Some trail systems name themselves.
If the Three Blind Mice trail system, just outside the beachfront city of Penticton in the South Okanagan region of interior British Columbia, evokes imagery of aimless wandering, it’s in the trail network’s noodling DNA.
“When mountain biking kicked off here in the early 90s, folks were just stringing together cattle and game trails,” says Skyler Punnet, Executive Director of the Penticton and Area Cycling Association (PACA), which oversees Three Blind Mice in addition to advocating for cycling throughout the South Okanagan.
How a group called the Gypsy Wheelers turned cow paths into over 100km of MTB trails
Punnet’s father and a handful of other riders formed a crew called the Gypsy Wheelers, and the Wheelers would stitch together slabs with animal tracks. Gradually, a trail network coalesced out of the cow trails, and the Wheelers named it for their tail-chasing treks. The name stuck. And while the trail network has grown in the last three decades thanks more to human hands than hoofprints, the feeling of wandering, all too rare in a meticulously mapped world, remains.
From the Arawana Forest Service Road that bounds the north end of the trail system, the trails trend north to south in a spaghetti bowl of singletrack that doubles back, dead ends, and dumps into five-way unsigned intersections.
If you’ve never ridden here, bring a solid sense of adventure—and direction.
“One piece of advice I learned years ago was the lake is always west and downhill, so if you can spot Okanagan Lake, you can always figure out where you are,” laughs Terry McWhirter, former PACA Executive Director and current Vice President. “But when you have that many trails in that size of an area, you’re going to have to pull out Trailforks every once in a while.”
There are worse places to get turned around.
Why the Mice has become a shoulder-season destination for riders across the Northwest
The Mice has developed a regional reputation as a prime shoulder-season destination. As an early-season riding zone, the technical traverses tickle all those fast-twitch muscles that have lain dormant through a winter of trainer miles. The sunny, west-facing slopes of ponderosa pine and bunchgrass dry out early, with a profusion of wildflowers following shortly after. Late in the season, the semi-arid South Okanagan landscape provides a welcome respite from wetter climates to the east and west.
The trails occupy a terraced shelf above the villas, vineyards, and hop farms of Canada’s craft beer capital, and the same “terroir” that favors wines also favors tech trails. Packed down by ice-age glaciers and slowly decomposing ever since, the slope boasts an interesting mix of slabs and shark’s teeth. Except for the berms and booters of the popular Flow Coaster, most of the trails lean toward technical cross-country traverses and short, shelf-like descents, full of tricky rock rolls and pedal catchers. For example, the high-speed Eagle features long transverse slabs and ankle-high stair-stepping rocks, while Drops A Lot, true to its name, throws progressively larger drops, up to fanny-pack-high.
In general, the Mice trails are true-to-rating; if you’ve been bamboozled by a BC “blue” elsewhere, you’ll be safe here, “although some of the climbs, we get some complaints,” laughs Punnet.
A new 10-year master plan aims to make the Mice more accessible
Meanwhile, the path forward for the Mice just got clearer. PACA recently finished a 10-year master plan for the trail system with the goals of improving accessibility both in terms of additional parking and ingress points and in terms of adding more beginner-friendly climbs. (There is currently one major access point at the south end of the trail system via Poplar Grove, which requires an occasionally technical and grueling ascent on old roadbeds and the Yellow Brick Road trail.) PACA hopes to work with both the City of Penticton and BC Rec Sites and Trails, which is the primary landowner for 75% of the trail system, to develop another parking area and green climb trail.
“What we’ve found when we did our engagement survey is that 50% of respondents were spending one to three times a month in the Mice, and spending two to three hours at a time, so in their mind they’re thinking ‘This is an epic,'” says McWhirter. “What we’re trying to work towards is the after-work, more accessible, more open to quick burns ride in addition to all-day epics.”
Aside from extending Flow Coaster up to the top of the trail system in a way that uses the natural contours of the landscape, PACA intends to keep the crazy-quilt character of the network intact, building to the unique character of the soils and the community, rather than blindly chasing trends.
“I think our local community would agree that having Flow Coaster is great and we’ll continue to maintain it, but we’re not going to have big Revelstoke-style jump trails because the topography is not there,” says McWhirter.
“One of the things that we kept hearing when we were working on the master plan was to keep the feeling of getting to know the trail system over a long time,” says Punnet.
Why locals keep coming back to the Three Blind Mice
Locals and shoulder-season road trippers in the know have grown to know and love the network. Another half-dozen-plus riding areas cluster around town, in varying levels of official access and landowner status, but most riders keep circling back to the Mice… and not just because they’re lost.
“The Mice, and this feeling of being integrated into the landscape as well as hovering above it, is always the thing to come back to,” says Punnet. “My dad is 76 and still riding, and his favorite thing is to ride a trail that’s been scratched in by a cow or deer and see where it goes.”
As the Gypsy Wheelers knew well, the Mice is a trail system that demands—and rewards—exploration, back-tracking, and just following a path to see where it goes.
Know about a new trail project we should cover? Whether you’re breaking ground on the next must-ride destination or putting the finishing touches on a neighborhood flow trail, we want to hear about it. Drop us a line at [email protected] with high-quality photos of your build, plus details like trail mileage, location, difficulty, and what makes it special. We’re always on the hunt for the next great trail story, and there’s a good chance your project could be featured in an upcoming article.
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