Displaying their best stunts and tricks in mid-air among the trees, about 40 bikers showed up at the Slope Line Bike Park on May 20-21 for the park’s yearly spring bike jam.
For weeks, the organizers have been hard at work repairing the jumps after the park was destroyed by vandals at the beginning of May.
All the work paid off.
“Everything got a lot bigger, a lot smoother and cleaner,” says Aidan Myhre, 18, who came down from Williams Lake for the event. “Now it’s all wood jumps almost and everyone’s loving it.”
The event had added significance for many of the bikers. Named the T10 Spring Jam this year, in memory of Tyler Tenning, a young man from Williams Lake killed in a car crash in late April, many of the riders were showing off in honour of the teen who had helped construct many of the features in the park.
“He would have loved it, loved to see us just killing it, throwing out big tricks for him, because that’s what he did. He’d just send it — do big tricks and people looked up to him so everyone’s throwing down their biggest tricks and we’re pretty stoked right now,” says Myhre.
Organizer Dalton Anderson has been working on the park daily since he found out it was destroyed.
“We made things roll a bit smoother and faster so it’s a bit easier for people who are just getting the hang of it,” he says. “They’re blown away. They’re super hyped on it, they absolutely love it.”
Thanks to donations from the community, the bikers were able to outfit many of their previously dirt-built jumps with wood and upgrade the already-impressive features at the park. In one section they added “a wooden lip to the hip” so to speak, increasing the height bikers can achieve.
The event attracted bikers from across the province. Young men from Sechelt, Vancouver, Vernon and even as far away as Alberta showed up to test out the newly-repaired park.
“From out of the darkness comes light I guess,” says Ben Markwick, 18, of Kamloops. “It increased the fun so much more.”
Markwick has been attending the jams at the park yearly.
“All the boys come out. Everybody’s just so happy to be here. Everybody’s just having such a good time. We’re all pretty much family now.”
Organizers ran contests throughout the weekend. Bikers could ride in a slopestyle event where bikers took a run through the jumps performing their biggest and best tricks.
Judges based their decisions on style, amplitude, variety and the difficulty of the tricks. A “best whip” competition was held where bikers are judged on how sideways they can get their bike before bringing it back around straight.
Bikers could win cash, new peddles and lift tickets to the Coast Gravity Park in Sechelt.
Otherwise, the young men were happy to test out the new jumps and remember their friend.
“He would be blown away. He loved this place so he’d be super stoked on it,” says Anderson.