If you’re a mountain biker and itching for some different action, you might check out a new trail system at Duthie Hill Park in Issaquah.
Although some completed sections have been open to riders for a few weeks while King County Parks staff and volunteers from the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance put finishing touches on others, the official grand opening is May 22.
The obligatory ribbon-cutting ceremony is at 11:30 a.m., but riders can come early and stay all day. Festivities from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. include demonstration bikes from Diamondback, Felt, Kona, Knolly, Specialized and Trek, raffles of bike accessories and more than 20 vendors on site with their latest gear. Oh yes, and a beer garden.
Glen Glover, interim executive director of EMBA, said visitors would get to ride the demo bikes on trails. “Trying out a bike at the dealers really doesn’t give you a good sense of what it can do,” he said.
The 120-acre wooded park has a total of about 6 miles of connecting trails, including cross-country trails (basically your wheels stay on the ground), free-ride trails (steeper, rockier and you get airborne sometimes), and other practice areas, including a 150-yard log ride on connected downed trees.
And all the technical areas have ride-arounds, dirt trails that let you skip anything you don’t feel comfortable with, Glover said.
The bike park was built and will be maintained by Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance (evergreenmtb.org) in cooperation with King County Parks.
“King County was phenomenally helpful not only for providing the land, but more than $220,000 in grants and additional funding,” Glover said. EMBA volunteers put in more than 6,000 hours on the park, which Glover estimated at $90,000 worth of labor. (EMBA volunteers also had an active role on the trails in Snohomish County’s Paradise Lake Conservation Area.)
If you want to skip the hoopla and crowds and bring your bike later, the trails will still be there.
Ron Ramey: 425-339-3443; ramey@heraldnet.com
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