By Rich Palzewic
Staff Writer
GREEN BAY – The Triangle Hill Sports Area of the Baird Creek Greenway already has walking and mountain bike trails, an 18-hole disc golf course and tubing and cross country skiing in the winter.
Now you can add a bicycle skills park.
The skills park will be constructed on the backside of Triangle Hill.
“I know many people drive to Wausau and Marquette, Michigan, to find similar skills parks,” said Holly Baseman, executive director of the Baird Creek Preservation Foundation. “Right now, our dollars from here are going to hotels in Marquette (for longer trips), but I’m hoping this will be a great area to come to after work or on the weekend.”
There will be three different courses: Beginner, intermediate and advanced.
“We have a fairly large mountain biking community in Northeast Wisconsin, and riders have been asking us for a while to construct a training facility for the next generation of bikers to practice their skills,” Baseman said. “Much of what’s on the backside of the hill where construction will take place is invasive anyway.”
She compared it to learning how to downhill ski.
“You wouldn’t take your kid to the top of a black diamond and push them down the hill,” she said. “This is a way for everyone – from beginning to expert – to learn skills they don’t have or build on skills they already have but make them better.”
Jumps, berms, bridges, tight corners, banked curves, rock gardens, logs and drops are common features in a bicycle skills park.
Baseman said if all the funds ($264,000) can be raised soon, construction will begin next May.
“We also want to put in an asphalt pump track, and that price tag doesn’t include that,” she said. “We’ve got some leads out to a few local asphalt companies, so we’re hoping to get some sort of donation. We’ve applied for several grants, but we’re finding nothing non-essential is being funded this year. I understand that, so we’ll likely reapply in January.”
An asphalt pump track is a looping trail system of berms and rollers for bicycling without the rider pedaling.
The Baird Creek Preservation Foundation has commissioned the services of Jeremy Witek from Global Action Sports Solutions (GASS) and Communities Trail Design to do the work.
“Jeremy is well-known in the business,” said Baseman. “He’s even designed courses for Red Bull. He’s following all the rules and will do a great job for us. Jeremy books a few months at each site. This last year, he spent four months down south building a course.”
Baseman said ideally, the park would be completed by late summer/early fall.
“The hope is it would be used in the fall next year to pack it down in preparation for the winter,” she said. “This will be another thing we can add to the area. The Baird Creek area is a hidden gem many people don’t know about.”