The Ride Home
Home to me means family, community, and friends. Home can also exist in many different places and look like many different things. I am fortunate enough to have a place where my family history runs as deep as the mountains are high.
Family is not only our parents and the many cousins, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews, to me family also includes the people who come into your life and create unforgettable bonds. These special people who come to feel like family change the way we think and look at the world. Both of these strains of people exist in Valemount, and I try to cherish these relationships however they look.
I haven't lived in Valemount for over 10 years. The community continues to grow and change every time I visit. 10 years ago I would have to describe to people the location of Valemount as being the town that's an hour west of Jasper, Alberta. With the growth of the bike park and an explosion of cycling over the last several years, now when I tell people where I’m from, instead of seeing a perplexed face, I see a face plastered with enthusiasm. Community to me is the people that go to the trail nights, volunteer, attend board meetings and support trail organizations. The community in Valemount is small, but it is strong. It’s those incredible people who keep the cogs turning on the little machine that is Valemount’s growing mountain bike scene.
Angie McKirdy hitting the local trails in Valemount BC.
Our family history in the area begins with my great grandfather Fulton Alexander McKirdy, known to locals at the time as “Mack”. He had the reputation of being one of the most “colourful and energetic pioneers of the valley” (Yellowhead Pass and Its People). In 1897 he came to the area, paddling up the Canoe River from Golden, BC. That drainage is now intermittently filled with water as the Kinbasket Reservoir and the uppermost hydroelectric dam in the Columbia Basin Drainage. He spent his summers prospecting along the Canoe, Swiftcurrent, and Fraser Rivers, and his winters were spent on the trapline. He was a pretty versatile character, and his list of job titles include forester, trapper, guide, dentist, Justice of the Peace, and Fire Warden. He staked his homestead in 1907 in the township of Cranberry Lake.
The Village of Valemount was not incorporated until 1962, but the community began to take shape with the construction of the railway in 1914. Most settled in the area of Swift Creek, and that is what the community was called. In 1927 railway authorities moved the station a mile down the tracks from Swift Creek. They called it Valemount, for its location in a valley in the mountains, and that is what the town eventually became. Vale mount, the valley in the mountains, is surrounded by the Rocky, Caribou, and Monashee mountain ranges. It is situated near the headwaters of the Fraser, Columbia, and Thompson Rivers. It is a pretty spectacular place to live, and I can understand some of what might have made my great-grandfather want to stay.
Andreas Thoni, long time proponent of Valemount's trails and mountain biking scene.
I grew up in this town, surrounded by a big family. Mountain biking in the early 2000s was a lot of forest service roads, horse trails, and hiking trails. Andreas Thoni, one of the kids in the bike club, built the first mountain bike trail, a steep rooty fall line that everyone still calls Andreas’ Trail. Now, years later, Valemount is home to an exploding network of mountain bike trails, and a tourist stop for anyone with a bike.
---
Valemount is located within the unceded traditional lands of the Simpcw First Nation. Please click here to learn more.