Telluride Bike Park to Expand to 15 Trails and 17 Miles of Terrain
At a community meeting last week, Telluride Ski Resort announced plans to expand its bike trails. The Telluride Bike Park, set to open June 2019, is currently underway with Telski investing $1 million to build miles of bike trails. Gravity Logic of Whistler, a industry leader, has been hired design and construct the project.
“The new terrain (inside the park) will be more on the flow side of things. We hired Gravity Logic out of Whistler, the industry leader, to design and construct the park, and they’ve already started,” he said. Ten miles of new terrain will be added.
As with other upper-echelon bike parks, Telluride’s will be monitored by Bike Patrol to aid with mechanical problems and medical emergencies. And, like popular playgrounds, it will charge users to play. The gondola’s San Sophia Station already provides access to the existing trails, Village Trail, Prospect Trail, and Basin XC Trail as well as the Mountain Village Bike Park (downhill bike park). Additional uphill access will be provided by Lift 4 (Village Express).
“The industry standard is $36 a day, so that’s what we’ll charge,” Telski CEO Bill Jensen said. “That includes a $1 donation to the National Forest Foundation (NFF), the nonprofit arm of the U.S. Forest Service.”
The cost, however, will be substantially less for holders of Telski winter season passes: a one-time $25 donation to the NFF, which will grant the donator access to Cross-Country, Freestyle and Technical trails, as well as unlimited rides on Village Express.
According to Jensen, local donations to NFF, which has a matching awards program, “will come back to us as a community and our trails. The hope is to sell 10,000 single-day tickets and put $30,000 in the coffers of NFF. Telski will make money at some point,” he said, but the short-term goal for the bike park is “to energize Mountain Village in the summer and stimulate the local economy.”
The resort plans to open Telluride Bike Park the third Saturday in June with daily operation through Labor Day, then moving to Saturday-Sunday operations through the second Sunday in October. Personnel will scan passes at Station San Sophia and atop Village Express from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., which also are the hours for the Bike Park, as well as its patrollers, guides and instructors.
Excerpts from Telluride Daily Planet/Rob Story