In a few weeks i'm fortunate enough to be going to Canada on honeymoon for a couple of weeks touring the rockies. What's better is that the wife will be letting me spend half of our one day passing throuygh Whistler out on the trials.

Being the honeymoon and all, i won't be taking my bike. I'm reasonbly fit and can hold a steady five hours without stopping hence i want to make the most of the time available.

My initial idea is to hire a guide and bike (ideally from the same place/shop) to take me on a five hour ride, heading out about 7am and returning for midday. Essentially i don't want to be wasting time navigating trying to find the best trials nor being in a group where there is more chance of a slower pace due to mechanicals etc… As i say the main thing is making the most of the half day that i have.

I'm not too bothered about the bike park/freeride downhill, and am more interested in riding woodland singletrack/backcountry routes.

I've had a look at the online Whistler Bike guide which lists a plethora of companies offering bike hire, guiding, tours etc… Question is, does anyone know of a company that would offer individual guiding and bike hire as described above?

Responses, suggestions and contacts will be greatly received. Thanks.

Contact Ticket 2 Ride and talk to them. I can strongly recommend Kill Me Thrill Me, or Comfortably Numb into Young Lust. There far too many others to mention, but those are definitely worth doing.

I would strongly recommend you DON'T do thrill me kill me. It is absolutel bollocks as is river runs through it. I would however do Squamish. Awesomeness

Ok just got back from whistler/BC.
I rode kill me thrill me and found it very technical, a bit too difficult for me if I'm honest, it's very steep (up and down) and very tight making it a bit slow. Mind you I was riding cautiously as I was alone in an XC lid with no phone etc. I didn't see another soul. It would certainly qualify as Freeride over here. It does make for some epic views and I was even watching a helicopter fly below me at one point!
The lost lake trails were good fun but not the most challenging and quite busy.
A river does not run through kill me, that's a trail called "a river runs through it" appropriately enough.
Squamisg was awesome as said and there plenty about from Alice lake, you could do the test the metal course (which I did) but there are some mental FR/DH trails like crouching squirrel hidden monkey and midlife crisis (tantalus bikes will give you some good advice). I did the TTM course and loved it, crouching I loved but it was quite hairy!
I'd suggest comfortably numb although i didn't ride it myself, it's less FR and more XCish apparently and certainly long enough for you. It's a point to point though so you may need a lift to the start.
Buy a bear bell and some great food from the Nesters supermarket for the ride.
Enjoy it mate it's ace and if you get the chance, visit Nelson and the kootenays. 😀

I'll give ticket 2 ride a call as at this stage i'm more concerned about securing a guide to take me out indivdually along with the bike hire.

Thanks for all the trail suggestions – i'll have a dig around on the web to research which would be best for my preferred style of riding.

I would strongly recommend you DON'T do thrill me kill me. It is absolutel bollocks

You are about the only person in the world who thinks so. On the other hand: If you can't ride it, then I would guess you wouldn't like it.

Drop our guides an email.

I guarantee you won't find more knowledgeable guides 🙂

Whistler guiding

Kill me thrill me can be a bit much for lots of uk ridrers, but our guides are very good at figuring out what you want to get from your riding and what trails will be best for you.. both in your ability, expectations and improvement.

Kill Me Thrill Me freeride? Not how I remember it all. Defo the Squamish idea, had an awesome day down there.

If I was there again I'd defo be heading for the bike park, you can ride XC anywhere.
If trying some of the XC trails in July an early start is good, it gets hot for the very techy & sustained trails around.

Ps: 47 mozy bits in the same day was my presonal best 😐

I did something similar on honeymoon, but the wife went riding too. 🙂 We went with Whistler Bike Guide and got to ride Santa Cruz Blur LT2s.

The guide did a great job of figuring out our skill level and tailoring the half day to match. Ended up riding a lot of the Zappa trails and had a great experience.

Whether they will start as early as 7am? Don't know, but they responded well to emails when we were arranging it.

Backhander,just as a reference for you in-case you head back for more Whistler riding fun. We use Kill me thrill me as a qualifier for Comfortably Numb for our package guests. If you didn't like KMTM, you will hate CN.
KMTM is an hour and a half, CN is 5 hours of the same kind of technical. Technically competent and enduro fit riders could do a hot lap through CN in under 3 hours ish.
The descent (Foreplay) is an old big bike descent trail. Used to be a hike-a-bike up to the top and a rip down before they linked it with CN.

Comfortably numb is West Coast XC.. a mere 24kms, but a seemingly never ending technical climb with pretty tough descent.
In fact, how the guide books tell you about CN is exactly the reason we recommend using a guiding service vs a map.
It is however an amazing ride, but you have to be ready for it.

Whilst we have all our favourite trail and link sets of trails and epic guiding loops, its tough to say what you'd be taken into until our guides have 'what you want to achieve' and 'what is achievable for you' figured out.

A 7am start is definitely doable, but we'd need to get you sorted with rentals the night before. Our partner Summit can help with this and rent Rocky Mountain Altitudes. If you ride clipless, remember to pack your shoes and pedals.
Remember to book the wife some Spa time too.. that way she wont be able to argue when you ask if you can 'go out and play' the next day too 😉