With all that great terrain, you'd think the Canadian Rockies would come close to being mountain bike nirvana. As it turns out, national park restrictions tend to limit things quite a bit, but the amazing options just outside more than make up for this.

National Parks

Far and away the best of any of the National Parks is Jasper National Park which has a good network of old hiking trails available to mountain bikers. Banff National Park has less, but this has mostly been purpose-built, so overall it's almost as good.

Bike towns

It's just outside the national parks, in Kananaskis Country and around towns like Canmore, Hinton, Golden, but particularly Fernie, that the trail networks really explode.

Ski resorts

To top it off several ski resorts –Fernie Alpine Resort, Panorama and Kicking Horse Resort – carry bikes on lifts in the summer, giving you easy access to a sizeable network of downhill trails without any of the grunt of climbing. Given the right bike (all rent them out) each resort has trails suitable for novices, but most are fairly challenging, while some will tax even the most skilled downhill mountain bikers.