Riders navigating adventure structures at the Gravity Mountain Bike Park, designed for intermediate skill levels
Montgomery Parks is thrilled to announce the grand opening of its brand-new mountain bike park, designed to inject adrenaline and excitement into Wheaton Regional Park. The Wheaton Gravity Mountain Bike Park is set to become a haven for Gravity Bike enthusiasts and intermediate riders seeking challenging and exhilarating trails.
Mark Your Calendars for the Grand Opening:
What: Wheaton Gravity Mountain Bike Park Grand Opening
When: Sunday, July 21, 2024, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (Rain date: Sunday, July 28, 2024, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.)
Where: Wheaton Regional Park, Shorefield area, 2000 Shorefield Road, Wheaton, MD 20902. The park is nestled in the woods just behind the Adventure Playground.
This exciting new addition to Wheaton Regional Park, officially named the Gravity Mountain Bike Park, is specifically tailored for mountain bikers and BMX riders who crave adventure and gravity-fueled fun. The park boasts two distinct courses, each offering a unique level of challenge.
Explore Two Thrilling Courses:
The green course serves as an excellent starting point, featuring smoothly flowing dirt berms, approachable dirt tabletops, and playful rollers. It’s perfect for riders looking to build confidence and hone their skills on a gravity bike.
For those seeking a more intense experience, the blue course elevates the challenge. Riders will encounter a start platform to gain momentum, exciting jump sections to catch air, and expertly crafted wooden berm turns for high-speed cornering.
Spanning nearly a mile in combined length, both courses are meticulously designed for riders with a moderate level of experience on a gravity bike or mountain bike. These trails embody the essence of gravity mountain bike parks, emphasizing downhill flow and minimizing the need for pedaling on the descent. Riders are propelled through a dynamic sequence of rollers, turns, and jumps, maximizing the thrill of gravity. At the trail’s lowest point, a return line connects back to the starting point, requiring riders to pedal uphill for another run, ensuring continuous action and fitness.
Safety First: Ride Smart, Ride Safe
Reflecting Montgomery Parks’ commitment to safety, the Gravity Mountain Bike Park operates under a ride-at-your-own-risk policy. While enjoying the adrenaline rush of gravity biking, riders are strongly encouraged to wear bike helmets at all times. Helmets are mandatory for all riders aged 18 and under.
Bob Turnbull, Montgomery Parks’ natural surface trails program manager, highlights the park’s design and progressive approach: “This new bike park provides an ideal environment for adventure riders to enhance their abilities on demanding terrain. Once you drop into the course, it’s a purely downhill experience, packed with diverse challenges to overcome. We advise riders to begin with the green course to familiarize themselves and progressively advance to the blue course as their skills develop.”
A Vision Realized from the Wheaton Regional Park Master Plan
The Gravity Mountain Bike Park’s creation stems from the 2022 Wheaton Regional Park Master Plan update, a comprehensive blueprint outlining park improvements for the next 15-20 years. This plan prioritizes enhancing services for Wheaton Regional Park visitors and the surrounding community, and the gravity bike park is among the first exciting projects to come to fruition from this vision.
Looking ahead, park planners are also in the initial design stages of an Action Sports Park at Wheaton Regional Park’s Rubini Complex. This ambitious project aims to incorporate a skate park, pump track, climbing wall, obstacle course, and comfortable seating areas, further solidifying Wheaton Regional Park as a premier destination for outdoor recreation and gravity bike enthusiasts. However, due to recent reductions in the parks department’s capital request, the Action Sports Park and other planned improvements in Wheaton Regional Park may face delays pending additional funding.
Miti Figueredo, director of Montgomery Parks, expresses enthusiasm for the new bike park and the future of Wheaton Regional Park: “This bike skills park represents one of the inaugural projects from the recent master plan update to materialize in Wheaton Regional Park. We anticipate that the community will thoroughly enjoy this new amenity with friends, and we remain committed to securing funding in the coming years to advance more of these enhancements, including the highly anticipated Action Sports Park.”
About Montgomery Parks: Enhancing Community Through Parks
Montgomery Parks stewards over 37,000 acres of parkland across 419 parks. The department’s mission centers on fostering physical activity, social connections, and environmental stewardship, particularly within diverse and urbanizing communities, with a focus on engaging teens, working-age adults, and seniors in outdoor recreation and gravity bike activities. Montgomery Parks is a department of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), a bi-county agency established in 1927 dedicated to preserving and managing public land for the benefit of the community and gravity bike riders alike. M-NCPPC is nationally recognized for its exceptional parks and recreation services and is considered a national benchmark for other parks systems.
Ensuring Accessibility for All
Montgomery Parks, as part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, is dedicated to inclusive participation for individuals with disabilities. For disability modifications, please contact the Program Access Office at 301-495-2581 (Voice), MD Relay 7-1-1 or 800-552-7724, or email [email protected]. For comprehensive accessibility information, please Visit Montgomery Parks Accessibility.
