I often get asked-delicately, in deference to my somewhat advanced years-why I still subject myself to the rigours and risks of "extreme" mountain biking. An answer finally starts to germinate in my mind as I fly in a de Havilland Beaver, bumping along in a series of contrary air currents a few thousand feet above a little torrent in the Chilcotins known as Gun Creek.

I huddle with my back to the icy wind blowing off Spruce Lake, where pilot Dale Douglas eventually deposits us, and formulate my response. As I look down to tighten my wheel lugs, I can see that my hands are shaking ever so slightly, which I recognize after all these years as a sign that the adrenaline is starting to flow, my body preparing me for the battle to come.
The answer gets closer still as we start out, carving our way through stands of spruce, as glutinous mud sucks at the wheels. We are a train of grunting, wild-eyed obsessives, composed of individual riders doing their best to look at where they want go rather than where they don’t. (Looking at a tree is the best way there is to set yourself up for riding into one.) Eventually the trail breaks into open alpine grasslands yellowing in the weakening fall sun; we are surrounded by a panorama of mountain peaks already disappearing under the coming winter’s first blanket of snow.
Here’s what I’m talking about, the answer to the question. When I’m standing over my bike looking at a scene like this, or slithering down the trail with my eyeballs rattling in my head like dice in a cup, I’m not thinking about past failures and future triumphs. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, no bills or stock market meltdowns, no annoying neighbours with barking dogs and perverse affections for hackneyed Broadway musicals. There is just the here and now, the space I immediately inhabit and the space I need to get into just ahead in order to survive. The ride becomes, in short, the quintessential expression of being in the moment, Zen-like. It’s perfection.

Hell, as I laze in the hot tub back at Tyax Mountain Lake Resort at the end of it all, pulling on a beer and listening to my companions decompress, I’m not even old anymore.

At 54, like a lot my fellow travellers in middle age and in some cases beyond, I can still ride a gut-busting day, but at the end of it I need more than an icy dip in a snow-fed creek and a can of lukewarm beans around a campfire to bring myself back up to fighting strength. In addition to wanting more, I can afford more.

Evidently I’m not the only one. The Fairmont Chateau Whistler is used to the sight of dirt-encrusted mountain bikers traipsing through the hotel’s elegant marble lobby en route to their Gold Floor suites, some of them shedding so much muck as they go that cleaners chase after them sweeping up the leavings. The hotel’s Lynn Gervais says, "We don’t get rattled. We have such a passion for our environment that we get excited seeing our guests enjoying it."

Once considered the demon seed of outdoor enthusiasts, many mountain bikers have grown up with the sport and are just as likely to be socially conscious middle-aged professionals sleeping in five-star hotels as attitudinally challenged teenagers camping out in vans, tearing up the landscape and relieving themselves behind the nearest tree. In fact, cyclists are now an essential component of the economic equation at resort communities across Western Canada, including Banff and Bragg Creek in Alberta and Golden, Revelstoke, Rossland, Salmon Arm and Kamloops in B.C. Even Saskatchewan, with its forested ravines, is reaping revenues from mountain bikers ripping it up at places like Meadow Lake near Dorintosh, Cypress Hills and Moose Mountain by Kenosee Lake. At Whistler, the quintessential resort community, mountain bikers now outnumber golfers during the summer season. A Mountain Bike Tourism Association study revealed that fat-tire enthusiasts pumped over $10 million into the Sea to Sky economy during a mere 15-week period.

Upscale tour purveyors are catching on. Owner Mike Brcic of the Fernie-based Sacred Rides says finding clients with sufficient disposable income is not a problem. "There’s been a big change in the demographic; some of our clients have been with us for over a decade," he says. "Now they’re in their late 30s and 40s and in their prime money-earning years. Where before they would’ve been fine with a tent and a good steak over the fire, now they want to pamper themselves a bit."

I experienced it firsthand on one of Sacred Rides’s 11-day mountain bike tours of B.C., home to some of the finest backcountry lodges anywhere, many just a few pedal strokes from some of the world’s finest riding. "What could be better," Brcic asks, "than riding the world’s best singletrack all day, then coming back to the lodge for a hot tub, a gourmet meal and a nice bottle of cabernet?"
Beats the hell out of me.

We started our journey in Fernie, a cute little alpine resort town in the Rockies. The hills overlooking the town are ringed with trails, some wide open and available to all, some closely guarded secrets you can only find out about by buying a lot of drinks at the Rockin’ R Bar.

From Fernie we wend our way back west, stopping along the way to ride along some of the planet’s best singletrack while the sun shines, and lazing in luxury while downing gourmet meals when it doesn’t. A highlight is Baldface Lodge, a cat-skiing aerie 6,750 feet up in the mountains above Nelson. Here, champion freerider and renowned filmmaker Mike Kinrade was invited a couple of years ago to create a network of trails of almost extraordinary beauty and style. His skills become apparent quickly: great flow, lots of places to go (the same can be said of Nelson, a small former mining town simultaneously so quaint, laid-back and hip I briefly wished I was sub-30 again).

Everywhere we go the proud locals welcome us to the mountain-bike capital of the world. Judging by the riding we experience, from the Seven Summits above Rossland to Chuck Brennan’s freeride mountain bike park above Little Shuswap Lake, they’ve all got a pretty good case to make for themselves. And along the way, each and all are eager to put out the welcome mat, plump up the pillows and fire up the stove for backcountry cycling enthusiasts with a taste for fare like the puff pastry tarts with caramelized onions, blue cheese, arugula and aged balsamic that we enjoyed around the fireplace at Retallack near New Denver, B.C.

It’s safe to assume that an increasing number of dirty, stinking and solvent mountain bikers are going to be mucking up the carpets at backcountry-chic hotels and resorts throughout Western Canada. Get used to it.