Hey there,
Planning a trip to Nelson soon and looking for car camping and trail recommendations. Also if there are any quick hits worth riding on the drive there and back, that would be cool to know too.
Lots of talk about Seven Summits, and Im down to check it out, but I'm on a 2018 RM Slayer. Is that too much bike? Not in any crush to crank out a record time.
Thanks!
Your Slayer will be fine on 7 Summits. I did it on a 2014 slayer with no problems. Will the snow be gone this time of year? I did it in Sept 2015 and there was still a bit of snow near the top where we had to push.
If you're doing a Kootenays trip Frisbee Ridge in Revy is a great alpine ride with great views.
In Nelson I really liked the slab trails. Paper Bag, Newtsac, Doz Slabs.. Also really liked Powerslave, Placenta Decenta.
Nelson is awesome.
Posted by: Cabana76
Your Slayer will be fine on 7 Summits. I did it on a 2014 slayer with no problems. Will the snow be gone this time of year? I did it in Sept 2015 and there was still a bit of snow near the top where we had to push.
If you're doing a Kootenays trip Frisbee Ridge in Revy is a great alpine ride with great views.
In Nelson I really liked the slab trails. Paper Bag, Newtsac, Doz Slabs.. Also really liked Powerslave, Placenta Decenta.
Nelson is awesome.
Morning mountain is great. Turnstyles is like A-line in the middle of nowhere.
Yes its kickass.
I just got back from 5 days in Nelson/Rossland. My thoughts:
Awesome, thanks for all the beta, that's super useful!
Just booked 3 nights at Kokanee Creek Provincial Park. Trying to figure out where to stay the first night when enroute.
Contact Tash & Ian at Kootney Mountain Biking to get the latest details on The 7 summits. They also do the shuttle for the trail and are all round awesome peeps!
other Nelson favs, Middle/Skiddle Earth, The Vein, Shannon Pass, and Uppr goldmember/lucky charms/gold rush
Posted by: superman_4
I just got back from 5 days in Nelson/Rossland. My thoughts:
- My 3 Favorite trails in Nelson were Newtsac (great blend of slabs and woodwork) & Morning Sickness (fantastic slabs) @ Kokanee Park, and Upper/Lower Skirt (fast and perfectly loamy dirt) at Mountain Stn.
- Mtn Station is a terrific trail network, everything there is great; in addition to the Skirts try TNT, Eli Sim, Smiling Buddha, Fat Chance, Tiger Beef. I hit almost every trail at MS and there wasn't a single one I didn't enjoy. Honestly it wouldn`t be a bad strategy to dedicate 2 whole days to MS and just knock off as much as you can
- Turnstyles is very ALine-esque. If your only doing 1 run at Morning Mtn I`d almost do something else, the jumps are pretty big and unless you`re a very confident jumper it`s the type of trail you`d want to do multiple times to dial-in. Maybe do it if you can follow a local who knows the speed for the jumps well
- I didn`t love Paper Bag, it wasn`t really fast/flowy enough to be that type of trail (too many loose flat corners and baseball sized rocks to carry good speed), yet not really tech enough to be challenging in that sense either. Depends on the style of trail you prefer, I like either maximum speed/flow, or ultra-tech, I found PB to be neither
- If you`re going in the next couple weeks 7 Summits may be snowed-in still. I`d contact a shuttle company in Rossland to find out for sure
- I really enjoyed SMD and Whiskey in Rossland, both are of the fast and flowy variety, not super tech, but lots of opportunity to go real fast
I lived in Nelson for a couple of years.
This is all pretty good advice.
Rossland is OK but Nelson has way more quality trails. Do Whisky on the rocks to whisky. crown point is pretty good. 7 summits is a must do but not really that great at the same time. I thought SMD was overrated.
Nelson is where to spend your time. Each area is a little different
Agree that mountain station is golden - my favorite trails. The vein is the classic. My favorite loop was skirt, fat chance, tiger beef, legalize it
Morning mountain - turnstiles is the one everyone will talk about but it is just a million berms and tabletops. most can't ride it fast enough to gap the table tops. My favorites were highball to bedframe. on the other side I agree with goldmember to lucky charms to gold rush.
svobova - the classic is paper bag. I love the top 1/2. the bottom half is just a brake burner. Another loop is to do log jam to una canuna to hippy killer.
There is camping in town in Nelson. You can walk to the bars.
Anything fun for hardtails? I’m on a chromag and my son is on a rocky 27.5+ and we’re mostly blue run types although my son is quicker and more fearless than his lame old pops.
Trying to decide whether to rent something fs or bring our bikes.
Thanks for any advice.
Older than Loam.
NVM. Watched some videos of the trails. They look awesome and I'm sure we will enjoy hardtails up there on quite a bit of it.
I loved Mountain Station when I was there. Steep and fast. I did Skirt, Eli Slim and TNT, I think. All very fun.
