On a recent drive down the Oregon Coast, we stopped in Pacific City to check out the Bicycle Skills Park. Discovering the gravity bike track behind the baseball fields, the park is a work in progress with a paved pump track and additional jump lines planned for the future.
TLDR;
The NVSD K8 Skills Park and Bike Track currently features a gravity-fed bike track with large berms as well as jumps.
Currently, the skills park consists of the gravity bike track. A paved pump track and additional jump lines will be added in the future.
The Bicycle Skills Park at the Nestucca Valley Elementary School is one of the projects of the Tillamook Off-road Trail Alliance, AKA TORTA. Their primary project is to create the Buzzard Butte Trail Network, which will be about 35 miles of trail in the area, featuring single-track trails as well as road-to-trail conversions with bike park-style trails.
When I arrived, I walked around the baseball fields looking for a pump track-style skills park as pictured on the Torta website. I’m not sure that exists, as I could not locate anything that resembled the photo on the website. However, I did see large berms and mounds that appeared to resemble a motocross track.
As I brought my Specialized Turbo LEVO eMTB on this trip, I unloaded it and decided I’d use it to explore the area. After a lap around the property, I rode up to the large berms to discover it was indeed a downhill bike track with several run options to choose from. Much of the soil has grass growing everywhere, which contributed to my confusion, as it looked a lot like backyard and private moto tracks. Many of the mounds of jump-shaped soil tower over head height, which led me to assume that they were for dirt bikes.
Nope, they were just large, bike park-level-sized jumps! Although I brought my 26″ wheeled dirt jump MTB, it was clear it was going to stay in the van, and the eMTB was the right tool for the job. – And it was. I did lap after lap, pedaling up the grassy climb to get laps in on each of the runs, gaining speed and confidence with each run. After 3 times down, it was clear I needed to ride back to the car to get my knee pads.
Once I was padded up, I turned my attention to the largest line on the right. There were 3 options to drop in on: one was just a hill, with pavers to reinforce the soil. The next was a step-down drop. The advanced line was a longer step down.
After the step down, there was a roller that led into the first jump. On the right was a smaller tabletop, while on the left was a longer and taller jump. It was followed by a step-up jump on the right and the largest tabletop of the track on the left.
Assuming this was a taste of what we’ll see on the jump lines at Buzzard Butte, I’m excited about what’s in store for mountain biking in the Pacific City area and hoping to make the drive down for a future work party to see what’s in the works.