We recently completed the conceptual design for Phase 1, and to help everyone envision the amazing potential of the completed park, we’ve been working with Alpine Bike Parks on the remaining phases.
To help understand how the park will flow, I got on the phone with Judd de Vall from Alpine Bike Parks, and he walked me through the design. Please refer to the image above, or click here for a detailed pdf of both phases as reference.
As Alpine has become more experienced and design more parks, they’ve realized that, in almost all cases, more users flock to a bike park than they would have originally imagined. So, they recognize the need to increase the carrying capacity of their parks. The design for McLaren Bike Park incorporates all of the knowledge they have their myriad of other bike park projects into a single, progressive design.
At the top of the hill, there will be a sizeable start mound for people to meet, greet, and watch the action.
The sections of the park are laid out so riders at different levels don’t feel too much pressure to perform outside their comfort zone(s) and also helps them stay out of potential conflict with other riders.
Just above the main start mound, there’s a smaller start pad that drops into the XC loop, Downhill trails and Slalom course. The XC trails are family friendly and weave through the eucalyptus grove ending at the finish corral.
The downhill trails will be highly technical and much more challenging. Riders will encounter large natural rocks that currently exist, and are designed into the natural landscape. The DH trails are short, so its important that they’re set up with very technical features to challenge riders and differentiate race times. Both trails pop out in the same place as the XC trails, but with a longer finish carral. Riders will also have the option to merge into the XL jump line consisting of three launch pads, and ending at the bottom just above the current phase 1 section. The goal of the DH course is to be a technical downhill style course, rather than all jumps. Tech features will be followed by smooth hard pack zones so riders would be able to get on the pedals and attack the next technical section with necessary speed.
The single slalom course is designed for many different styles of bikes. It will be ideal for fun, single or two-up, dual eliminator style racing with big berms, jumps and drops built in. An expert line with drops could be easily taped off for kids races, and the beginner line taped off for expert races.
The large, lower start mound will be an overlook and handicap accessible to the parking lot. Coming off that mound is an expert/pro pump track that will provide a great place for riders to warm up and practice advanced skills. It will be a mix of street and dirt, with many hidden lines, and very bmx oriented, though hardtail mountain bike riders will love it too.
Riders in the pump track will be able to bounce back onto the start mound, or go right into the slopestyle course.
In the slopestyle area, the trail closest to the return path is the easiest. Berms and hips flow into medium jumps, and converge on one merge point into the next larger set. The level of difficulty increases as you move upward and to the right.
Riders may choose to go straight over the hitching post into trick jumps down the middle, or far left into four, extra large lips into the corkscrew, then jump back over following riders.
The lower section will consist of a progressive levels of berms, jumps and table tops. Beginners will move up from the phase 1 pump track into this area, which will see a great deal of skill development as riders become ready to move up and into the more advanced features upward in the park including the slopestyle park.
This conceptual design, like phase 1, is tentative and will be further developed as we move into Design Development and when Construction Documents are developed. We love to hear from riders, so please feel free to comment here or on Facebook.
And please support the bike park by buying a ticket to the MBP DIG Fundraiser April 26th.
We want to keep Phase 1 design and construction on schedule and need to close our funding gap by the end of May!
Thank you for your support!
San Francisco's First Bike Park 