Bike club hosts fundraiser for bike skills park

SANDPOINT — Mountain biking is for kids, too.

A Friday fundraiser aims to further Pend Oreille Pedalers’ goal to make the sport available to riders all ages, abilities and income levels. The group’s latest effort to serve as that advocate involves a partnership with the city of Sandpoint’s Parks Department to improve an existing dirt bike track at Travers Park by designing and building a modern mountain bike skills park on the site, POP Executive Director Jason Welker said.

The skills park is slated to be built this fall on the half-acre parcel north of the existing tennis courts, Welker said. The site will include multiple pre-fabricated steel and wood skills features from American Ramp Company, a firm out of the Midwest that builds bike parks all over North America.

"When completed, local kids and their parents will have a whole new place to ride their bikes in an environment that simulates the kinds of technical challenges mountain bikers might face out on the trails, essentially bringing the thrill of mountain biking right into the backyards of thousands of Sandpoint residents," Welker said.

The park’s design and construction will be funded through a combination of grant-writing efforts by POP and local fundraising, said Welker, who also serves of the Sandpoint City Council.

"The project’s budget of around $60,000 will only be achievable through community support," he added.

To help reach the group’s fundraising goal, Pend Oreille Pedalers is hosting a film premiere event of "The Engine Inside". The feature-length documentary from Anthill Films, tells the stories of six everyday people from all over the globe who reveal the unique power of the bicycle to change lives and build a better world.

In addition, the evening will feature a raffle, with all proceeds going toward POP’s skills park fundraising campaign.

The film will premiere in Sandpoint on Friday kicking off a weekend of cycling excitement, as the next morning over 300 road and gravel cyclists from around the country will embark on the annual CHAFE 150 Gran Fondo, an event hosted by Rotary Club of Sandpoint that takes participants on an all-day tour of North Idaho and Western Montana. This year’s CHAFE includes a gravel category that will take riders from Clark Fork, up Lighting Creek, over Trestle Creek pass and down Trestle Creek drainage before depositing them on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille for a race back to City Beach.

Pend Oreille Pedalers have long been Sandpoint’s local cycling club, and for the last four years have also emerged as an advocacy group and trail building organization, whose efforts have contributed to the buildout of local trails loved by hikers and mountain bikers, including in the Syringa trail system and in the Little Sand Creek Watershed.

All told, POP has built nearly 16 miles of new trail since 2019, and through its bike grants and scholarship program, welcomed over 20 new local kids into the mountain biking community. The club’s youth programs now serve over 140 kids a year in after-school and summer clinics and camps, and weekly group rides and trail work parties keep local road and mountain bikers healthy and active in the outdoors.

All this focus on trails and cycling has helped build Sandpoint’s cycling community and culture around the outdoors, enhancing the quality of life for those of us who call Sandpoint home, while boosting recreation opportunities during the shoulder seasons between the peaks of ski and lake-base tourism.

Tickets for POP’s "The Engine Inside" film premiere are available online at panida.org. Doors will open at 6 p.m. with the show starting at 7 p.m.

Information: pendoreillepedalers.org