Valmont Bike Park partial trail map | Click to see the full map

What does it take to design and build a world-class bike park? We asked Perry Brooks, who now works as a Park Planner for the Redmond Area Parks and Recreation District, what it was like to oversee the building of one.

Dedicated in July 2011, the 45 acre Valmont Bike Park in Boulder, CO took one and half years to design, and a year to build.  The project came under the umbrella of the City of Boulder for whom Brooks worked for five years, as he spearheaded the park’s development.  Planners asked for and received public input and were surprised by the amount of interest and support there was in and for the project, including from the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance and Bobby Noyes, president and founder of RockyMounts.

Valmont Bike Park features
Terrain Park

• dirt jumps
• slopestyle
• dual slalom
• pump tracks

Cyclocross features

• sandpit
• two staircase run-ups

Other Park features

• network of single track trails
• learning loop
• tot track for tricycles & strider bikes

The park accommodates multiple cycling disciplines: dirt mountain bike trails, dual slalom and downhill courses, a cyclocross course, as well as terrain and trails for kids of different skills and ages.  While it wasn’t an initial target, it became a goal to be able to host national bicycle events at the venue, one which they’ve realized when they awarded the bid to host the USA Cycling Cyclcross National Championships in 2014. 

In a press release on the USA Cycling website, Michael Eubank, the City of Boulder’s Valmont Bike Park director is quoted as saying,

“This is like the Super Bowl of cycling and tremendous news for Boulder…. Valmont Bike Park was specifically designed and built to accommodate daily recreation users as well as USA Cycling racing events and we can’t wait to bring this event to Colorado.”

Costs and Funding

The price tag for the bike park came in at about $1.2Mill.  It was a small piece of the much larger 189 acre Valmont City Park which will cost an estimated $8.5Mill.  After they decided on the direction and amenities to include in the design, Boulder Mountainbike alliance solicited donations and fundraised $500,000 making them eligible for a state grant of $200,000.  Looking to save money where they could, when area builders had dirt they didn’t need, Valmont invited them to donate it, creating a savings which Brooks estimates at $1Mill.

The biggest expense and what took a lot of design energy to accommodate was the 22′ of vertical slope gain for the dirt jumps.  Valmont’s designers incorporated elements from lessons they learned by studying what the Central Oregon Trail Alliance did at The Lair, a progressive skills park south of the Phil’s Trail Complex. 

With its evolving dirt jumps course, The Lair fills the free-riding need, which, in Brooks opinion liberates a Bend bike park from the expense of building in the elevation differential needed for that element.  He feels if you build courses for kids of different ages, a pump track, a skills course, and a cyclocross course, you might have everything Bend’s likely to want that’s not covered elsewhere especially now that Mt. Bachelor will be introducing its own downhill park.

One element not included in the Valmont model is an asphalt-paved veloway. Austin, TX has one that’s popular with roller bladers as well as road cyclists. With multiple loops it covers three miles, and, at 23 feet wide, it can host criteriums.

Austin's veloway is wide enough to host criteriums; an extended loop could make it a road circuit race course too | www.veloway.com

Lately, the idea of a bike park has been gaining momentum. While in the near term, marquee cyclocross events can still be held in the Old Mill despite losing some real estate to a new hotel in the area, it’s inevitable that in the longer term, a new venue needs to be identified.  The recent cancelling of the weekly summer road race crit series due to a scheduling conflict seems to put an exclamation point on Bend’s need for a dedicated recreational bicycle facility. 

If you were going to design a bike park for Bend, what would it include?

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Team All Access (left Serena Gordon, right Brennan Wodtli) bracketing Blitz to the Barrel organizer Erik Eastland

Race organizer Erik Eastland took this year’s Blitz to the Barrel to the next level gathering enough sponsored support to sport a total of $20,000 in cash prizes to men’s and women’s professional racers as they bombed down from Wanoga Sno Park to 10 Barrel Brew Pub yesterday evening in Bend.

Overall men’s winner Geoff Kabush took home the top prize, and local Adam Craig secured third. On the women’s side, Rosara Joseph, who’d decided to stick around after winning last weekend’s Oregon Enduro Series race in the pro division, took home top honors and a $3,000 prize with local Serena Gordon slipping to third due to a slow beer chug which caps the race at the Brew Pub in front of a crowd of fans. Gordon freely acknowledged she needed to up that aspect of her overall game to climb to top of next year’s podium.

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Bret Lee Biedscheid
Photo from Deschutes County Jail

Anthony Martin was hit and killed while crossing NE 3rd Street near NE Seward in Bend with his bicycle by a southbound vehicle on January 26th, 2011 sometime around 11pm. The driver of the car fled the scene. The Deschutes County District Attorney’s office believed the driver of the vehicle was Bret Lee Biedscheid of Bend, and he was charged by a grand jury with criminally negligent homicide, and failure to perform the duties of a driver when a person is injured.

After numerous delays in his trial, Biedscheid’s attorney Stephen Houze negotiated a settlement whereby he pled guilty to the felony charge of failure to perform the duties of a driver and was sentenced today to 90 days in prison, three years probation, 500 hours of community service, as well as having his driver’s license suspended for five years. The other charge leveled by the grand jury was dropped. Sentencing guidelines for someone without a prior criminal record are the same for both of the originally filed charges

A recitation of facts in the State’s Sentencing Memorandum shows the evidence of Biedscheid’s level of intoxication hinged on conflicting statements to investigators from a bartender who served him drinks that night at the Blackhorse Saloon. She could not initially identify him in a line-up, and subsequently signed an affidavit which contradicted earlier interviews.

