Squamish needs a mountain bike skills park

Imagine you are a Squamish-based parent with a five-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. Both children want to go for a ride and improve their bike skills: Where are you going to go?

Unfortunately, despite our 200 plus trails, Squamish does not have anywhere to satisfy this family, due to the variety of skill levels. Going to the trails isn’t always a quick and easy option, especially if you and your family are not avid mountain bikers.

What Squamish needs is a mountain bike skills park, a park that will be well maintained and accessible for all ages and abilities. Last year I traveled to Nanaimo, where I was introduced to the Steve Smith memorial bike park. The park had beginner, intermediate and advanced riding lines and features.

For toddlers on run bikes as well as professional riders, it was the perfect place to safely learn and try new skills, build confidence, and foster a healthy community atmosphere. When I first set eyes on the park, I felt like I was in a dream; a dream surrounded by pump tracks, jumps, burms, bridges, wall rides and drops. I wanted this dream to become a reality in my hometown.

Creating a skills park in Squamish will increase overall community wellness.

From the perspective of residents and visitors, it will bring people together, give kids the freedom to test their limits and build confidence in a safe setting, and encourage a healthy outdoor family activity. Given it would be a free and accessible community amenity, it appeals to people of all walks of life. From an economic perspective, the facility will boost tourism, support local businesses and increase nearby property values.

I envision a Seattle family driving to Whistler for their annual spring vacation, and they decide to check out the Squamish mountain bike skills park on their way.

Before they arrive at the skills park they go to a nearby restaurant for lunch, buy a new helmet for their son and pick up a few groceries. The park exceeds the family’s expectations and they decide to make this stop an annual tradition. In this relatively simple scenario, our local economy benefits along with our community’s reputation.

In addition, this park will also increase safety. A skills park provides a perfect environment to safely progress your skills and try new tricks before taking them to the trails. Imagine you’re on a trail and decide to try out a new feature that you have never practiced before and you end up having a bad crash. It takes Squamish Search & Rescue (SAR) several hours to find you, tend to you, transport you out of the forest and eventually transfer you over to an ambulance.

In 2020, between 20% and 25% of all Squamish SAR calls were from injured mountain bikers (based on an interview with SAR member). Alternatively, a skills park would allow you to practise a similar feature in a progressive manner until you are comfortable enough to safely take that skill into the trails.

If an accident were to happen at the skills park, it is very easy for paramedics to attend to you. If Squamish had a mountain bike skills park, there would be less injuries on trails and less demand on our volunteer-based SAR.

This important community amenity will reinforce Squamish’s reputation as a world-class biking destination and reinforce our community tagline ‘Hardwired for Adventure’.

Despite our incredible trail network that attracts bikers from all over the world, we do not have a comprehensive skills park. The current, introductory skills park, located at Brennan Park Rec Centre is poorly maintained yet very popular for younger riders, some less than seven years of age. As an active, growing community we are in desperate need for a remodel and expansion that lives up to our biking reputation. Following a review of the Brennan Park Rec Centre masterplan (District of Squamish website) , I noticed that the district may replace the current skills park with either a parking lot or Recreation Centre expansion, possibly an additional rink.

This means that in the near future we will potentially lose our existing skills park. An ideal location for the mountain bike skills park is the large gravel area adjacent to the turf field. This field is largely unused and despite long-term plans to add a second turf field in this location, a well-designed skills park would have a larger benefit in our mountain bike dominated community.

In conclusion, if we want to continue establishing ourselves as a mountain bike community, we need a well-planned mountain bike skills park. This facility will spark even more passion for the sport and reinforce the ‘Hardwired for Adventure’ brand. The number one goal is to create a healthy environment where people of all ages can hang out, make friends, learn new skills, gain confidence in themselves and improve their fitness in a safe atmosphere. Building this relatively low-cost community amenity will have no negative impacts. Therefore, why is a skills park not the best use of district lands?

Marin Lowe is a grade 10 student at Howe Sound Secondary School.