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New, crowdsourced, year round bike park on the BC South Coast.

FarkinRyan

Monkey
Dec 15, 2003
611
192
Pemberton, BC
The Coastal Crew is building a year round, lift served bike park in Sechelt, British Columbia. You are broadly aware of the trail building these guys are capable of from Life Behind Bars, Strength in Numbers and From the Inside Out.

40 minutes by ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Gibsons, 25 minutes drive from Gibsons to Sechelt. If you live on the West Coast and ever travel to or plan to travel to Whistler to ride you should probably just get on and pre-book your lift ticket to this place to make sure it goes ahead.

I just bought 4 one day tickets. You should too.

That number again; http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/coast-gravity-park-campaign
 
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jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
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resting your downtube on the padded edge of the gondola while fitting 3 people and 3 bikes and getting to the top in 4 minutes isn't good enough for you?
padding?


and i was referring to an actual design solution, not "here let's figure out how to use what we have with no retrofitting whatsoever". please note that nowhere did i say it was a bad solution.

and 4 minutes is sweet, but it's only 1000' feet of vertical. potential for as much as 3x that in sechelt.
 

mattmatt86

Turbo Monkey
Feb 9, 2005
5,347
10
Bleedmore, Murderland
padding?


and i was referring to an actual design solution, not "here let's figure out how to use what we have with no retrofitting whatsoever". please note that nowhere did i say it was a bad solution.

and 4 minutes is sweet, but it's only 1000' feet of vertical. potential for as much as 3x that in sechelt.
I gotcha. You mean the lift at the new park should have a better way of loading bikes, as opposed to current bike parks where all of the loading solutions are retrofitted because when the parks were built they were never intended to carry bikes...

I recall there being some kind of padding on the lip of the gondolas at Mt. Creek... could be wrong though.
 

jonKranked

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Nov 10, 2005
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and my point is more that mt creek/diablo used what they had installed for ski season with 0 modifications and 0 additional lift operators and little (if any) additional operator training. if installing a lift solely for bike park operations, they won't be dealing with those kinds of limitations.
 

jonKranked

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Nov 10, 2005
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I gotcha. You mean the lift at the new park should have a better way of loading bikes, as opposed to current bike parks where all of the loading solutions are retrofitted because when the parks were built they were never intended to carry bikes...

I recall there being some kind of padding on the lip of the gondolas at Mt. Creek... could be wrong though.
yea, you got it. :cheers:
 

jonKranked

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Nov 10, 2005
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one of the reasons the mt creek lift DOES work really well is that they don't have a capacity mismatch - they can send up the same # of riders per hour as they do bikes. a lot of mountains that retrofit lifts for summer ops wind up with a capacity mismatch; they can send up more riders per hour than bikes.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,855
9,560
AK
Should use this to post the various lift configurations that we've seen across the world:

These are trays at Alyeska, bike sits in the tray, totally replaces the seats, may even be a dedicated chair that they don't even mess with in the winter season and store. The tray setups seem to be real nice, they have a name cut-out/etched on some of them, but I forget what it is. We also gots a tram.

View attachment 114452View attachment 114453

 

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jonKranked

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Nov 10, 2005
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those trays are their own independent attachments to the lift cables. on in the spring, off in the fall. originally developed by murray latta progressive machine in conjunction with whistler bike park.
 
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canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,197
19,162
Canaderp
Won't the park be open year round? I'd think they would be able to come up with a quality working solution for the bike on the lift, without having to worry about what to do during different seasons.

Cost for the lift set aside, I can't imagine how much labour would be to put a new one in :eek:

I hope it works out for them.
 
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Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,855
9,560
AK
If it's year round, why do a lift? Funicular or some other setup would make more sense IMO. You can probably get a cheap beater lift from a resort upgrading I'd imagine, except it's got to be shipped, foundations, hauling stuff up a mountain, etc, and then maintenance and upkeep.

Or just a road and some old schoolbuses.
 
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buckoW

Turbo Monkey
Mar 1, 2007
3,777
4,700
Champery, Switzerland
Should use this to post the various lift configurations that we've seen across the world:

These are trays at Alyeska, bike sits in the tray, totally replaces the seats, may even be a dedicated chair that they don't even mess with in the winter season and store. The tray setups seem to be real nice, they have a name cut-out/etched on some of them, but I forget what it is. We also gots a tram.

View attachment 114452View attachment 114453

So cool to see Alyeska getting developed for bikes. I lived there for a year and a half in 1999 but we weren't allowed to take bikes in the tram. How many trails do you guys have now?

Back on topic, I visited the Sechelt park and took a short run on one of the easier trails they were working on and this looks like it will be the best bike park trails ever built. Everything they are doing is world class! We should all rally together and help them get this thing gong.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
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If it's year round, why do a lift? Funicular or some other setup would make more sense IMO. You can probably get a cheap beater lift from a resort upgrading I'd imagine, except it's got to be shipped, foundations, hauling stuff up a mountain, etc, and then maintenance and upkeep.

Or just a road and some old schoolbuses.
a funicular would work for a very small scale (private) park. their big drawback is capacity.
 

gemini2k

Turbo Monkey
Jul 31, 2005
3,526
117
San Francisco
I gotcha. You mean the lift at the new park should have a better way of loading bikes, as opposed to current bike parks where all of the loading solutions are retrofitted because when the parks were built they were never intended to carry bikes...

