There are a lot of mountain bikers in Texas, but not a lot of mountains, so a lift-access bike park should be great news for Lone Star riders.
Spider Mountain offers 350 feet of elevation and a four-person chair-lift that will operate Monday through Sunday year 'round. If you hail from Colorado or Switzerland, 350 feet of elevation might seem laughable, but if you live in Texas, you'd have to travel out of state to find a lift access bike park - or a real life mountain range, for that matter. Spider Mountain is located in the Highland Lakes area in central Texas, about an hours' drive from Austin and accessible from Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston.
You can overnight at the resort's
Thunderbird Lodge, and take advantage of Lake Hodges, which borders the bike park. Day passes run $50 for adults (ages 19-59) and $45 for all others. Season passes are also available for a limited time at $199 for adults (ages 19-59 years) and $149 for all others, valid January 19 through April 30, 2019.
Spider Mountain is owned and operated by Durango-Colorado based Mountain Capital Partners, who also own Purgatory Resort, Arizona Snowbowl, Sipapu Ski & Summer Resort, Pajarito Mountain, Hesperus Ski Area, Nordic Valley Ski Resort, and Purgatory Snowcat Adventures. MCP offers a comprehensive
"Power Pass" that gives access to all of its resorts, and will include Spider Mountain as well.
From the press release: With a variety of trails for all abilities and 350 feet of vertical, Spider Mountain ’s lift-served bike park features include downhill flow trails, and technical trails with bridges, berms, jumps, and more. The bike park is designed and developed by Hogan Koesis, director of mountain biking for Mountain Capital Partners, which owns and operates Spider Mountain and six ski resorts. Koesis has more than a decade of experience in the biking industry, designing, developing and constructing trails.
“It’s exciting to be the first lift-served bike park in the US that’s open year-round and bring progressive mountain biking terrain to Texas,” stated Koesis. “Until now, this type of lift-accessed terrain was only available in a ski resort setting. The new Spider Mountain Bike Park is unlike anything else in Texas.”Contact Spider Mountain for more information.
www.resortboneyard.com/l/lifts
There are plenty of ski hills that only operate for a couple months of the year and still have lift tickets that are less than $50.
That said, who needs a lift to go up 350 feet?
Not saying that lift installation is cheap by any means, but unless they're buying new or installing a detachable, they ought to be able to get a short lift like that up and running for less than a million.
I think some of you are missing the point. I'm under the impression this place was built from scratch (IE: not on an existing ski/ multi use area [ yes, I do realize this is Tx] , 4 trails is a good start. Yes, there is room for growth, but the Whistlers of the world were not built in a day.
Most of our land is private making it hard to develop, but to those land owners that allow us crazies to come out and build progressive trails and push the boundaries of what people thought was possible in Texas, THANK YOU!
Y’all come visit sometime!
But that’s awsome, in my experience you can’t “really” appreciate trails till you build one and understand how much time and work it takes.
Just saying....
and I'm not even complaining about elevation now in my posts. I'm saying what you are saying in that we live at sea level and do great at enduro/DH events up in the mountains
Someone said it but I’ll reiterate, to have a dedicated, purpose built BIKE PARK is special. To b the first in TX is special. To offer 5 trails is killer. Two of them are black !? That’s rad. A jump flow line? Sick. The lift is just a cherry on top. To be sat on a lake that size with boat and Jetski rentals,... AND A FULL RESORT TO STAY AT? Dope on dope on dope. To all who spit ???? on this thread, stay home if it’s so bad. More for us. Peace.
Kudos to Hogan Koesis for what he did to develop Angel Fire as one of the best bike parks in North America.
Spider Mountain is owned and operated by Durango-Colorado based Mountain Capital Partners, who also own Purgatory Resort, Arizona Snowbowl, Sipapu Ski & Summer Resort, Pajarito Mountain, Hesperus Ski Area, Nordic Valley Ski Resort,.
Hogan's success with this project will likely put him further in a position to further expand the sport with the multiple mountains listed above. Who doesn't want to see that?
More power to him and this project.
Meanwhile in the southern end of the "enemy of all things fun" state ( California) will all our mountains we have one seasonal (and pretty shite) bike park and a year round pedal to the top one.
Well done TX. I'll come and be a tourist any time!
As the Crow Flies