Morning Mountain wasn’t as steep but was fun. I find machine-built flow trails are a bit dime-a-dozen but I thought Turnstyles was one of the better ones out there. The area has a nice singletrack climb.
Here's a quick recap from my trip, split out by day:
After doing most of the driving the night prior, we started our morning enroute to Nelson with a stop in Rossland. We rode Larch Ridge > Monticola > COG which spits you out on a logging road that you climb back up to your car which is just beside the highway. Pretty fun with some simple tech at the top, and then much higher speeds in the lower half. We bumped into a couple groups of locals and told them we'd be going to Nelson, everyone's response was "Nelson? Why are you going to Nelson? You should be staying here. Might have been a good idea to go to Nelson like 15 years ago."
After that we continued to Nelson proper for some food, and then setup camp at Kokanee Creek Provincial Park. Awesome frontcountry camping, highly recommended. Across the highway from the park there are the "North Shore" (of Kootenay Lake) trail network. We rode up the green trail Goosebumps as a climbing trail, and then the road to Glade Runner, then down to Ledges > Lower Ledges. Glade was steeper than the others, and they all had pretty fun little slabs, nothing too long or technical like Squamish. Really wanted to ride Newtsac and Morning sickness, but it got dark. 2. Headed to Morning Mountain, and rode the climbing trail to Mister Slave > Placenta Descenta, and then back up the climbing trail halfway to Turnstyles > Lefty. We took a helluva long time due to some mechanicals, which didn't leave time for other riding that day unfortunately. Mister Slave and PD were really fun but the bottom half of PD was pretty blown out, gravelly/chunky and not a fun. Turnstyles is a better jump trail than most jump trails you would even find in a bike park that isn't Whistler. Lefty is an easier continuation of the same vibe, but the jumps on it are (mostly) smaller, but more interesting with optional gaps, transfers etc. 3. Finally hit Mountain Station. The road up is steep! Similar elevation to get to the 7th on Fromme, but in just over 4 kms instead of 6+. We rode Skirt twice, which has the same steep loose loamy vibe of a secret trail on Seymour, and then Eli Sim which had a bit of everything; optional drops, jumps, wooden rollers, tech, fast. I think we spent this evening at the hot springs instead of riding more. 4. On the final morning my plan was to go back to the North Shore to ride Newtsac and Morning Sickness before driving home, but we decided to drive up to Kokanee Glacier Park instead for a quick hike. That's okay, Ill be back.
tl;dr? My overall recommendations would be camp at Kokanee Creek and ride the North Shore trails after you've come back to your camp for dinner. Spend your days at Mountain Station if you are pedaling; the network is dense, and if you're an intermediate/advanced rider you will find plenty stuff to make you grin. If you love to jump then shuttle Morning Mountain, but the tech trails there didn't seem so great so as to be worth a trip over Mountain Station.
Posted by: D_C_
I loved Mountain Station when I was there. Steep and fast. I did Skirt, Eli Slim and TNT, I think. All very fun.
Morning Mountain wasn’t as steep but was fun. I find machine-built flow trails are a bit dime-a-dozen but I thought Turnstyles was one of the better ones out there. The area has a nice singletrack climb.
yeah, Upper Skirt/Skirt to TNT and back to Ei Sim is mucho fun! that was a regular lap for me when I lived in nelson, bit of a grunt to Upper Skirt but worth it!
Posted by: RAHrider
Rossland is OK but Nelson has way more quality trails. Do Whisky on the rocks to whisky. crown point is pretty good. 7 summits is a must do but not really that great at the same time. I thought SMD was overrated.
Nelson is where to spend your time. Each area is a little different
Agree that mountain station is golden - my favorite trails. The vein is the classic. My favorite loop was skirt, fat chance, tiger beef, legalize it
Morning mountain - turnstiles is the one everyone will talk about but it is just a million berms and tabletops. most can't ride it fast enough to gap the table tops. My favorites were highball to bedframe. on the other side I agree with goldmember to lucky charms to gold rush.
svobova - the classic is paper bag. I love the top 1/2. the bottom half is just a brake burner. Another loop is to do log jam to una canuna to hippy killer.
There is camping in town in Nelson. You can walk to the bars.
Sounds like you hit some of the classics - it's too bad you didn't try any of my loops, I think you would have liked them based on your riding preferences. I could have told you to avoid placenta - it is never better than so so even when it isn't washed out. Let me know if you try some of my Fav's next time if you like them. Sounds like you had a great trip.
Oh, and the people in Rossland always think their trails are the best. I think it is FOMO personally. ;)
Can anyone comment on Powerslave, is it worth pushing to the top of Upper Powerslave? Or just doing the entire main part of the trail? We are hiring a shuttle which I assume drops us at the top of Powerslave as there's an FSR up there. We don't have all day to ride and want to traverse over and climb the FSR to Goldmember after riding Powerslave so thinking the hike a bike isn't worth our time.
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