Mountain Creek Bike Park - Now Open!

Mountain Creek Bike Park, please introduce yourselves.

Marc Tremain: Operations Manager at Mountain Creek Bike Park, designing and building bike trails and terrain parks year round at Mountain Creek since 2003.

Hugh Reynolds: Marketing & Sales Manager. I started with the resort 4 years ago. I was looking to combine my personal passions for the outdoors and action sports with my professional life and took a seasonal events manager position to get my foot in the door. A year later I was overseeing all marketing and sales. I’ve always had a personal passion for mountain biking, now it’s my job. I’d say that’s pretty cool.


Besides the name, what else is different at the park this year?

We've changed quite a bit at Mountain Creek for the 2012 season, the new name and new management was just the first step in a multi-year plan for improvements to the park. Our crew collectively shares a true dedication for quality trail building and maintenance with a passion for the riding community. We all live to ride bikes, our staff couldn’t be happier doing anything other than what we’re doing at this mountain. The changes don't stop on the mountain, expect to see us implementing simple conveniences such as a large bike wash, bike protection on all of our gondola cabins, a true full service bicycle repair, rental and retail shop, a close and convenient bike park guest only parking lot and even an outdoor Biergarten that caters directly to our bike park guests. It doesn’t stop there either… We’ve got some big plans in the making, it’s going to be a great season with many more to come!




How many hours of trails work have you done in preparation for opening day? Can you give some insight into what it takes to get a bike park ready to go after the winter season?

The trail refurbishing project started in mid-March, so far we've invested over 2500 man hours, over 800 machine hours, 30 Moxy (25 ton capacity off-road dump truck) loads of dirt, and over 200 feet of drainage pipe to restore, re-engineer and improve the pre-existing trail network. The trail network had some serious neglect from years past as well as some severe hurricane damage from the late 2011 season. We've re-engineered the erosion control and drainage on just about every trail on the mountain and will continue to improve all season.



The trail network is certainly diverse at Mountain Creek, can you give a quick synopsis of what type of terrain you have to offer guests? What for the DH specific crowd? For the Freeride crowd? For newcomers to the sport?

One of the misconceptions of the park under the previous Diablo management was that it was this hard, gnarly, experts only place. Which is true if you’re looking for that terrain, but 30% of our terrain is actually beginner and intermediate focused, and we’re looking to increase that this summer. Mountain Creek Bike Park is a great place for beginners and novice riders to come to learn or improve their skills, and to make it easier for the true first timers we offer the “Experience Downhill” package. This all-inclusive package gives you everything you need to try downhill for the first time, 2 hours of bike rental, protection, instruction and lift access, all for just $99.99. Our flagship expert only freestyle line 'Dominion' contains 20+ jump features, banked turns, drops and a few other unique man-made features to get down with. Re-born for 2012, 'Breakout' is an intermediate trail that takes you on a fast and flowy rip through the upper half of the mountain mixing up berms, rollers and small tabletops. Meanwhile 'Greenhorn' provides our guests with a great beginner experience while on the opposite end of the spectrum, newly re-opened trails like Evil Bob, USO, BMW and Slayer provide a raw, steep, rock infested old school DH experience.




For people who have been coming to ride at Mountain Creek since the beginning can we expect to see some of the original trails brought back to life?

Expect to see some old flames come back to life during the 2012 season. We actually just finished up re-working Evil Bob and for the first time since 2004, our guests will be able to ride this trail all the way down to the Garden State ski trail. You will definitely see some more trails come back from the dead later this season.



Besides reviving the dead, will you be adding new trails throughout the season?

Expect to see trails added to our network throughout the season... Enhancing the top to bottom experience is at the top of our mission list. Greenhorn will be brand new from mid-mountain to the base area and provide a much improved beginner experience. Breakout will continue from its current mid-mountain ending and become at least a 3/4 trail by the end of the summer. After Breakout and Greenhorn are completed, we have a new double black diamond trail in the works code named: DMLH. Details on DMLH are fuzzy right now, but we'll let you know more about it when the time to build is closer.




There is no US Open this year, but you have added a few other high level events that will be sanctioned by USA Cycling like the Pro GRT. This is a first at Mountain Creek, what led you to make these changes?

Unfortunately the US Open needed to take a hiatus for this year, but yes, we are kicking off the event season this May with the Mountain Creek Spring Classic. The Spring Classic is USA Cycling sanctioned Pro GRT event as well as a part of the Eastern States Cup Series. We’ll also be hosting the first stop of the Gravity East Series at the resort on June 2 & 3rd. We are very excited to see professional racing continue here in New Jersey, and also to get some of the east coast racing series to the resort this summer. We have such a great mountain, we want to show it off to the racing world. You don’t think New Jersey when you think Mountain Biking destination, but we’re trying to change that.



Can you confirm any riders and/or Teams for the Pro GRT.

Already confirmed for the Spring Classic are: 2011 UCI Work Champion, Aaron Gwin, Justin Leov, Neko Mulally, USAC National Champion, Logan Bignelli, and our own local favorite, George Ryan.

Can you give us some details as to what the course will be like?

Let's just say that George Ryan and I wanted to re-live some old days at Mount Snow…. Jersey style. Picture a change from courses of the past and something with a bit more open slope, rough rocky and fast. You won’t want to miss it.



What are some of the sponsors you guys have on board this year? It looks like there are a lot of shiny new bikes in the rental fleet.

Indeed. This summer we will be offering some of the best downhill mountain bikes in the world, including the Fury Team and Wilson RC through our partners at GT Bicycles and Cycles Devinci. On protective we’ve partnered with SixSixOne and One Industries to carry their product lines. Additionally, the Bike Park is sponsored by Red Bull, GoPro, Shimano and Rocky Mounts. It’s been awesome to see how the sponsors have responded to what we’re doing. We’re very proud of the partnerships we have struck.


What is the best way for riders to stay informed about new trails, events and general happenings at the park?

We’re in the process of launching our new Mountain Creek Bike Park website this week. But if you really want to stay in the know right down to the minute, be sure to follow us on Facebook @MountainCreekBikePark and on twitter @MCBikePark. We would just really like to thank the riding community and our fans. The response we’ve been getting throughout this whole process has been unbelievably positive and amazing. It’s tremendously gratifying and a great barometer to validate everything we’ve been working so hard on. Thank you.

Words and Photos by Dave Trumpore