About Well Lived: There are people who spend their time in interesting ways. They build, explore and create, following their curiosity wherever it leads. They are multifaceted in life, work and play, finding opportunities where others see constraints. In short, they’re cool people doing cool things. They’re also the inspiration behind the design and development of the RUX System. The Well Lived series captures a small part of who they are and what they do.
The Unseen Work
Tightly crouched on your mountain bike, you drop into a blind right-hand corner. Gravity pulls your front tire into the berm just below a stand of old-growth cedars. The dozen or so droopy limbs on your left morph into a single blur as you lean deeper into the corner and carry momentum through the turn. Accelerating into the following straightaway, you become part of the surrounding landscape.
Each feature on every trail started as a rough idea. Someone had to study the landscape, understand how riders would move through it and then shape the trail so each feature naturally connected to the next. In this case, that someone was Zander Strathearn.
Through his company, Howler Contracting, Zander builds biking and hiking trails, backcountry bridges, remote camps and whatever other infrastructure people might need in the wilds of British Columbia. His work generally happens far from established access points, where weather, terrain and logistics can quickly turn a construction project into a complex puzzle. The finished product is what people experience, but the decisions behind it are what define his craft.
The people who use those trails rarely know who built them. They are focused on the speed of a descent, the view from a ridgeline or the satisfying feeling of arriving at a hut after a long day of hiking. That’s exactly what Zander creates, all while staying behind the scenes.
Creating the Experience
Before Zander picks up a tool, he thinks about the person who will eventually use what he builds. “Visualizing the experience is the most important part of being a good trail builder,” he says.
For a mountain bike trail, that means understanding how riders will move through the landscape. Where will they carry speed? Where will they slow down? How does one feature connect naturally to the next? A well-built trail is not just a path through the forest, it’s a sequence of decisions designed to create feelings. Whatever project stands in front of him, Zander starts by imagining how someone will experience the finished product.
That same thinking requires an understanding of the landscape itself. Building in wild places means working with the terrain rather than imposing your will on it. Water flow, erosion and long-term durability all become part of the equation. A trail might look great when it’s finished, but if it falls apart after a few seasons, Zander considers it a failure.
Zander’s goal is to create things that last while causing as little impact as possible. The best projects feel like they belong in their surroundings, allowing people to enjoy a place without overwhelming it. That balance between creativity and responsibility is something Zander has been developing since he first started building as a kid.
Basecamp at Macbeth Hut - photo by Kim Eijdenberg
Finding His Way Into the Mountains
Long before he was building trails and structures in remote corners of British Columbia, Zander was a kid in Toronto playing in the dirt. Even though he grew up around his father’s construction company, his first projects weren’t homes or commercial developments—they were bike jumps. By the time he was 12, he had taught himself how a small addition of dirt on the lip of a jump could completely transform an experience.
In his early teens, a visit to North Vancouver’s Deep Cove introduced him to a different side of biking. The North Shore mountain bike trails of the early 2000s were raw, creative and constantly evolving. Riders weren’t just carving trails into the landscape, they were actively utilizing logs and boulders to shape them. When Zander joined trail days with the North Shore Mountain Bike Association, he realized building could be its own pursuit.
He liked working with his hands, but the slow pace and long timelines of conventional projects didn’t offer the same satisfaction as watching a trail take shape. Trail building offered an immediate connection between effort and outcome.
“I really enjoy seeing lots of visual progress on a job,” he says. “In the construction world, it can be a long time before things look any different."
When he moved to Whistler at 18, that curiosity grew into something larger. He started building trails in his free time before joining the Whistler Bike Park trail crew. That’s where he gained a deeper understanding of what makes or breaks a trail.
In time, his construction background and years spent working in remote environments came together. The result was Howler Contracting, a company built around solving problems in places where traditional construction methods don’t always apply.
Building Where Others Can’t
Remote construction requires a different mindset. When a project is deep in the mountains, it’s simply not possible to take a quick trip to the hardware store if you forget something. Materials, tools and equipment have to be carefully planned before arriving at the job site, especially when access is by helicopter.
For Zander, good planning is where successful projects begin. “You don’t want to bring too much stuff, and the weight of the gear is really important,” he says. The challenge is finding the right balance between being prepared for whatever might happen and bringing only what is necessary to get the job done.
That efficiency is part of what makes his job unique. A forgotten piece of equipment can cost valuable time. Poor planning can create unnecessary impact on the landscape. Every decision has consequences when the margin for error is so small.
Zander has found a niche that allows his different experiences to come together: the construction knowledge from his childhood, the trail-building skills developed in Whistler and the ability to operate in challenging environments. His projects may vary, but the common thread is building things in places where the work is anything but easy.
The Places That Remain
Much of Zander’s work has an interesting quality: the people who benefit from it often never know who made it possible. They hike the trail, stay at the camp or use a structure that makes a remote place more functional. They experience the finished product, but have no idea about the months of work that went into it. For Zander, that’s where the fulfillment comes from.
When he revisits projects years after they are complete, he enjoys seeing how they have become part of someone else’s experience. “It’s just really cool knowing someone had a good time because of something we built,” he says.
He saw that firsthand with an outdoor shower he built at Tyax Adventures Bear Paw Camp, a remote camp in British Columbia’s Chilcotin region. Right after Zander installed the final pieces, he had to leave and never got to try it himself. Returning years later and hearing guides talk about how much guests appreciate having that small comfort in such a remote setting gives the project a greater meaning.
Most of the time a design succeeds exactly as planned, but occasionally something fails and reveals a lesson for the future. Working in unpredictable environments means constantly adapting and improving.
Beyond the Trail
After years of building trails, Zander’s relationship with them has changed. As a builder, walking along a trail makes it difficult to experience it the same way as everyone else. His brain focuses on the decisions behind every corner and feature, thinking about why someone chose a particular line and how that shaped the experience.
Because of that, his personal adventures have increasingly moved away from established trails. He finds himself drawn toward high alpine scrambling and places where there is no obvious path to follow. “I tend to enjoy being off trail more than I enjoy being on trail these days,” he says.
There’s a certain irony in that. Zander spends his professional life creating ways for people to access wild places, while his own adventures take him off-trail. Maybe that’s why his work resonates so strongly. He understands that the outdoors is not just about reaching a destination, it’s also about the feeling created along the way.
Years after a trail is finished, the dirt settles, vegetation begins to return and thousands of riders descend without ever knowing who shaped the experience beneath their tires. They lean into the same berms, carry speed through the same corners and disappear down the trail, focused only on the ride ahead. Zander might be long gone from the trail itself, but he remains part of the experience.
Photo By Robin O'Niell
Subject Snapshot
- Name: Zander Strathearn
- Homebase: Whistler, B.C. Canada
- Sports: Biking, skiing, sledding
- Business: Howler Contracting Limited
- Vehicles: Santa Cruz mountain bike (Solo, Bullit), 4FRNT skis (Hoji, Raven), Polaris 850 RMK Khaos snowmachine, Polaris Ranger 1000 UTV, Chevrolet Colorado, Ram 3500
- Favourite RUX products: 50L Waterproof Tote, 70L box
