If there’s one thing that makes mountain biking such a special sport, it’s the opportunity to experience the complete breadth of ecosystems and landscapes the world over from such an intimate perspective. If you’re anything like me, traveling to different destinations ignites your passion for life and makes you feel like a giddy kid on Christmas morning!

Choosing the top 10 mountain bike destinations in North America was no easy feat. To start with, we decided that this was to be a list of true destinations: not residential areas with good mountain bike trail access, but rather destinations that you could plan your entire year’s worth of vacation time around. While one could argue that the people who actually live in these places are truly doing it right, we realize that not everybody can make that happen, so stay tuned for our top 10 list of mountain bike towns, coming soon.

When we sat down to make these careful choices, we called on the expertise of the entire Singletracks blog team. Narrowing the list down to just 10 places was a very difficult, controversial process. There was quite a bit of disagreement, even internally, about which towns should make the list, and which ones weren’t deserving. Regardless, each of the 10 locales listed below is more than worthy of dedicating a week (or a month) of your vacation time to exploring on the back of your mountain bike.

Top of the World Trail, Whistler. Photo: Mike Crane.

Whistler is the true mecca of all things mountain biking. While Whistler is perhaps best-known for its world-class downhill mountain bike park, the surrounding area is covered in excellent cross country and all mountain singletrack trails, such as Comfortably Numb, that aren’t served by the lifts.

We admit: British Columbia itself could arguably envelope this entire top 10 destinations list with such fantastic locales as Squamish, Fernie, Nelson, Golden, Kelowna, Kamloops, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Revelstoke, and many more. Consider Whistler our nod towards everything BC. -mtbgreg1