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I have been meaning to take my bike down to the Colonnade bike park in Seattle for quite some time. Yesterday it was nice enough and I actually had the time to do it. I had a general idea of the location which made it quite easy to find. I crossed the University bridge coming from the UW area and then took Boylston Ave E over to the park.

I had seen pictures of the park, but to see it in person is quite impressive. It looked like a ton of work had gone into the park. Colonnade park is a mountain bike skills park that was built under the I-5 elevated freeway. The park is 2 acres and will cover about 1.5 miles of trail when it is completed. Phase 1 is completed and Phase 2 is currently in progress. From what I can tell, Phase 1 is more of a beginner course with some challenges thrown in for the more advanced rider. Phase 2 looks like it is set up as a free ride course with lots of wooden features.

It had been about 10 months since I had ridden any sort of mountain bike trail so I was a bit rusty. I started at the top of the Phase 1 trail and made my way down. It seemed like the trails were well put together. If you stayed on the main path it was pretty flat and straight forward. You could also choose to venture to the side to attempt to ride skinnies and rock obstacles. If you avoid these obstacles it is a fairly smooth ride to the bottom.

From first glance, my only gripe with the Phase 1 trail is that the switchbacks have too small of a turn radius. This may be because I am out of practice, but for a supposed beginner trail I thought the hairpin turns were a bit difficult. It probably didn’t help that the turns had loose gravel and no bank to help out. I think that a beginner would get frustrated by this. The other issue that I had was that the terraces of the trail were fairly high up. I can imagine a beginner coming up to some obstacle and losing balance and falling over one of the terraces onto the gravel trail 4 feet below or some rock feature. I don’t think that would go over well.

One think that I did like was the skill building area at the bottom. It had miniature versions of many different trail features one might expect when mountain biking. They had some short log rides and teeter totters as well as whoop-de-doo bumps. The other cool thing about the park is that it is covered by the freeway. This way when it rains you still have a dry place to go riding.

I wish I had a little more time to explore so that I could practice a bit more, but I wanted to get home before it got dark.

To see more details on the park, check out the official website.