Sandwiched between Saint-Mathieu Lake and Saint-Mathieu Mountain, Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu is a brand new lift-served bike park with some of Quebec’s most unique trails. What made the trails so unique? Quebec’s unending rocky terrain.
“Rockwork is a defining element throughout the trail network and has become a central theme of the park,” Charles Stevens, owner of Kodiak Trail Works, told us. “Wherever possible, significant natural rock features were integrated into the trail design to create distinctive riding experiences.”
And “wherever possible” was a lot of places.
Adding world-class riding to a trail-sparse area
Roughly 150 miles due north, as the crow flies, from the northernmost part of Maine is Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu. As a ski hill, Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu has been around for over 50 years. While the bike park has been in the works for several years, 2026 marks its opening, establishing another zone for Quebec riders to visit in an area where trails are relatively sparse.
The park consists of six downhill trails and one climbing trail.
Double-black trails
The crew at Kodiak benefited from a prominent cliff band that crosses the Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu roughly halfway down the trails. While they used the unique geological formation to their advantage, crossing the cliff was also one of Kodiak’s greatest challenges during the build. Although they didn’t incorporate features quite this high, Stevens said that at its tallest point, the cliff measured roughly 40 feet.
Out of the six DH trails at the bike park, two land squarely as double-blacks. First is Pikliz, named after a spicy Haitian pepper. This is Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu’s advanced jump trail, which features, of course, quite a bit of rock.
In some instances, a small slab is used for the lip of a jump. For other features, a traditional dirt lip launches riders onto a giant slab landing. The jumps are significantly larger than Anaconda, but the trail has a similar feel. While it runs alongside Rochante and drops the same amount of elevation, Pikliz has quite a few more turns, nearly doubling its length.
Cowboy is the park’s double-black tech offering, which Stevens told us was specifically designed for DH racing. The trail is fast and raw, dropping nearly 600 feet in almost three-quarters of a mile.
Kodiak wanted to keep Cowboy a true DH track, providing multiple line choices in specific sections. The trail will host the final stop of the Quebec Cup Downhill Series in September.
Intermediate and advanced trails
Pedalo is Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu’s blue tech trail, dropping nearly 600 feet in just a mile. The trail was named after a paddle boat (“pedalo” in French) found in the forest about halfway down the run. Riders on Pedalo mostly navigate massive boulders and slabs that stretch most of the way down. In some spots, wooden bridges connect sections across rock, allowing riders to use the slabs as “lily pads” as they make their way down the trail.
Stevens mentioned a particular Pedalo section, known as The Ledges, which traverses the upper edge of a cliff. Eventually, the traverse drops down a natural bench in the rock face, before dropping again to join the trail below.
Moving to intermediate flow, Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu has a trail called Anaconda, which features drops, tabletops, sharkfins – essentially everything you might expect on a flow trail. Many of these features incorporate rock slabs and boulders.
The trail starts with a large squirrel-catcher rock drop, and features several other rock drops, rolls, and rock lips later on. All told, Anaconda is also one mile long and loses 550 feet of elevation.
Rochante is Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu’s only black trail, perhaps leaning a bit closer to the double-black side. “Rochante delivers a highly technical experience that begins with a series of rock slabs before transitioning into traditional technical singletrack,” Stevens said. “Its most iconic feature is a large wall ride built directly into a natural rock face.”
At just over half a mile long, Rochante is a bit shorter than the beginner and intermediate offerings, but a bit steeper, dropping 450 feet.
Even the green trail is spicy
Even on Mousse, the bike park’s green-rated trail, Kodiak incorporated as much of the cliff band as they could, creating a beginner flow trail with beginner- and intermediate-level rock features.
“On [Mousse], a natural alignment above and below the cliff allowed for a seamless connection,” Stevens said. “Achieving this required elevating the trail tread by approximately 10 feet onto a series of immovable boulders, bringing the trail to a similar elevation as the cliff formation before guiding riders past impressive rock outcrops covered in moss and ferns.
Mousse stretches two miles and drops nearly 600 feet down the mountain. While the main tread of the trail is wide and flowy, much of what you would expect from a green trail, numerous rock side options are also incorporated. Some get you off the trail a foot or so; others put riders fairly high in the air, allowing for skill progression and confidence-building on the way down. Stevens noted that Mousse is “the heart of the network,” so to speak, “a defining theme for the entire park.”
Even the beginner trail, while still accessible to all, is a bit rough and rowdy in places. And rough and rowdy seem to be what makes Parc du Mont-Saint-Mathieu.
Lift access is available on weekends
The lift is open on weekends, with a $45 fee that gets adults as many trips to the top as they can squeeze in. For a fee of a little over $20, riders can also pedal up. Lift access is available every weekend, while pedal-up access is available on certain weekdays. Some days allow for both.
Despite being in a fairly rural community, Stevens said the park is seeing several hundred riders each weekend. And, they are already asking for more.
“Seeing the community embrace the network so quickly has been incredibly rewarding,” he said. “We’re excited about the future growth and potential of the project.”
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