For the past decade or more, professional trail builders have been mostly constructing machine-built flow trails across British Columbia along with the rest of North America — or so claims Thomas Schoen, CEO of First Journey Trails. But “the first signature mountain bike trail” in Hope, British Columbia, shows that demand for flow trails is waning.
“As a provincial trail advocate, I can tell you that this is the type of trail that I see in demand again, after the last 10–15 years of building blue flow trails that often have the same characteristics,” said Schoen.
The type of trail Schoen is referring to is a steep, technical, black diamond shuttle trail built entirely by hand through gnarly terrain. With the working name “First Blood,” this new trail coming to Hope in the spring of 2025 promises to revolutionize the mountain bike scene in this small BC town.
A small town with big tourism ambitions.
Residents of Hope have very few legal mountain bike trails — and they had zero legal trails when First Blood was initially proposed about five years ago by a group of local riders in cooperation with Mike Woods, former President of the Fraser Valley Mountain Bikers Association (FVMBA). Until now, Hope’s claim to fame was the filming site for the first Rambo movie, a history to which the new trail’s name pays homage.
Hope may be a small hamlet of just 6,700 people, but it has big ambitions — and it has to in order to compete with the renowned mountain bike destinations Chilliwack and Coquitlam nearby. North Vancouver, the mecca known as the “North Shore,” is located just two hours away. But maybe instead of competing, perhaps Hope can generate tourism revenue by attracting riders to stay in town for just a short while longer than they would have otherwise?
“[The] locals got sick and tired of cars coming into Hope, grabbing a coffee, filling up with gas, having mountain bikes on the back of their cars… and then just driving away,” said Woods. “They felt more of that tourism revenue should be staying in Hope.”
Schoen shared that Hope occupies a unique position for the over 10,000 mountain bikers who live in interior BC. “We all travel for mountain biking… if we leave the interior, if we leave BC’s north, every single mountain biker gets funneled through Hope. So, by the time you get to Hope, you’re ready for a campground, for an Airbnb, for a hotel room, and now you’ve got a shuttle trail.”
But it’ll take a real gem of a trail to get riders to stick around. Just how good will this new First Blood trail be?
First Blood is a gnarly, technical, hand-built downhill trail through incredible terrain.
First Blood has been designed and built as a dedicated shuttle trail, accessed via a steep dirt road that climbs almost into the alpine. This new descent drops a staggering 1,000 meters (3,280ft) of vertical in just over 5 linear kilometers (3.1mi) — meaning it’s freaking steep!
The mountainside First Journey Trails built the trail on is a northern slope just outside of town. “It’s extremely steep, a lot of water, lot of creeks, lot of runoff, lot of snow in the winter time,” said Schoen. “I mean, my company has built, in the last 16–17 years, signature trails all over the province, and this was, hands down, the most difficult area we’ve ever constructed a trail in, which is reflected in the budget and the number of professional trail builders on site for 20–21 weeks. The area itself wouldn’t have been identified as the ideal area for a new trail network, but it is within the community forest, there is excellent access, so it did make sense to start building there.”
The entire project hinged on “one crucial pinch point,” which measured 1.5km long. For some time, Schoen didn’t think the mountainside would be buildable, but then, “we finally identified a corridor where we could stitch the top section and the lower section together, and that’s where we brought a subcontractor in who concentrated on just 1.5 kilometers of this really steep, pinch point area.”
One of the crux sections of the trail traverses a narrow ledge on extremely steep, exposed terrain through a series of cliff faces. First Blood won’t be opened until the snow melts in spring 2025, and to keep it closed, First Journey has one crucial bridge that they won’t build in this zone until the spring. “It’s absolutely rideable, but we can make it safer by building a wooden boardwalk that gets the tread to two, two and a half feet width,” said Schoen.
First Blood utilizes wooden features to negotiate crux points, but it makes the most of the natural terrain, with steep, rocky chutes dropping into endless catch berms. In places, riders will be fully gripped while riding technical rock gardens next to tumbling cascades. The trail is both challenging and beautiful, exemplifying the uniqueness of Hope’s terrain.
To further showcase the beauty of this mountainside, First Journey has built a few connector trails, including a hiking trail to access a waterfall. The connector trails to the shuttle road will also allow the lower sections of the trail to be ridden before the upper reaches melt out in the spring. They can even be used as bail-out options for riders who get in over their heads.
Funding and build process
This 5.5km trail cost $416,450 CAD to build, and $60,000 had already been invested in developing a master plan for the area. The money for both the master plan and the trail construction was raised via two grants from the Rural Economic Diversification and Infrastructure Program (REDIP), according to an article in the Hope Standard.
Schoen had up to 17 different builders working on the trail at one time, including his employees and employees of subcontractors that he hired. Schoen also noted how diverse the crew of trail builders was. First Journey had one female planner and two female builders on the project, as well as two indigenous builders.
The build wasn’t easy, though.
“For the first time in my career, it was more about managing the builders, to […] stay upbeat and stay on the job, just because it’s frustrating if you’re out there as a hand builder, and you can […] literally build a couple meters a day by yourself, like it’s just absolutely playing with your mind,” said Schoen. “A lot of the guys, they wanted to leave throughout the year. So just to keep them motivated and to keep them going was a huge challenge for me.”
After 21 weeks on the job, First Blood is 95% complete. All that remains is to let the trail tread set up over the winter, let the snow melt in the spring, and build the final bridge.
What does the future hold for Hope?
Between the time First Blood was proposed and today, a volunteer-built trail was also constructed in the area, known as “Columbia,” since it’s a shuttle trail. First Blood will also form the spine of a new trail system, with potential future connectors and loops. Most of the additional trails in the plan will be located on the lower mountain, with the master plan calling for about 22-25km of trail.
With the main spine of the trail system built by First Journey, it will be dramatically easier for the FVMBA to build shorter sections of trail that still result in rewarding rides — whether with volunteer labor or smaller grants.
Hope and the FVMBA are thinking big and already looking beyond First Blood. According to the Hope Standard, “six other potential future trail network locations in Hope have also been found: Dog Mountain, Hope Lookout, Thacker Mountain, Sucker’s Creek, Othello Tunnels/Coquihalla Canyon, and The Core. At the time, these locations had yet to be properly surveyed and are just possibilities for now.”
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