Gearing up for the season

It’s the ultimate garage sale, especially if you’re the type to keep more bikes than cars in your garage. This spring, the Contagious Mountain Bike Club (CMBC) is hosting its annual bicycle garage sale. Anyone can bring a bike (or bikes) to Shipyards Park on May 4 and leave them with CMBC members to be sold. The trade-off is a CMBC donation of 10 per cent of the sale price.

It’s the biggest fundraiser of the year for the organization, which uses the money for tools to groom trails and for regular donations to Single Track to Success and the Youth Achievement Centre.

“We made $3,500 last year,” said Maude Craig, with CMBC. “People are selling their really good bikes, so 10 per cent of a really good bike can be a couple hundred bucks.”

Craig said funds will also go to support a new mountain bike festival called Klondike Krankfest. The festival, being held July 12 to 14, will take place at Mount Sima.

“This will replace 24 Hours of Light (a 24-hour mountain bike race the club usually organizes),” said Craig. “The intent of that is to have a mountain bike festival for all types of bikers, have races, skills workshops, yoga classes and a festival vibe with camping and food trucks and a DJ set on the Saturday night.”

Craig said the event is intended for all ages and all kinds of riders, so programming reflects that. There will be downhill and enduro races as well as bike demonstrations, maintenance workshops and more. Craig said the mountain biking community in the Yukon has expanded in recent years. Last year, CMBC hosted a winter fat-biking event called Five Hours of Daylight. It was attended by 50 people versus the 15 in attendance the previous year.

“And more and more people get into it every summer,” she said, noting that people are asking for skills clinics ranging from how to ride slab and how to hit jumps, to how to be more comfortable and more aggressive on the trails.

The summer calendar on the CMBC webpage is rammed with events including biathlon bike nights, nights organized for woman-identifying riders, and King of the Canyon, an August cross-country race held on Grey Mountain each year. If you don’t think you’ve got the right bike to ride this season, chances are you’ll find it at the bike garage sale. Craig said more than 40 bikes sold in the first hour of last year’s event.

The sale takes place at Shipyards Park, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Payment is accepted in the form of cash or cheque. Those who want to sell bike-related gear and accessories can rent a table to do so for a small fee.

Icycle Sport, which is sponsoring the event, will have staff onsite to offer advice and help size people to bikes.

More information about the bike garage sale, as well as events, can be found online at CMBCYukon.ca

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