The Basin Gravity Park is the lift-served bike park at Bogus Basin, the Ski Area just northeast of Boise, Idaho. In addition to the lift-served downhill trails of the Basin Gravity Park, Bogus Basin offers a range of summer activities for visitors including cross-country mountain bike trails, a mountain coaster, hiking, an adventure challenge course with zip lines, and more.
TLDR; the 411 on the Bogus Basin Bike Park
The Basin Gravity Bike Park at Bogus Basin features 14 lift-served mountain bike trails. In addition to the downhill mountain biking trails, Bogus Basin also has a range of cross-country mountain bike trails that are free to ride.
The best bike for the trails?
While we enjoyed riding the trails on Trek Session DH bikes from the demo shop, as there are only two black diamond runs, the trails and jumps are optimal on a long-travel trail or enduro bike.
Additional Activities
Bogus Basin is a suitable destination for the whole family, with a variety of fun summer activities available. Our favorite? The Glade Runner Mountain Coaster.
Get there: Bogus Basin Recreation Area
1731 N Bogus Basin Rd, Horseshoe Bend, ID 83629
Lift Ticket Prices
Adult/Junior (13+) Day Pass: $49
Adult /Junior (13+) Twilight Pass: $29
Child (4-12) Day Pass: $29
Child (4-12) Twilight Pass: $19
Where to stay
Boise is about 18 miles from Bogus Basin, and offers the best options for lodging and evening activities. We stayed at the Avery Hotel and recommend it.
More info
Visit BogusBasin.org
Boise has amazing outdoor recreation opportunities
Boise might be one of the best US cities for mountain biking. Single-track trails are bikeable from the city, with hundreds of miles of trails nearby. It’s also relatively close to many more riding destinations. There aren’t a lot of cities with trails that are accessible without a car, and Boise residents who love skiing, snowboarding, rafting, hiking, and mountain biking have it good, as the city sits against the base of a mountain range. The Bogus Basin Mountain recreation area is only 20 miles from town and offers a unique value proposition: it’s operated by a 501c3 non-profit organization, with a mandate to keep local mountain recreation affordable. In addition, profits are invested back into the mountain to improve the user experience. As such, the costs of season passes at Bogus Basin are affordable compared to the prices Oregon residents pay for skiing/ snowboarding/ mountain biking. In addition, they offer a range of school programs, camps, and scholarships.
The downhill mountain bike trails at Bogus Basin
The trails at the Basin Gravity Park offer a variety of terrain and grades with green, blue, and black diamond options to suit all skill levels.
Most of the trails we rode offered a mix of fun and flowy and loose and rocky, with the occasional (small) rock drop or ladder drop option. Almost everything was dry and dusty, with braking bumps and potholes working your arms, legs, and suspension before many of the turns.
While most of the trails at the Park are rated as blue for intermediate, there were quite a few green trails for novice riders to enjoy.
One thing the park lacked was black diamond trails; there are two accessible from the chair lift: G19 and Rabid Badger. G19 is considered the OG DH track littered with boulders, rock gardens, and rocky while Rabid Badger is an advanced jump line with larger tabletop jumps.
The consensus of our group was the progressive jump lines were super fun, but some of the loose sections made it challenging to ride well and maintain speed. Overall, we all thought it was a fun park, that would be amazing on a hero dirt day.
Some bike parks are starting to install sprinklers on the popular jump flow trails to help the soil from getting too blown out and that would be great to see at Bogus Basin. Either way, we’re looking forward to coming back and riding it again, ideally earlier in the season when conditions are better.
The group we rode with had the opportunity to demo some downhill bikes, and they were fun on the black diamond trails. We felt they were a bit overkill as we spent more time doing laps on the blue jump-flow lines. That said, that extra travel was sure fun on the advanced black diamond jump line and rock garden sections of G19,
If I picked one bike for an Idaho Mountain Biking trip, it would be a modern trail or enduro bike with 6-7″ of travel. A more playful rig would have been so fun on the blue jump lines. However, that does seem to becoming the norm outside of parks like Whistler – outside of racing, there aren’t that many advanced trails that need a dedicated downhill rig.
So many cross-country trail options
After a day of riding the park, we felt we had experienced all the gravity lines. However, the Bogus Basin Ski Area has single-track MTB and hiking trails circling the entire mountain that would be fun to come back and explore. There is a whole network of options for riding outside of the lift-served area and several routes that could be taken back into Boise.
Thanks and shout out to Ski Idaho for providing travel and accommodations.