Executive Director's 2023 Summary and Infographic

Dear WORCA members, 

It has been another successful year for WORCA. In 2023, we saw our events return to full capacity, following the restart of in-person events in 2022 after two years of only virtual events during the pandemic. 

We ran Whistler’s first women’s enduro race, The Witsend, with really positive feedback from participants. Strong support from sponsors meant that we ended up with a $6K surplus for WORCA and donated $2K to PearlSpace from this event. Thanks to everyone that was involved in making it such as success, especially our volunteer directors Kat and Kayla who put in a lot of work to create and execute the event! We are looking forward to running this event again in September 2024.

The Back Forty was also a huge success in 2023. The event sold out at 250 racers which was a big increase from 130 racers in 2022! It contributed $8K to WORCA’s funds for new trail construction and $3K was donated to the Indigenous Life Sport Academy. Registration for the 2024 event opened a few weeks ago and it is already more than 80% full, so we expect to sell out again and it should be another great race next June.

Our highly-skilled trail builders continued to do a great job of maintaining the trails throughout the Whistler trail network. We had the same number of people on our trail crew as last year (11) but spent slightly less overall ($310K vs $321K) due to reduced availability for some of our staff.

We constructed WORCA’s first trail built to Adaptive MTB standards (Flashback 1), after successfully applying for a grant from Fox Factory Trail Trust and receiving US$20K. We have applied for another grant to build additional sections of Flashback to aMTB standards next year and the end goal is to have the whole Far Out/Flashback loop suitable for adaptive riders as well as all other trail users.

Volunteer hours for trail work increased from 1,665 last year to 1,965 this year. We were less affected by dry conditions and fire danger which meant that we could run more trail nights than last year, and they continued to be very popular with almost all of them at full capacity (30 people per trail night). Many thanks to all of the volunteers and sponsors involved. We made a lot of progress on the Flashback trail project and the sections of trail that were open this year were running great!

Our Dirt Camps were very popular again this year and we continued to receive positive feedback from parents and kids, thanks to our great coaches. Staff shortages continue to be an issue in Whistler so we had to reduce our capacity slightly from last year and reduced our camps from five to four days per week to match staff availability. For 2024, we will continue our efforts to retain staff and attract new coaches while maintaining the high quality of our camps.

Our membership numbers dropped from 2,241 last year to 2,016 this year. This was mostly because of mandatory memberships in 2022 for Canadian Enduro Series racers, but in 2023 the Canadian Enduro League partnered with Crankworx for their event in Whistler and only used trails within the Whistler Blackcomb CRA (Controlled Recreation Area) so WORCA memberships were not required for those racers. Our total membership number was still well above our previous record high of 1,814 in 2021 though.

We have achieved many of the key priorities and deliverables in our 2021-2024 strategic plan so we will be reaching out to our members in the spring and summer of 2024 to gather feedback to help guide the creation of our next strategic plan. Our goal is to complete this process next summer so that we can present the new strategic plan in September 2024.

Thanks for supporting WORCA in 2023. We are looking forward to another great year for our trails and community in 2024.

Sincerely,

Trevor Ferrao

WORCA Executive Director