Berthoud Bike Park ramps up

BERTHOUD — Since opening in September 2023, Berthoud Bike Park has ramped up in popularity, bringing in visitors from as far as southern Colorado to try out the pump tracks, jump lines and dual slalom.

“It has been really popular since it opened up,” said Paul Furnas, town forester and open space supervisor for the town of Berthoud. “Everybody has shown a love for it out in the community and kind of all over. They’re excited to have a nearby bike park.”

Furnas and his crew, an open space lead and tech, take care of the bike park and interact with the bikers on a regular basis, including through social media. The bike park is local for Berthoud residents, who previously had to go to places like Boulder and Erie, but also brings in riders from across the state.

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“It’s pretty apparent it’s quite a hit, and we’re going to try to build off of that and make it better each year,” Furnas said. “There’s room to add more jump lines or a very beginning skills course.”

Berthoud Bike Park, located at 1225 Meadowlark Drive, is part of the future 80-acre Richardson Park that will consist of a baseball field complex, a multipurpose field, and pavilion structures and picnic benches. The bike park, which spans about 25 acres, presents a multitude of options for mountain bike riding and doing tricks on the dirt. 

“There’s something for everybody for all skill levels here and a way to train up to all those jumps,” Furnas said.

Drew Wallace, who lives down the street from the bike park, purchased a dirt jumper and bikes for his three children as soon as the park opened.

“I used to BMX when I was a kid,” said Wallace, owner of Service First RV in Berthoud. “We would find places to make jumps, but we never had a place like this that we could ride to.”

Wallace appreciates how the bike park is progressive, especially since he hasn’t biked for 20 years.

“It’s not just for experts. It’s not just for novices. It’s everything in between,” Wallace said. “You can work your way up to the north side. You start in the south and work on your skills and work progressively toward the north. They nailed it on all ages and skill levels.”

Berthoud Bike Park, which also serves as an open space for the town, cost $2.5 million to build with construction beginning in spring 2023. Options include beginning, intermediate and advanced jump lines, side-by-side jump lines, a quarter-mile dual slalom track, a one-mile bike trail, a bicycle playground, and an approximately 20,000-square-foot asphalt pump track.

“A lot of people love the pump track out there,” Furnas said. “It’s a very large pump track compared to the ones I’ve seen in the area. It’s for all skill levels, from kids to advanced riders flying over that thing.”

The three jump lines have names like the field hopper, the smoke jumper and the barn stormer with a wood shed in the middle of the line. Bikers ride up a hill and jump onto the side of the shed and go down another hill as part of their ride.

“Everybody likes to end up or start there,” Furnas said. “They get a feel for the dirt out there and how they’re feeling for the day.” 

The side-by-side jump lines are in the dual slalom and have jumps and progressions for mountain bike racing. The playground is entry-level, consisting of an asphalt bike track that has small hills and custom-designed objects to ride through and under. And the mountain bike skills course contains a few small hills and in spots a second lane or skills course with more advanced features such as wood beams, logs and boulders.

“There are novice to intermediate obstacles that riders can ride over to experience different obstacles on a bike,” Furnas said. “There are balancing areas, tricky things to roll over and keep your balance.”

Furnas and his staff aim to keep the bike park open all year but will close it if the trails get wet or muddy to help prevent conditions from worsening, requiring even more maintenance. Normal park hours are sunrise to sundown seven days a week — any closures are listed on the town’s website, berthoud.org/Berthoudbikepark, and the park’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Routine maintenance work on Berthoud Bike Park consists of smoothing out any ruts throughout the year and each May, repacking and resurfacing all of the jumps and stabilizing them for optimal riding. The crew also maintains the vegetation and keeps up the property for an overall aesthetic look, so it’s not just mud and dirt.

As the town forester, Furnas would like to plant more trees in the bike park but that will depend on routing water there, he said. There are six trees in the parking lot, a horse chestnut and five blue spruces.

“We’re hammering out the kinks just after finishing the construction, like improper drainage,” Furnas said. “We need to get those to drain correctly and get the facility up and running like it’s supposed to. We’re making sure everything in the plan comes to fruition and is running smoothly all around.”