Three days of Hero Dirt, Good Eats, and Epic Memories Made in Cumberland, BC
Growing up in Kelowna, I used to think the island was far away and hard to visit. Then, I discovered that, with the right mode of transport, the Comox Valley is only 75 minutes away from Kelowna. In the fall of 2023, my partner and I hopped on a flight from Kelowna to Comox to visit her family. We spent a day renting bikes in Cumberland, exploring the endless trails, and enjoying the hero dirt conditions while most of the trails at home were all too muddy or snow-covered to ride. Now, a year and a half later, I live in the Comox Valley. Remembering this past experience, I invited my Kelowna-based friends Mia and Chelsea to hop on a quick, direct flight with Pacific Coastal to take advantage of the amazing early-season riding conditions in Cumberland while they wait for the trails to dry out back at home.
The History of Cumberland
Cumberland has a rich cultural history, starting with the K’ómoks people, who have called the valley home and have been the caretakers of this land since time immemorial. In 1852, the discovery of coal deposits near Comox Lake brought a massive cultural shift with the arrival of prospectors and later settlers. Cumberland quickly became a boom town with a focus on mining and forestry. Today, the mines are no longer operating, and the village has embraced the outdoor community, offering scenic hiking, countless swimming holes, and some of the most epic mountain biking in the province. Despite the change in direction, the Village of Cumberland has maintained its original character, which is reflected in the historic buildings that line the main street, Dunsmuir Avenue.
Day 1 – A Taste of Hero Dirt
After their plane touched down, I met Mia and Chelsea at Comox Airport and welcomed them with smiles across their faces to the Comox Valley. We left the airport and drove 30 minutes straight to Dodge City Cycles in Cumberland to pick up their rental bikes. We stood by the wood stove inside the shop while the shop staffer, Jared, kitted Mia out with a Rocky Mountain Altitude and Chelsea with a Marin Rift Zone, which she later swapped out for a Rocky Mountain Instinct to try something different. While Dodge City Cycles is the closest shop to the trails, another great bike shop in town, Beaufort Cycles, also offers bike rentals.
From Dodge City Cycles, we rode our bikes a quick 2 minutes down the road and stopped to check in at the Cumberland Guesthouse, a quiet little apartment with secure bike storage, a bike wash station, and a cozy gazebo with a propane fire. We quickly got dressed into our riding gear and then proceeded to ride 5 minutes down the road to the trailhead. The beautiful part of visiting Cumberland is that once you’re there, everything you need is easily accessible on foot or by bike.
One of the worst parts about riding in Cumberland is that there are so many super fun trails that it can be hard to choose which ones to ride. What a great problem to have! Hopefully, this blog article will give readers the insight needed to choose the best trails and maximize the fun on their own trip to Cumberland.
We eased in gently to our weekend of riding, staying in the lower portion of the network. After a brief climb up Davis Lake Main, we made our way along the blue trails Missing Link, Found Link, and Lost and Found – a short climb followed by a fun descent with a bit of everything: berms, drops, jumps, and chunky tech! This is the perfect little loop to get a sample of what the network has to offer. From the bottom of Lost and Found, we pedalled up Davis Lake Main, connecting onto Spanker and Short Climb to ride the blue flow trail, 4 Pack. We then pedalled down the road to Round Out to traverse over to 2 Flats and then onto Bonestorm, home of one of Cumberland's most iconic rock rolls, for a fast, flowy end to the ride.
After a long day of travel and biking, we were ready for food. We rode our bikes straight from the trailhead to Riders Pizza to enjoy some of the cheesy, saucy goodness they have to offer! As Mia took her first bites, she did a little happy dance because it tasted that good! With bellies full of the best pizza in the Comox Valley, we headed back to the hotel room to play some card games and wind down before another big day.
Day 2 – The Epic
We started the next day at Laneway Coffee and Kitchen for breakfast, where I enjoyed a delicious latte while the girls had London fogs. We followed our coffee with some of the tastiest breakfast sandwiches any of us had enjoyed in a long time. After eating at Laneway, we quickly popped into Seeds Market to grab a few Hornby Bars and other snacks for the ride, then stopped in at the apartment to get ready before hitting the trails.
Once at the trailhead, we started pedalling up Davis Lake Main until we connected with the climb trail, Sobo No Michi. This scenic and gradual climb trail takes you across multiple creeks, through mossy, lush forests and finishes with epic views of the Comox Peninsula, Denman Island, the Salish Sea, and the Coastal Mountains far in the distance.
