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Mountain bike club wants your votes

The Contagious Mountain Bike Club wants Yukoners to get online and vote for them in the Mountain Equipment Co-op's Dirt Search Contest.
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The Contagious Mountain Bike Club wants Yukoners to get online and vote for them in the Mountain Equipment Co-op’s Dirt Search Contest.

The Whitehorse-based club is one of 10 mountain bike clubs in Western Canada hoping to receive the most online votes and pocket $10,000 for trail creation.

“We’re up against Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Whistler, which has the world’s largest mountain bike club,” said Contagious’ Jane Koepke. “The competition is really stiff, to say the least.

“We’ve been running a pretty aggressive campaign. I’m hazarding a guess that we’re going to be in the top two, top three for sure.”

If Contagious wins the contest next week, the club doesn’t plan to use the winnings for Whitehorse trails. The club will donate the money to the Single Track to Success Project, a Carcross/Tagish First Nation project founded in 2005 aimed at creating an extensive trail network on Montana Mountain in Carcross.

“We had lots of ideas for putting that money to work in Whitehorse, but we felt this was an ideal opportunity to give back to a First Nation that has done so much for Yukon trails,” said Contagious president Sierra van der Meer in a news release. “It’s also a show of appreciation for the investments that the federal, territorial, and municipal governments have made to help the Yukon become an amazing home for all trail enthusiasts. We just want to do what we can to contribute.”

The trails on Montana Mountain are already highly regarded.

In 2011 the International Mountain Bicycling Association

inducted the Mountain Hero Trail on Montana Mountain into its Epic Trails category.

Outdoor Magazine declared Yukon - specifically Whitehorse and Carcross - as the world’s best mountain biking destination in the American publication’s April issue.

Those wanting to help Contagious can vote once a day up to the deadline on Wednesday.

Vote at apps.facebook.com/dirtsearchw/ or follow the link on the Contagious Mountain Bike Club’s website.

Contact Tom Patrick at

tomp@yukon-news.com