Alone in the forest on Montana Mountain, all I could hear was my ragged breathing as I rode my bike up a steep dirt trail slightly wider than my handlebars. My quads were fatigued from stomping down on the pedals, pushing them through slow rotations as I climbed. It was a frosty September morning, but just a half hour into the ride I was starting to sweat as I fought gravity. And I had hours of climbing—two-and-a-half CN Towers’ worth—to go. Eff this.
I was only a couple of kilometres into an epic adventure day. Five of us—my partner, three friends and I—had started at the coffee shop in Carcross and were heading up Montana, on a mix of mountain-bike trails and old mining roads, to Mountain Hero, eight kilometres of singletrack through the alpine and down the other side of the mountain to the South Klondike Highway. In all, we’d cover 30 kilometres. My friend Tricia, who’d previously ridden Mountain Hero, had no qualms about doing it on an e-bike this time, but I stubbornly insisted on riding my non-motorized “acoustic bike.” “Are you sure you don’t want to trade for a little while, Alex?” she asked. I scoffed.
I’d wanted to ride Mountain Hero since I moved to the Yukon seven years ago. Though I’d biked on Montana’s lower trails, I hadn’t attempted the alpine ride. After the pandemic hit, my body began settling into its mid-thirties. Old injuries from high-school basketball flared up when I exercised, and I started to develop a distinct sense of my own mortality. I used to be excited to set off on a challenging hike or spend a weekend doing back-to-back mountain-bike rides, but instead I now found myself fishing or just sitting on the couch with a beer. I’d spent my youth dreading aging, and now here it was.
But, in the fall of 2024, I committed to doing it. Or die trying. Our group, which included three runners and three dogs, was high on stoke but not looking to set any land-speed records. Everyone else was focused on fun, looking forward to a long day in the mountains. But I worried it might be my last chance to do something this hard.
Before it became a mountain-bike trail, Mountain Hero was used for mining. A tramway built in 1905 carried silver ore out of the mountains along the route. Repurposed for biking in the mid-2000s, it is one of four trails in Canada to receive “Epic” status from the International Mountain Bicycling Association. Montana is home to 40 kilometres of trails built and maintained by Singletrack to Success, a Carcross/Tagish First Nation project that offers young people meaningful work while reconnecting them to their traditional lands.
About 15 kilometres into the ride, I wolfed down my last piece of cold pepperoni pizza. We were in the alpine now, trucking along a washed-out mining road through orange and yellow patches of scrub brush and sedges. We were halfway there. After our snack break, Tricia zipped away and the others, on a stupid runners’ high, set off chattering like squirrels in spring. I swung a quickly stiffening leg back over my saddle and began to question some of my life choices.
As I tried to keep up over the loose, fist-sized rocks—baby heads, in mountain-bike parlance—my friends pulled further and further ahead. The riding was tough; if I didn’t keep my weight in exactly the right place on the saddle, my back tire lost traction and spun out. Mentally, I was drained. My inner pep talks (You love this, you love this) were becoming less and less effective.
By now, the group was out of sight. I plodded along towards a turn in the trail that disguised another climb. Dejected, I dismounted and sat down, using my front tire as an armchair. I was done. My legs were shaking. My butt was numb. My neck was strained from craning my head. Even my eyelids were heavy. It struck me that I’d either finish this ride or I’d die right here on the mountain.
Then, on a nearby ridge, some 30 metres away, a female caribou appeared, followed closely by two others. The first animal looked at me as the others began climbing the ridge. She followed but then turned to face me again, as if to say, “Well, are you coming?”
With a deep breath, I got back on the bike and caught up to my friends, who were waiting for me on the other side of the hill.
As I told them about the caribou, I felt a shift. I hadn’t thought I could go on, but now I did. I kept up with the group through the rocky slides, brisk fall winds and flocks of ptarmigan. Finally, we made it to the official Mountain Hero trailhead—all downhill (mostly) from here. After climbing for six hours, navigating a steep, rocky descent is punishing on the body. The trail drops 180 metres over less than a kilometre. I tried desperately to stay upright until the pitch leveled out to an alpine meadow.
Before dropping down into the spruce trees, I turned to look behind me. I was awed by how far I’d come since the caribou—how much I’d accomplished since (almost) giving up. The final descent to the highway was fast but unyielding, leaving me with frozen knees and index fingers clawed from squeezing the brakes.
We reunited in the parking lot where we’d left my truck seven hours earlier and headed to Carcross for celebratory burgers and beers. Moving gingerly with smiles on our faces, we agreed we never had to do that again. One and done.
The next morning, I was surprised to wake up feeling stronger rather than sore. Maybe I wasn’t as far gone as I thought. In the following days, I said, again and again, “I can’t believe I did that.” Even now, months later, I’m still amazed. But if there is a next time, I won’t be too proud to ride an e-bike.
