Sunday, February 24, 2008

Worlds raddest bike park!

We got approval and we are making the park!!
Phase 1, nuke the park! www.freeridebc.com this is our temporary blog for the park and I have no idea why my hotlink won't work, lol!

Last Saturday we broke ground on the FreeRide Park we are building with the Municipality North Saanich - hands down the raddest forward thinking crew- and Gord Martman of Gord Martman Excavating showed up with a little gift for us...
So not only did Gord hook us up with his machine he also left his top operator who threw us the keys and lets us drive it too. We were blown away with these guys and to top it off the machine is ours to use for the whole project.


The Excavator is kinda essential because Drew only brought one shovel!

And Kyle is hiding something off camera...

White shoes! Good news is Kyle flies around the world for UCI building tracks.

The crew, Lindsay/Engineer, Kyle Michell Course designer/builder, Drew Mitchell -no relation- Designer/ course layout, professional consultant.

Here is the goal: Build a modern park that will have little kids section intermediate and a pro section with out compromising design for fear of safety.

Now this is going to be a fitness park riddled with intermediate pump tracks to triple diamond pro sections, all well though out and designed for flow and safety. All levels will be clearly marked and segregated by access roads. There is no way in hell anyone will be riding out of their own ability, Whistler Blackcomb has donated their signage files so that we can use the blue and diamond method for our signs.

Phase 1: Beginner/everyone flowy pump tracks and jumps for all levels to play on.
Phase 2: Intermediate/Expert flowy table tops progressing to gaps and a creek jump.
Phase 3: Pro Section will be an absolute free for all that ends in a perimeter pump track jump line that brings you back to the beginning if need be.

The design inspires flow, cleverly thought out keeping safety a top priority and isolating those into the areas they belong until skill levels increase.
I took a quick video to briefly explain the size of this park and what is currently there.

The excavator scrubbing the soil and fluffing up the pump track zone.




This is Cliff Halliday bragging about something. Cliff is North Saanich's top guy for the parks division, he has been crucial in making this park happen.


Drew and Kyle dreaming up the pump track start point.

Drew and I plotting the pump track design out, notice the beautiful natural stump he accidentally toasted in the background. Thanks for coming out Drew, good game.

This is what makes Drew one of Coves and Canada's fastest racer... he is full of rage! He was concern about me and my loosing an eye phobia so he punished everything in our path.




Some natural sections that we will be designing through.


I will come back and clean this posting up. I have to run off to the airport and pick up my girlfriend from a flight, a flight I cancelled on 3 hours before because of this park! So everyone better be stoked on this park when we are done!!
Greg

2 comments:

shaun said...

A lot of really great work done there. The title though says freeride park. It looks quite a bit like a dirtjump park?? Would you agree, or are there to be some other techincal skills areas

Anonymous said...

It looks like nothing to me because we have not even started yet. Go to the blogs main page and scroll around and you will see the kids pump track we laid and the pro start ramp. What is your definition of Freeride I guess. We do not want this to end up like ever other overly safe one direction jump park. We are in the process of pushing an old park over and going big. Skill areas will be pro pump tracks double downs pro bmx jumps big hits we have so much land we are even palcing a large quarter pipe. I can go on. You local?