Spoiler alert: I guarantee they are buying a used ski lift, designed for carrying skiers and skis up.
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,855
9,560
AK
So cool to see Alyeska getting developed for bikes. I lived there for a year and a half in 1999 but we weren't allowed to take bikes in the tram. How many trails do you guys have now?
I don't know if the management was the same back then, but the owner/operator burnt-ski is real enthusiastic about it. The DH races have real good turnouts, but the enduro stuff doesn't always, but even if there are only two people that show up for enduro (haha) he's still there all pumped and ready to put on a race (with prizes no less, so you can't lose). I'm the state enduro-series champion btw, lol. There are trails that start even above the tram, a few routes down on each side of the gulley, the stuff on the upper mountain is more open, fun, at mid-mountain there are some steeper/tighter advanced runs with lots of roots and rocks, and then on the lower mountain they have a nice jump-park area with a bunch of different trails. It's no whistler, but they are running the tram and the high speed quads and they seem to have the right attitude about drumming up interest for the ski resort. It only benefits them IMO, as people come down to do other stuff and they come back in the winter due to how accommodating they are. We have a new super-long downhill trail in the hatcher pass area evidently too, I haven't done that yet, but I did help build a whole new section of trail this summer in Kincaid. There are massive berms, tabletops, doubles, etc, all built in there, it's like a bike-park but self-propelled. Real fun stuff. I've been impressed by how much quality riding there is. I didn't know what to expect last year when I moved up.
 

bizutch

Delicate CUSTOM flower
Dec 11, 2001
15,928
24
Over your shoulder whispering
I'd think the ideal lift would be one where the bike tray sits out wider than a normal 4 person chair and just ahead of a 2 seat chair. That way you walk up and roll your bike into a tray itself on your same chair, 2 riders in a chaur and bikes just ahead of you. Then, when you get off you can unload your own bike.

It would save money on lift operators.
 

sethimus

neu bizutch
Feb 5, 2006
4,882
2,133
not in Whistler anymore :/
in les deux alpes they outfitted a gondola with outside bike trays similar to the ones in whistler, so 2 ppl can put in their bikes and than go into the gondola. much better solution than the usual hook most parks with the same type of gondola use
 

motomike

Turbo Monkey
Jan 19, 2005
4,584
0
North Carolina
I'd think the ideal lift would be one where the bike tray sits out wider than a normal 4 person chair and just ahead of a 2 seat chair. That way you walk up and roll your bike into a tray itself on your same chair, 2 riders in a chaur and bikes just ahead of you. Then, when you get off you can unload your own bike.

It would save money on lift operators.
You still need lift operators to... operate the lift.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,573
24,193
media blackout
I gotcha. You mean the lift at the new park should have a better way of loading bikes, as opposed to current bike parks where all of the loading solutions are retrofitted because when the parks were built they were never intended to carry bikes...

Spoiler alert: I guarantee they are buying a used ski lift, designed for carrying skiers and skis up.
so, aside from the chairs, what's the difference between a lift designed for skiing and one designed for biking?
 

motomike

Turbo Monkey
Jan 19, 2005
4,584
0
North Carolina
Nice guys, 3 pages of a worthless discussion about chair lifts and nothing mentioned of the fvcking amazing looking trails they have built so far. Nice!
 

slyfink

Turbo Monkey
Sep 16, 2008
9,289
5,029
Ottawa, Canada
was gonna say... that Just the Tip "edit" seemed to only show one of the four trails. Pretty sick, but pretty huge. much too huge for me. Also, far too far away for me to go on a regular basis. Still, I love watching people rail it.
 

bizutch

Delicate CUSTOM flower
Dec 11, 2001
15,928
24
Over your shoulder whispering
You still need lift operators to... operate the lift.
But you don't have to pay that one girl that got run over by the bike tray and shoved out of the tower onto her butt. :)

I understand that. I'm thinking more in terms of Beech, etc. If you load four people, you have to have four employees at the top to unload the customer's bikes. If the rider is with their bike, less extra staff.

Diablo's basket style is awesome in that way, but missing seats to rest. And if it's year round for bikes, if they can enclose the cabin, bonus!
 
But you don't have to pay that one girl that got run over by the bike tray and shoved out of the tower onto her butt. :)

I understand that. I'm thinking more in terms of Beech, etc. If you load four people, you have to have four employees at the top to unload the customer's bikes. If the rider is with their bike, less extra staff.

Diablo's basket style is awesome in that way, but missing seats to rest. And if it's year round for bikes, if they can enclose the cabin, bonus!
As long as it's a detachable high speed lift. I hate fixed grip lifts...so slow.
 

FlipFantasia

Turbo Monkey
Oct 4, 2001
1,659
492
Sea to Sky BC
Whistler is upgrading two of their lifts this year (harmony and christal?) would be funny if one of the old ones ended up on the SSC bike park!
the only one available would've been crystal triple as the old harmony quad got moved over to blackcomb....not 100% but I thought WB had already found a buyer for the crystal chair before they started building this year
 

FarkinRyan

Monkey
Dec 15, 2003
611
192
Pemberton, BC
Although watching people try to get bikes into a tray on the Crystal as it whipped around the bullwheel, shattering ankles and crushing dreams in it's wake would surely be a thing of beauty.