Hinton Bike Park

Jan 7, 2010

The vision of the Hinton Bike Park was to build an exceptional mountain bike skills park that is fun, free of charge, and ride able by all ages and abilities. The park was designed and built by Jay Hoots, and by creating such a great park they have been able to promote mountain biking and the skill development required with the sport. Although the park caters to all levels of riders, the park has numerous stunts/features to challenge any rider. Along with a skills area they have dirt jumps, a drop zone, pump track, slope style course, shore style trail and a flow trail. Living in Edmonton, the Hinton Bike Park is a 2.5 hour drive away, I managed to ride the park 3 times this summer and highly recommend anyone in the area to check it out.

More details and pics inside,

One of the best things about the park is that it never seems to be busy, no bottlenecks on the trails, no wait time to drop into the jumps. In the three times that I was there, we have only seen a handful of other riders each time.

The park starts off with a skills area comprised of numerous ladder bridges, some teeter totters and skinnies. Although all the features in this area are low to the ground they are still fun and can be a challenge, plus it’s a great warm up for the rest of the park and a perfect way to stretch after that 2.5 hour drive. From the skills area you can move onto the pump track, although small in size it’s very fun and a challenge to make it through the loop without pedaling. I strongly recommend a hardtail for the pump track though, there was no way I could pump my way through it on my 8inch travel downhill bike.

Although dirt jumping is not my forte, the Hinton Bike Park has a great set of jumps. The jump park is made up of 4 rows of jumps starting from small to large with a great run in and run out for each row. The jumps always seem to be in good shape.


Next is the Drop Zone, this is a great section for beginners to get the hang of air time on drops, although there is nothing big in size, the drops are still fun to ride with nice smooth landings. The Drop Zone has 3 drops on the upper slope leading to 4 different drops on the lower slope.

Fo’Shore-


Fo’Shore is comprised of skinnies, log-rides and ladder bridges. This is a super fun trail and a real challenge to clean the whole section. Another great thing about the park is that everything is build real well, these stunts are meant to last. The Fo’Shore trail continues through the woods and meets up with the bottom of the Slope Wars trail.

Slope Wars-


Video by norco.pinkbike.com of the local trails and the park:

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Video by s-m-a.pinkbike.com of the park:

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This is my favorite trail in the park, I lost track of how many times we hiked up to ride the wall-ride over and over again. The trail starts with a couple of doubles and then leads onto a ladder which you can jump off into what I think is the most perfect wall-ride I have ever ridden. The angle and size of the wall is awesome, it just allows you to ride as fast as you want at it and air off the end of the wall. You can either ride or jump onto the wall and then either ride or jump off the end of the wall into a perfect transition. From there the trail flows into several jumps and a step up and step down. I wouldn’t really call this a slope style course but it is such a super fun trail which you can’t help but ride over and over again.


Flow Master-

Flow Master is the longest trail in the park and once again is a really fun trail, this trail is made up of various jumps and berms which allow riders to work on carrying their speed through jumps and corners. Although this is labeled as a DH trail there are no technical sections or roots here, just a super flowy fun trail to rip down.

Overall the Hinton Bike Park is a great place to come and ride, it's very easy to spend half a day riding all the trails with a small lunch break in town. All the riding is gravity fed and back hiking back up the trails is not too strenuous. Another great thing about the park is that any style of bike can easily ride here, whether you have a hardtail or a full suspension you can come here and ride all day long.