OPERATION: BIKE PARK is currently seeking support from community members and businesses who share our excitement and passion for healthy lifestyle and developing confidence! Together we can create an exciting new place for youth and riders of all ages to ride, develop their skills, build confidence, and have FUN in a safe and accessible environment!

DONATE!

Update 2019-03-25

First Design Draft!

We've received our initial DRAFT design for the Bike Park!

We will soliciting community feedback at Long John Jamboree.

Make sure you check out our tent @ LJJ for MORE information, MORE pictures, and a chance to have your say!

DOES THIS PROJECT EXCITE YOU?

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?

We need YOUR help! Contact us NOW

Here's your first look at Yellowknife's Bike Park:

Yellowknife bike park takes big step with $50K Rotary grantYellowknife Rotary Club is putting $50,000 behind plans to build a bike park in the city, saying the facility will make a big difference to the community.

Update 2018-08-30

Yellowknife Rotary Club Signs on as our Partner!

With the additional $50,000 that Rotary has contributed, $108 000 has now been raised for Operation: Bike Park!

We are now talking to bike park designers to commission a design, complete with construction documents.

We have a theme too! Our park will reflect our rich mining history, with donated equipment forming the backdrop to the facility!

We still have a long way to go!

If this project really matters to you, let the City know!

Don't Forget: ELECTIONS WILL SOON BE UPON US!

What is Operation Bike Park?

Operation Bike Park is a YKMTBC initiative to get a Mountain Bike Skills park built in Yellowknife, NT!

Yellowknife has an incredible untapped potential for mountain biking! Unfortunately some past-times have seen a lot more investment than others in our community. A skills park is an important investment for kick-starting a broader community of mountain bikers, serves a previously ignored segment of our community and acts a means to attract and retain future residents.

What is a Skills Park?

A Mountain Bike Skills park is a recreational facility tailored to developing bike handling skills for riders of all ages and skill levels.

Skills parks consist of a mix of natural and man-made features. These features are designed to replicate what riders would find on the trails and provide purpose-built training aids for developing crucial skills in a controlled risk setting. As a rider's skills and confidence improve, they are presented with increasingly difficult versions of any given feature, providing them with clear paths of progression.

Types of features include: wooden ladder bridges, skinnies, rock-gardens, jumps, rollers and drops.

Why Build One?

Aside from being FUN, skills parks providing a community space for riders, a location for conducting programming and a great way to foster healthy active lifestyles.

Lots of different skills go into being a proficient mountain biker. A skills park provides the tools to develop these skills. By improving skills a rider builds their confidence and will ride better, safer, and more often!

Can our community support it?

These days Yellowknife is home to more and more mountain bikers & fat bikers. And, while Overlander Sports has seen a year after year rise in Mountain and Fat Bike Sales, Yellowknife still has a long way to go!

Mountain biking is grossly under-represented as a leisure activity within the NWT when compared with the rest of North America. The International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), the Outdoor Foundation and many other authorities on the topic estimate that Mountain biking as a preferred leisure activity sits at 3% to 4% of the population within North America and the United Kingdom.

Based on Yellowknife’s population, that’s approximately 800 active riders!

For the Youth!

Did you know that MBM Camp (Mountain Bike Madness Camp, a youth mountain bike camp) has been running in Yellowknife for over 10 years? The 2017 season saw over 130 unique sign ups.

How many sports camps can you think of without a field or facility?

Most kids already own or have access to a bike.

With the goal of developing active lifestyles it’s important to keep kids on their bikes especially as they get older and other less conventional, and certainly less healthy, outlets for risk-taking become available. Risk-taking is popularly seen as highly meaningful to personal development, and will likely increase throughout adolescence. Rarely though will those risks be conducted in a controlled and targeted manner, which inspires confidence and develops the capacity for calculated risk-taking and avoidance.

Organised sports aren't for everyone.

Organised sports are a fantastic way for kids to get active, be social, and have a great time doing it. Unfortunately organised sports aren't for everybody. Hockey rinks and soccer turfs are fantastic hubs of community activity. But not every kid will be comfortable in those environments for a variety of reasons. Having alternative facilities which can still offer a sense of community and belonging can make a huge difference to developing healthy active lifestyles.

Without fun, exciting and 'cool' alternatives where do those kids go?

Not everybody got time for that.

Parents and guardians have a lot of demands placed on them for their time. Meeting the demands of practice schedules, registrations, travel, coaching can be impossible for some families. Alternatives to organised sport are important!

Just in the off-season, or all year round. Having exciting and fun alternatives to organised sport helps keep our communities healthy and happy. It attracts newcomers and keeps residents, resident!

Attracting youth to a highly active lifestyle is deeply important to this project; key to that goal is ensuring that we can provide the means for youth to develop themselves through sport and provide the opportunities and infrastructure to allow them to continually challenge themselves.

What would it look like?

Our commitment to Yellowknife

While planning for this park we wanted to ensure that what we hoped to deliver was tailored to the needs and wants of our community. With that goal in mind we conducted a survey of current mountain bikers, their parents and other members of the community to gauge public opinion and get a picture of what type of riders were already here.

Now armed with the results of that survey we feel confident that we can deliver on the needs and wants of our community and build the best possible park experience for current and future riders and their families here in Yellowknife.

We highly encourage you to take a look at the published results of our survey here

Powell River Bike Park, Powell River, BC

A small shot of Inter-River Park in Vancouver, BC:

Where else do parks like this exist?

Just to name a few!

Did you know that Cape Dorset has a BMX track?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/skate-track-bmx-nunavut-cape-dorset-1.4315188

Whether you have a mountain bike, a fat bike or a BMX bike, a skills park is for you!

How much does a facility like this cost?

Depending on the size and scope of the facility a bike park can cost anywhere from 150 to 500 thousand dollars. Usually the figure is around 500 thousand.

Typically a huge amount of the cost of the facility is provided for by in-kind donations.

For example, take this example park facility in Hinton, AB

Sourced from Jay Hoots Inc.

Dirt jumps and a wall ride at the Hinton Park

For even more information check out their site here: Hinton Bike Park

Sound Awesome? Get Involved!

DONATE!

Do you have something you or your business would like to contribute?

Funds to support the development of the park or the purchase of materials
Donation of equipment for the purposes of relocation and forming of soil / materials.
Discounted supplies or merchandise
Commitment of volunteer hours & support during one of the future designated community trail development days.
Letter of support describing your level of contribution

Fill this form to be contacted by an OP:BP representative!

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