Trailside Park
- Maximum descent: 150 feet
- Maximum trail length: 2,300 feet
- Green trails: 4
- Blue trails: 2
- Black trails: 2
- Skills courses: 3
- Pumptracks: 2
The Ride
Trailside Park is, less of a bike park and more of a bike playground. Pulling into the parking lot, you’ll feel like a kid again. A kid stepping onto the wood chips and looking up at the tire swing, jungle gym, and twisty slide, but instead, you’re seeing an all-inclusive skills park, a concrete bike-friendly skate park, and a nearly zero-elevation flow trail that’s so packed with rollers, it’s more like a point-to-point pumptrack.
Of course, there are a couple regular old pumptracks too. And that’s not even counting the crown jewel of Trailside: a 140-foot-tall hill scribbled with four unique trails that range from beginner flow to natural chunk to jump trails peppered with huge wooden features. Bagging multiple runs is made easy by a smooth, direct, over-before-you-know-it return trail. That’s why Trailside is so special. You take the climbs in small doses. Kids and new riders who probably don’t have the patience to go climb for 30, 60, 90 minutes at a time can get that near-instant gratification that makes the climb worth it, but always leaves you wanting more.
The mellowest trail is called The Great Gazoo, and it is a lazy, winding strip of silky dirt. It doesn’t get many shredders, so nowhere is it denuded down to bedrock or choked with braking bumps. Anyone can come and let gravity take over. Next to it, Bronto Jam is a little more advanced. There are no gaps or drops, but it’s got taller, steeper tabletops and a few wooden features. Around the back is Mr. Muchrocks, which feels natural, but in a highly curated way. A few rock gardens, but also berms and a couple short bridges and man-made rock drops. The highest-profile trail is Bamm Bamm. That’s where you’ll find most of the wooden features, including kicky lips, non-rollable drops, a shark fin and and a step-on-step-off salad bowl.
It’s a place where time seems to disappear. You’d just go for a few runs and maybe work on improving your tabletops, then, four hours later, the streetlights are coming on and mom is calling you in for dinner.
Hop on board for a few chill laps with BIKE’s Satchel Cronk and Justin Olsen during the 2020 Bible of Bike Tests, and then just try to convince us that every town doesn’t need a spot like this. Satchel is on the Yeti SB140, and Justin is riding the Santa Cruz Hightower.
Want More?
You can see our findings from all of the bikes we rode in Park City by checking out the 2020 Bible of Bike Tests. And as for the rest of the trails, this lap is just one line on a veritable spiderweb of trails. There’s a lot to choose from out there. Have a look at Utah’s mountaintrails.org web app.
This article originally appeared on Bikemag.com and was republished with permission. Cover Photo: Margus Riga.
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