According to Deputy District Attorney Kari E. Hathorn, her office also felt it most likely that even if convicted on both counts, he would have served the sentences concurrently, netting him no additional jail time. Counter to the DA’s recommendation of a 16 month prison term given his efforts to conceal his crime, Judge Roger J. DeHoog found that Biedscheid’s ongoing counseling to deal with depression was enough to deem probation a more appropriate penalty than a longer jail sentence.

The civil case brought by Terri Gibbs, Martin’s sister, against Biedscheid was also settled yesterday for $525,000.

The option does remain for Biedscheid to potentially receive time off for good behavior which might shorten his three month prison sentence.

Biedscheid’s decision to flee the scene is likely what saved him from a longer term of incarceration, leaving us all to hope this doesn’t serve as a blueprint for others to follow.

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Burning Man Festival 2007 by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector
Photo © Jenene Chesbrough

• Starting with a classic. Sheldon Brown is no longer with us but his knowledge and humor live on.
• One site’s ten best cycling jokes of all time.
• From Team Estrogen bicycle jokes and humor.
• A few videos for your funny bone.
• More cycling jokes from the UK.
• Another video for bicycle hump day.
• Bicycle art for your visual senses.
• Everything bicycle 8,070 results.
• Simply the bicycle is art for your viewing enjoyment.
• For viewing and purchase antique bicycle posters and prints.

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Big drop on Stage 1 of Saturday's Oregon Enduro Series race in Bend
Photo © Trent Hightower

Congratulations to all those who participated in this past Saturday’s Oregon Enduro Series races in Bend. Results are as posted on the Oregon Enduro website.

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Photo © www.541images.com

The day included races for a ‘kiddos’ category where everyone was a winner as well as a post-race movie. We’re sure all who participated had fun. Below are the results:

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Riding against traffic gets a cyclist injured and ticketed

designed by Perez Design and part of 2011 education campaign by RUSTF | click for larger version

Cyclist Joaquin Flores-Hernandez was cited for failing to drive on the right (ORS 811.295) after his collision with a car on NE Greenwood in Bend.

Flores-Hernandez sustained non-life threatening injuries according to the Bend Bulletin after being hit by a driver exiting a retail parking lot at NE 7th. Bend Police reported that the driver did not see the 27 year old cyclist from Bend because he was biking westbound in the eastbound bike lane.

A 2008 safety study by the Road User Safety Task Force (RUSTF), which was created by the City of Bend’s Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, found biking the wrong way was one of the top contributors to bicycle crashes. The study spanned January 2005 to June 2008 and concluded that an educational campaign was needed to highlight a simple message: contra-flow riding is not only illegal but unsafe.

To that end, RUSTF and Commute Options launched the “Posters to Coasters” educational campaign back in 2011 to target wrong way riding. It even included televised public service announcements.

ORS 811.295 references “vehicle”

When is a bicycle a vehicle?
See ORS 814.400
[Application of vehicle laws to bicycles]

In spite of the tireless efforts of Commute Options to educate not only school-aged children but also adult cyclists of their rights and responsibilities while on our roadways, biking against traffic persists.

How do we better combat wrong way riding? It’s already a Class B moving violation and could carry a $297 fine. Should it be part of the DMV driver’s test? Post your suggestions here.

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This July 1st and 2nd when anyone eats at Pastini Pastaria in the Old Mill, 50% of the net proceeds go to the Tour des Chutes.

Three things you can do to support the cancer survivorship programs which the Tour des Chutes donates to:

1. Tell all your friends about the event!
2. Eat at Pastini Pastaria the first Monday and Tuesday of July. Take out counts.
3. Mention Tour des Chutes; it’s a critical part.

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Monkey Light Pro | Photo © gizmag.com

Here are a few bite-sized stories:

• Boston bike share to roll out helmet vending machine.
• Interesting insight into a man who is the creative director at Specialized Bicycle company.
• Interview with Elly Blue feminist bike activist and bike book author.
• Pedego electric bike juices up commute to train station.
• Another bike buying guide. This one about a child’s bike.
• Forbes lists a bicycle delivery entrepreneur located in South Africa.
• Monkey Light offers unique ways to light up your bike.
• Not everyone loves bike share programs. Here’s a NYC rant. Sound familiar?
• Photos of bicycle commuting today and yesterday.
• ElliptiGO bicycle selected for new exhibit at Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

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Weekly crit race at Summit High School in 2012 | Photo © 541images.com

A convenient in-town after-work location for many, the race series proved popular and was expecting to attract more racers this year. Reached by phone, Kelley says she submitted her application to the school district for the use of high school’s grounds in early April and assumed the venue had been approved.

Lacking solid confirmation after nearly two months, she placed calls into the school district. It seems no one could verify that MBSEF had definitively secured the location. That changed when the school’s Assistant Principal Al Hulbert called this week to inform her that her race dates were unavailable because of a conflict with another event.

The last minute cancellation of venue put MBSEF in an untenable predicament and placed Kelley in the unenviable position of having to cancel the entire series.

“I feel like we’ve let the cycling community down.”

It remains to be seen if another group can organize quickly enough to put the race back on the summer calendar. Stay tuned.

Should Bend establish a dedicated facility for a crit series?

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