Bike Park receives major investment

Upgrades and new trails coming this summer

This season bikers of all abilities will notice new additions and improvements to a total of 12 kilometres of terrain in the Sun Peaks Bike Park. Aidan Kelly, chief marketing officer for Sun Peaks Resort LLP (SPR), confirmed the resort will invest $350,000 into the park with most of the work being completed mid-summer.

According to Kelly, the project was first brought to management by bike park co-ordinator James Jeffries, who envisioned an ambitious five year plan that would help introduce more machine built trails to complement the hand built single track the resort is known for.
After laying out the full plan, SPR’s management team decided to condense the plan to two summers in an effort to get the park to the standard they envisioned.

“When you combine the work from summer 2018 and summer 2019 that will be well over half a million dollars that we’ve spent on mountain bike trails over those two summers,” said Kelly.

Recognizing the current park caters to a more advanced rider, this year’s investment will expand the progression of the park with the addition of more beginner friendly machine built elements.

“We’re going to have two intermediate blue machine built flow trails that’ll be a combination of existing upgrades to certain sections of trail, but also a lot of brand new trail development as well,” said Kelly.

Along with the two new trails, crews will be working on finishing touches on the green progression park as well as improvements to sections on the existing green trails. Not wanting to neglect the upper tier of trails, SPR plans to build on the previous work on Steam Shovel last summer and will add a new middle section to the trail.

“We feel this is going to catapult us to one of the leading bike parks in North America due to the level of progression that you have,” he said. “You can be right from someone who’s never ridden in a bike park before and come have a positive experience at Sun Peaks within your comfort level, right up to those hardcore World Cup level athletes that love the rugged, narrow, single track chutes.”

Prior to the investment, Kelly recognized Sun Peaks was lagging in certain areas of bike trail development but feels the resort is not only catching up to others in the industry but surpassing the offerings of other bike destinations.

“That level of progression that we’ll be able to offer for trails of all types and riders of all types I think is something that’s going to set us apart from many other destinations.”

Two separate contractors will come into work in conjunction with the bike park team on this year’s projects. The contractor who built the new green trail last season will do this summer’s upgrades to Smooth Smoothie as well as work on the new blue trails. The builder who started the rebuild of Steam Shovel will return as a contractor to finish the Steam Shovel build.

Anticipating a mid-summer completion of this year’s projects Kelly stated if the weather cooperates the majority of the green and blue work will be done close to opening day.

“If the weather cooperates and everything goes according to plan all the work should be completed and all rideable, and everyone’s out there having fun by around the middle of the bike park season.”

While SPR has invested in the bike park each summer with trail improvements and upgrades completed by the bike park team, there hasn’t been an investment of this magnitude for many years.

“It’s going to be a lot more fun to roll around on two wheels in Sun Peaks.”