New bike parks are popping up all over the country, offering a unique alternative to the typical lift-served experience. These gravity parks are typically located on private land and rely on shuttle vehicles to transport riders to the top of the trails. Parks like Jarrod’s Place and Windrock Bike Park have embraced this model, offering shuttle services that allow for non-stop downhill runs. Many of these parks also allow e-bikes, giving riders the option to “self-shuttle” nearly as quickly as using the park’s own service.
Another shuttle-served bike park, Red Hawk Ridge, is in the works in Talent, Oregon, with a grand opening planned for April 2025.
From pit bikes to bike parks
Like many bike parks that have opened in the past several years, Red Hawk Ridge will have a couple of options for getting to the top.
“I’ll probably start [shuttle-access] off either one or two days a week, shuttling like Saturday and Sunday,” Ananda Goldsmith told Singletrackjs. Goldsmith is not only the founder and owner of Red Hawk Ridge Bike Park, but he also owns the land on which he is building the park. In addition, Red Hawk will “have some days that are pedal days.”
Like many shuttle-access bike parks, having the land privately owned means Red Hawk Ridge can more easily allow e-bikes on their trails. Goldsmith told us that pedaling up the 0.9-mile climbing road on an e-bike takes roughly the same amount of time as shuttling.
Goldsmith, who lives in Ashland, OR, bought the property just north of Ashland several years ago. Initially, Goldsmith thought he would be moving his life out to the acreage he’d bought, but he didn’t want to leave the Ashland home that had been in his family for several generations. Instead, the land became something of a playground for Goldsmith and his buddies, with one friend in particular cruising around the property on a pit bike.
“He got a pit bike…and was wheeling around and built a little jump,” Goldsmith told us. “I was like, ‘I gotta get one of these things.’ I built two pit bike tracks and this big double section.”
Eventually, pit bikes turned into mountain bikes. This was Goldsmith’s return to mountain biking, something he hadn’t participated in for a number of years. Right away, he found himself again connecting to the sport, yet something was missing from the local trails he was riding: big jump lines.
With help from friends, Goldsmith began working on what would become Main Line — a massive, one-mile-long jump line with over 40 features — roughly six months ago. As Main Line grew and began to take shape, the idea of a bike park started bouncing around in the back of Goldsmith’s mind. Social media confirmed his suspicions that a bike park may have public appeal as people began to show interest in more shuttle-accessed riding in southern Oregon.
And if Goldsmith still doubted, those feelings were laid to rest when pro riders like Dylan Stark and Ryan Rodriguez came to Red Hawk Ridge. Both riders sent the massive features of Main Line, with Stark flipping one of the jumps over a tree.
In total, Goldsmith has 134 acres just north of Ashland in the community of Talent. Red Hawk Ridge Bike Park is being built on 114 acres of the property, extending roughly 1,200 feet up the mountainside. “It’s all steep,” Goldsmith told us. “Anything that’s not steep is because of how we cut the trail.”
Goldsmith plans on putting a parking lot, service and rental shop, and a customer check-in at the bottom of Red Hawk Ridge. And the bike park won’t be far from the main road. In fact, it’s just a couple of turns off of I-5 between Medford and Ashland.
What is next for Red Hawk Ridge?
Goldsmith is working with his land consultant to prepare Red Hawk Ridge for its slated spring 2025 grand opening. A key priority in this effort is completing a second trail before next spring.
While Main Line has go-arounds for those who don’t want to hit the massive features — some stretching up to 60 feet — Goldsmith also wants another option. With Main Line blurring the lines between the black and double-black diamond categories, Goldsmith plans to build a more intermediate flow/jump trail. This “B-line,” as he calls it for now, will run nearly parallel to Main Line and provide trail builders access to both trails without ruining the lips of Main Line.
More technical, hand-built singletrack is in the works but will need to wait for a later date. Goldsmith feels that Red Hawk Ridge definitely has the steep terrain for it, but they will need to battle quite a bit of poison oak for crews with hand tools to get into the areas. For now, he’s relying on excavators and skid steers to deal with the itchy plants.
Building a bike park means funding a bike park, something that Goldsmith has essentially been doing from his own pocket. While friends and riders from the community have contributed through the giving of their time, funds still need to come from somewhere, and Goldsmith hopes to secure some grants.
“It is a big project, but I am super excited to get more people on board and try to figure out some grant money,” Goldsmith said. Part of the grant money could go toward covering the climb road in gravel, which would help with the slick conditions when the area gets rain.
The next — perhaps most crucial — step is for Goldsmith to secure insurance for the park. Once he does, he will have a better idea of how much daily operations will cost and how much he will need to charge for tickets.
Goldsmith is shooting for April 1, 2025, as Red Hawk Ridge Bike Park’s grand opening. He hopes to have multiple shuttles running to the top and the option to pedal up.
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Sep 24, 2024