For years I have been hearing about the trails over on Hornby Island and finally had the chance to go and check them out. First off, the stories are all true and the riding is really that good.
Hornby Island is a bit of a trip from Whistler as you need to head down to Horseshoe Bay, across to Nanaimo, then drive up island to pick up two more ferries as you bounce over to Denman Island and then Hornby. Ends up being about half a day travel, but well worth it if you can stay for a couple days.
The weekend we picked turned out to be the race weekend, with an XC event on Saturday and the Super D on the Sunday. As you can imagine the local bike scene was incredibly welcoming in showing us the best trails to hit up as well as trying to convince us into racing in the coming days.
The main riding area where we were was up on Mount Jeffreys and a relatively small zone, but filled with a tonne of trails. The majority of them are really fast and flowy single-track with a couple additions for those looking for a more technical trail with options such as 'Yer Mom' and 'Freefall'. My personal favorite was the Slickrock trail, which you can also connect into from the Freefall above. Also of very worthy note is the 'No Horses' trail, which is the amazing trail that follows down a little canyon with the banked corners the whole way down and resting in an incredibly green and lush section of forest. We really wished we had a Fish-eye lens to capture the shape of the trail, but still hand a great time doing laps through this classic island trail.
Overall, Hornby offered some quality riding, a very relaxed scene and good island culture to wrap up the weekend. I will definitely be heading back and look to stay even longer next time.
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