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Singletrack Six good for business, bad for trails

While the major biking event was good for business, it wasn’t necessarily good for the trails.
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Cary Fisher (far corner), president of Tourism Rossland, led a board meeting following the AGM. (Chelsea Novak/Rossland News)

Business owners who attended the Tourism Rossland AGM and board meeting all reported a busy summer, with the Singletrack Six bike race weekend particularly successful.

While the major biking event was good for business, it wasn’t necessarily good for the trails and the local trails society has decided not to host major events during the dry season going forward.

The Kootenay Columbia Trails Society (KCTS) voted not to host any events between mid-July and Labour Day at the society’s last board meeting, according to Scott Forsyth of the KCTS.

“The Trails Society made some mistakes as far as our assessment of what was going to happen to the trails. We naively thought that cross-country racers would not have as much impact as an enduro racer,” Forsyth explained.

With the dry conditions Rossland experienced over the summer the KCTS was not able to groom the trails again and mountain bikers who visited after Singletrack Six “did not experience good trails.”

Contacted for comment, Aaron McConnell, president of TransRockies Race Series — which organizes Singletrack Six — said he has been in communication with KCTS directors.

“I’ve had some conversations with Stewart Spooner and other board members from the Trails Society. I certainly understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “I think it was kind of an unprecedented dry year and we were certainly working closely with the Trails Society to pick our routes, but I think they’re obviously concerned with making sure that their trail system is sustainable. It will probably have an impact on our ability to return to Rossland. Not saying that we couldn’t operate on other dates, but it’s something that we’ll have to look at to see if we can make it work to come back in the future.”

McConnell said the Singletrack Six team received a lot of positive feedback from riders about the West Kootenay stages this year and they would definitely like to come back — though Singletrack Six moves around Western Canada each year anyway, so it would be a few years before they planned a return either way.

“The soonest would probably be 2019, but there’s a good chance it would be after that anyway, so it’s good to know now, because if we would need to move off our traditional date at the end of July, we sort of know in advance that that’s the parameter,” he said.

Hotel revenue up for 2016/2017

Tourism in Rossland wasn’t just up over the summer.

According to data shared by Tourism Rossland executive director Andras Lukacs during the AGM, Rossland’s hotel accommodation revenue increased 16.5 per cent to $4,445,582 in the 2016/2017 fiscal year.

Now Tourism Rossland is preparing for the upcoming winter season, which includes preparations for the Free Ride Ski Bus.

“We have a mock schedule ready based on available funding. We have a route plan and a bus stop plan ready. We have a schedule expansion planned, based on the revenue coming in, so once we get the revenue confirmed, we know what’s going to be added first and [what] the schedule’s going to look like,” said Lukacs.

He added that the bus is expected to run from the opening day at Red Mountain Resort until the closing day.