The Building of Pro Star, Silverstar's New Trail

This is a cool update about Silver Star's trail development! -gordo

Pro Star is fast becoming one of Silver Star Bike Park's premiere Trails. What started out as a three hit wonder in 2010 is now one of the most talked about jump trail in any bike park.

Pro Star History
Originally the line was designed to be a standalone set of jumps that we could use for events, photos shoots and special events. To get these riders off Pro Star they merged with Challenger, one of our other beginner progressive trails that give the green rider the chance to advance their skills with braids of blue intermixed on the trail. This forced two different levels of riders together for a short section of trail, something we don’t like to do. After seeing the amount of traffic Pro Star was generating we knew we had to be proactive to keep the high speed black trail rider away from the green rider. As a result, we extended Pro Star with a “Mother” of a step-up into a very fun transfer line, followed by a “Catcher Mitt” of a berm and finishing with a small but long step down. This made the high end riding community very happy and the green riders safe from getting run over.
     We thought this would be the finish to Pro Star but people wanted more! We want to keep pushing forward and advancing the progression of the biking at Silver Star. After the praise and kudos we received from the first two phases of Pro Star the crew was very excited to see if we could keep with the same flavour and energy for the next part of Pro Star. The first two parts of this trail have great terrain, and to be honest a trail builder is only as good as his canvas. With natural step-ups and gullies for take offs it was easy to see the line, not easy to build, but the line was there. It took two days this fall walking in the rain to see if we could find an area that would keep with that same flow the upper section is famous for. As it turns out we found it. “It won’t have as much of the gravity feed of the upper section but if you every played the old Atari game Excite Bike you are going”to feel like you are on level 10 jacked on Red Bull.

Pro Star Future
We started building the third section of Pro Star this week after fine tuning the line a bit. The machine has been duffing the line in between rain storms. The rain has definitely posed some challenges for building this year but it has kept the overall condi- tion of the park in amazing shape! People might be complaining that they aren’t their beach time and the answer is to come up to the Star and ride your bike! It may not be good sun tanning weather but it is great mountain bike weather!

While the duffing is going on we started building the role in off Paradise trail. As with most bike parks we try and put features at the start of our black trails that represent the difficulty level of the trail. The whole premise behind this “gate keeper” is to make sure that if the rider is confident and skilled enough to pass the first feature than they are skilled enough to ride the rest of the trail. This is Silver Stars phi- losophy; we are a progressive bike park and we’ve built a trail system that allows riders to learn and push their riding, to always have fun and do so in a safe manner.
     As soon as all the prep is done you will see the trail start to transform from a low grade windy trail to a jumpers paradise. We will keep you all posted on the progression of the build of Pro Star.
Matt Butterworth will be keeping a photo log as we go, so you will be able to see what is coming and dream for the day we have it finished. The upper section is running great so get your jump game on and be ready for Phase III of Pro Star later this summer! (Press Release Photo Credits: Matt Butterworth)