails maps of RMR, visit the resort’s website.
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