From the top of Sobo No Michi, we pedalled up Above and Beyond to Blueprint, an epic trail built by local professional mountain biker Mark Matthews for a Shimano video project. While this is one of my favourite trails in the network, this time we got skunked; as we neared the top of the climb up, we found that some recent precipitation had left a bit of snow at this elevation of the trail network, so we descended slowly and finished this section enjoying the fun blue flow trail Hunky Dory.
Feeling warmed up to the rental bikes, we felt ready for a more challenging trail. We traversed the Old Bucket Access Road and connected to Sphagnum P.I., a double black jump trail that is a local favourite with clean berms, wood features, and jumps galore. While there are some serious features on this trail, many of them have ride-arounds making it accessible to riders who are working into pushing from a black to double black riding ability. After riding Sphagnum P.I., we hopped back on the climb trail and made our way over to Off-Broadway. This gnarly tech trail follows the side of a beautiful canyon with a roaring creek complete with plenty of rooty-jank, exposed sections, and one high-committing rock roll. As Chelsea descended the face of the rock roll she could be heard singing the lyrics to “Believe” by Cher to quell the fear of taking on a new feature of that size. With our adrenaline quota met for the day, we finished the ride with some mellow flow on 4 Pack and a little pedal on Black Hole to connect to Space Nugget, a flowy blue trail that winds through one of the more beautiful sections of forest in the trail network. Tired from covering roughly 24 kilometres on this epic of a day, we opted to order takeout and have a relaxed evening to refresh our energy for another day of riding.
Day 3 – Cumberland Sampler
We started another day with breakfast and coffee from Laneway Coffee and Kitchen, because we were left craving more after the delicious breakfast the morning before. After fuelling up for the day, we quickly hit the trails for another ride. On this day, it was my aim to get a little bit of everything mixed into one ride – blue flow, mellow jumps, rock rolls, woodwork, and rooty tech.
We followed the same route up Sobo No Michi to descend New Vanilla, a blue flow trail that is fast and flowy with plenty of crisp berms and mellow table jumps to keep any rider excited while remaining accessible to beginners. This is a must-ride for any riders visiting Cumberland. After finishing New Vanilla, I recommend beginner riders continue down Funky Vanilla, Vanilla Climb, Old Vanilla, Middle Vanilla and Vanilla Bottom to get the full Vanilla experience. But on this adventure, my goal was to guide Mia and Chelsea through the full spectrum of terrain available in the Cumberland network, so we opted to ride down Lower Thirsty Beaver to check out the abundance of epic woodwork on this trail as it navigates wetlands and creek crossings, with one bridge travelling over a waterfall! After Lower Thirsty Beaver, we pedalled up to Vanilla Climb and rode Truffle Shuffle, Slick Rock, and That Damn Trail, a great connection of trails for those who love fast downhill tech. After that, we rode our bikes down Davis Lake Main, re-riding Missing Link and Found Link before branching off onto Orange Peels, another amazing black tech trail with a few fun medium-sized drops along the way.
To celebrate three days of riding we pedalled down the road on Dunsmuir Avenue to stop at Love’s Ice Cream to enjoy the first day that this locals’ favourite was open for the season. If you stop in at Love’s, I highly recommend their swirl cones, which are made of hard ice cream blended with locally sourced fruit, creating a soft-textured, fruity cone! This concluded the riding portion of the trip, and with tired legs and full hearts, we popped back into the Cumberland Guest House to wash the rental bikes before we returned them to Dodge City Cycles.
We finished our day with delicious street tacos at Biblio Taco, enjoying a meal and reflecting on the amazing weekend while engaging in talks about “next time.” The only thing on our mind was that 3 days was not enough to explore the 200+ kilometres of amazing bike trails Cumberland offers. We very easily could have extended this trip by a few days and made room one of those days to catch the bus from Cumberland up to Mount Washington to enjoy some of the fantastic powder skiing conditions that were present on the mountain while we were down in the valley riding hero dirt! The following day, I dropped Mia and Chelsea off at the Comox Airport, where it had all started a few days prior. We exchanged hugs before they headed off back home to Kelowna.
If you make your own trip to Cumberland, consider giving back to the trails by purchasing a United Riders of Cumberland sticker at Dodge City Cycles, visiting the UROC website to donate, or—even better—purchase a membership. These small actions go a long way toward supporting the maintenance and ongoing development of this mountain biking mecca!
By: Mathew Wanbon
