Concrete has been laid for a one-of-a-kind pump track at the bike skills park at Powell River Recreation Complex. However, the full park won’t be open until spring.
Volunteer trail builders from Powell River Cycling Association have contributed many weekend hours to help out with the facility. Many of those volunteers are teacher Andrew Shostak’s students at Kelly Creek Community School. The school runs its Outdoor Adventure program for grade six and seven students. The program is designed to expose students to various outdoor sports available in Powell River’s backyard.
“We have so much that the kids don’t know about that they can do here,” said Shostak.
Shostak is a certified mountain bike instructor. He is taking his students through the program to also become certified. Part of that training includes learning how to build mountain bike trails. “We’ve done a lot of work on trails for the past three or four years,” he said. “The kids really love it.”
Last year, Shostak’s students contributed to the work done establishing the Aloha Trail, part of the course used by BC Bike Race. This year they have been working on the downhill trail behind the recreation complex which winds its way down to Willingdon Beach, also part of the bike park. He added that he has had a lot of teens helping out on the weekends as well.
The volunteers have been doing a lot of shovelling, raking, shaping and packing the ground to help sculpt the course, Shostak said. The volunteers have not been able to be on site when machinery is working, but they have been doing some of the other aspects of creating the course. Once completed, Shostak believes the course will “probably be the best in BC.”
Once Shostak’s students are certified instructors, they can then teach other students in the school district to encourage them to use the course. “We will have a great use of this facility and great programming,” he said.
Judd de Vall, founder and principal owner of Alpine Bike Parks, the Whistler-based company completing the bike skills park, announced Powell River as having the first completed concrete pump track in North America this past weekend.
“For a few years, our crew at Alpine Bike Parks has been inspired by Claudio Calouri’s concrete pump track in Europe and finally we got the opportunity to build our own here in North America,” said de Vall.
Pump tracks, first started in the 1970s by BMX riders to build skills, have gained in popularity with mountain bikers recently.
They are small circuits, usually made from mounds of earth smoothed into rollers and berms, designed for riding without pedalling to generate momentum. The name comes from the motion used by the cyclist’s upper and lower body as they move around the track.
Powell River’s track has been surfaced with concrete, something necessary for the wet West Coast winters. Its butterfly design is symmetrical and allows for head-to-head style racing, said de Vall.
Shostak, who races competitively downhill, said pump tracks are a key training tool for riders of all abilities.
“You watch a kid who has grown up using a pump track ride their bike and then see someone who hasn’t and you can just see in their riding style how balanced, how comfortable, how great they manoeuvre a bike—like it’s part of their body.”
Shostak added that now the concrete has been laid, riders will still need to wait a month before using it and he asks riders to respect the fence.
With the recent rain, Alpine has decided to wait until the spring to put its final surface on the bike skills park and fine tune its flow.
