White Salmon is a town in Washington, located across the Columbia River from Hood River. A one-hour drive east of Portland, it’s popular with outdoor recreationists for all the same reasons as Hood River — the area is filled with opportunities for mountain biking, wind and water sports, hiking, and more. We caught wind of a new (to us) bike park undergoing construction this winter via social media and with the recent re-opening of the park, made a point to drive over the bridge after some riding sessions in Post Canyon to check it out.
All volunteer built
The newly revamped park is unique in that it’s a community-funded and volunteer-constructed project initiated by a group of riders calling themselves the White Salmon Bike Club. In their “BMX Park” proposal, their initial pitch was simple – transform a 19-acre city lot known as the “Barrow Pit” into a youth-oriented bicycle skills park for all riders and abilities.
Located at the bottom of a hill, the White Salmon bike Park features a single-track descent with flow trail features to access the park from both directions, with a pump track, drop line TTFs, and multiple progressive jump lines.
The park re-opened after being completely revamped with a soft opening on April 1st, and is an impressive accomplishment for a small community – we’ve ridden quite a few bike parks of similar scale, and the park rides as good if not better than many contractor led projects.
We were especially impressed with the implementation of the intermediate and advanced jump lines — the design and radius of the jumps are well executed. Riding the lines, the take-offs are predictable and easy to ride despite their scale, and in our humble opinion, are some of the best lips/ramps/take-offs in the extended Portland area.
As photos posted in social media portray the ramps as on the narrow side, I’m especially relieved to report they’re of more than ample width, and it’s the actual scale of them that makes them a bit misleading in photos. (the transitions are so big they look narrow)
The only downside we experienced was the last two sets of the biggest and intermediate lines are spaced a bit close, and the crew found ourselves over jumping them to flat (that was a wake-up moment for each of us) until figuring out the proper amount to brake check. As the entire line is on a slope, when properly jumped, you gain momentum with every set. Part of it obviously was still getting to know the ramps, as well as being on an enduro class 29er. A short travel rig with smaller wheels would be the most fun – I’m coming back with my slopestyle bike for sure.
The entire area is very well signed, and both Google and Apple Maps are already updated with the location making it very easy to navigate to the park.
For more info or to keep up with the park, follow the White Salmon Bike Park on Facebook.
Find it: NE Tohomish St, Cook, WA 98605