Reader Story: (RE)Building & Riding 'Poacher' in Squamish

When it comes to mountain biking, few places in the world rival Squamish's legendary trails with steep rock rolls, deep loam, and sweet flow.

Although Squamish has a ton of trails surpassingly there are almost no advanced jump trails.

Five years ago (2019) my friend Tim and I set out on a project to build some jumps. The result was "Poacher" a Freeride Alt-line off East Infection that preserved the original line.




After five years of abuse and thousands of riders many of the features were beaten down and in need of some love.


One dark winter evening my friends and I headed up to the trail to do some maintenance. After a quick inspection I knew it was time for a full rebuild.

We started on the shark fin. Our original line was very tight and didn't line up the best forcing many riders to roll over the jump, flattening it and eroded the soil. We ended up ripping the entire jump out, opened up the radius of the turn and stacked a huge amount of soil making the lip steeper and bigger. The result was a much smoother jump while being able to maintain more speed and flow.


The next project was the entry drop landing and catch berm. The drop landing was pretty much non existent from riders going around the drop and skidding down the landing causing erosion. We stacked a bunch of large rocks steepening the landing while making it more difficult to cut into the trail.


The catch berm after the entry drop was always really tight and many riders had blown over it.


We ended up pushing the line back slightly, opening up the radius and extending the berm at the top at bottom. We also considerably heightened and steepened the turn making it a lot smoother and safer into the shark fin.


After the turn we started on the step down. While the original version held up alright we decided to add more lip to the jump, push the landing back slightly and re-establish the landing point.


Continuing down the trail our next job was the S-Berms. Originally we had only built one turn due to the natural slope of the land but after the rework of step down the speed was much faster and I wanted to build a set up berm to help guide riders into the 90 turn. Luckily we found an insanely good honey hole of gold dirt and were able to make some the nicest turns in town, tripling the size of the old berm.


The setup for the drop was always a bit of a challenge. The soil quickly changes and instead of perfect gold the ground turns into dense pudding stone that makes for horrible digging. My main goal for the revamp was to make the run in to the drop smooth enough that riders felt comfortable hitting it from intended line and not opting for the straight entrance line, a braid from a nearby trail. We widened up the approach and built a bermed turn allowing riders to comfortably maintain the perfect speed into the drop. I'm stoked with how it turned out, the speed for the drop is perfect.


The final challenge was rebuilding the road gap landing. Over the past couple years I've received a ton of messages asking me when I was going to make the landing steeper. What had happened was the landing point and road/trail it gapped over had slowly been blending together washing out both the landing and the trail flattening it out even more. We built up the landing point by a couple feet, using some large rocks and a ton of dirt to help separate the landing and trail. The result was a much steeper landing and better separation between the two trails.


A big shout out to everybody who helped make this rebuild happen, Anton, Jordan, Andy, Jade, Will, Estiven, Robin, Lucas, Honza, Sandy and Duck. Another big thanks to Rob Perry for coming out to take some great shots.


Poacher will be re-opened for all to enjoy in the spring after the freeze/thaw cycle had finished and a few minor drainage problems can be sorted out.

Thanks for the support - Transition Bikes, OneUp Components, Ennef (NF) Clothing, WeAreOne Composites, Delium Tires, Tantalus Bike Shop and Alba Distribution.

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Stories Matt Bolton Trail Advocacy