Throughout the summer, the Clear Creek Metropolitan Recreation District has been offering a slew of programs for both adults and children alike. Now, with the summer season winding down, it’s offering a fun, full-day mountain biking experience for kids ages 7 to 17.
Led by newly-appointed outdoor program coordinator James Weiner, kids now have the chance to explore their wilder side, courtesy of a six-hour bike ride and the beautiful, local mountain trails that Mother Nature provides.
“This is a brand new youth mountain biking program,” Weiner said. “I think the idea was conceived when we talked about having more outdoor programs for kids and adults, but specifically kids because we felt it was important to utilize the backyard here for recreation programs.”
The program began just three weeks ago, and has grown to full capacity as of this week because interest around the county has spread. Because Weiner is the only instructor, he can only take five kids out at a time.
Since groups are so small, Weiner can more easily provide individualized attention to his riders. Sessions start with basic bike check and maintenance, and then move into more technical mountain biking skills once the group hits the trail.
“We have a couple more sessions that we could fill up, and I think the hope is, what we found is most effective right now, is having people contact us if they’re interested, and we talk with them about their child’s skill level and comfort level with it,” Weiner said.
“Then we’re going to group them up rather than just blocking off an age group for one week because we’ve crossover with an 11-year-old and a 7-year-old; the 7-year-old is more experienced and the 11-year-old have never biked before, so we can put them together. It’s worked really well.”
The group has many trail options thanks to a permit from Jefferson County Open Space.
For some of the less-experience riders, Weiner has taken them to Three Sisters and Elk Meadow in Evergreen, Bear Creek Lake Park in Morrison and Mount Falcon. For the more-experienced crew, Weiner can take them to the Mayhem Gulch and Centennial Cone trailheads.
“My son is in it, and he loves it. He’s having a great time with it. I can tell he’s already getting better, and there’s been a huge improvement,” said Paul Dalpes, program coordinator. “… I think the big thing with some of these other kids is the confidence that once they do it, they know they can do it. I think that confidence on the bike in a mountain setting will also carry over to other things, so they’re more willing to try new things.”
The program costs $75 per session, which includes both Monday and Wednesday rides that run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Riders are expected to bring their own bikes, lunches, water and backpacks, but the Clear Creek rec center will help kids without bikes find ones that could work with the trails.
“I think the biggest thing was trying new things with adult and youth programs,” Dalpes said. “I think one of the positive things that I’ve seen since I came on here with James is we’ve maintained most if not all of the programs that were established here, and we’ve also added quite a few new ones, both adult and youth. We have the traditional baseball, basketball, soccer. We’re looking to do more things, offer more stuff and be more creative with things that we’re offering.”
So far, the feedback for the program has been overwhelmingly positive.
“I have had some really good quotes,” Weiner said. “(One kid) said that was the best day of his life. And then, the other feedback that I’ve gotten from other kids is they’ve never gone out and ridden as long as we do, especially in the first week.”
Because the end of summer is fast-approaching and the interest has grown recently, Dalpes and Weiner hope to possibly extend the biking season until the end of September, with a little help from the weather.
“It is something that we want to grow and continue for next year, and hopefully we have enough kids, enough interest that we can start having more instructors,” Dalpes said. “We do need to keep the instructor-to-participant ratio to 5 to 1 for safety issues and for the instructor, but hopefully we can have enough interest, so we can grow it.”