This week, Birchwood Park is seeing an addition to its southwest corner: more than half a dozen truckloads of fresh dirt for a new bicycle pump track.
Flaggers stood watch April 4 as trucks hauled their first loads of dirt from an excavation site at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center. The work will continue through the end of the week.
The Birchwood Park pump track is a collaboration between the City of Bellingham and Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition (WMBC), and is set to be completed later this spring, Bellingham Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Oliver said.
For residents like Kelly Morgan, former president of the Birchwood Neighborhood Association, that completion date has been long-anticipated.
WMBC initially met with the neighborhood association in 2017 in response to a growing desire for a pump track. Morgan recalls many students in the neighborhood were involved in afterschool mountain bike programs, but without a pump track in the area, families had to drive to the one at Whatcom Falls Park.
At the same time, Morgan and other neighbors noticed Birchwood Park was getting less and less use.
“We thought [a pump track] would bring a positive energy to the park and have more of our neighbors using the park in a healthy way,” she said.
Birchwood is a diverse neighborhood both culturally and socio-economically, Morgan said. Because riding a pump track doesn’t require an expensive bike, she sees this new addition to the neighborhood as a low-barrier way to connect with others outside.
“We’re hoping that this is an accessible pastime to get kids moving and connecting and in our diverse neighborhood, and be an activity for students that might not have a lot of access to other options outside,” Morgan said.
Park-goers walk their dog while flaggers wait for the next load of dirt to arrive April 4. (Finn Wendt/Cascadia Daily News)
What began as a neighborhood conversation transformed into a nearly $55,000 WMBC fundraising campaign, and a formal partnership between WMBC and the city. In March 2019, Bellingham City Council approved the pump track.
Through the partnership, the city has applied for and obtained permits, while WMBC has provided funding and spearheaded design and layout. WMBC has also facilitated partnerships and received pro-bono services from Ram Construction, Freeland & Associates, Inc., and Associated Earth Sciences, Inc. for dirt hauling, stormwater design and soil testing, respectively.
“It’s a pretty specialized skill set to build a pump track, so we’re lucky to have the WMBC as these willing partners in our community,” Oliver said.
The pump track will be accessible to the Cornwall, Columbia and Birchwood neighborhoods via local trails.
“The cool thing about it is it’s tucked in there with the neighborhood around that Bay to Baker Trail, so from the standpoint of parents, their kids can get to it really easily. Mom and dad don’t necessarily need to drive them to it,” said Eric Brown, executive director of WMBC.
Brown said the WMBC crew will begin building the pump track as soon as the weather improves and the final permit is approved. Construction will take about two weeks and will involve an iterative process of building and riding the track to make necessary changes as they go.
“You build it, you lay it out, you start creating your pumps and your bumps and your berms and stuff, and then you go, ‘Wait, this doesn’t quite ride like we were hoping to ride,’” Brown said. “So then you make adjustments.”
Once construction concludes, WMBC and the city will take a week or two to clean up and add fencing and a kiosk before opening the pump track to the public. WMBC will continue to maintain the track as community members begin riding it.
Every pump track is unique — at Birchwood, Brown said, riders can look forward to new opportunities to catch some air. The pump track also offers a new opportunity for members of surrounding neighborhoods to come together.
“When people across cultures dance together, ride bikes together, eat together, they know each other in a more real way. And there might be real relationships developing between families with that pump track there,” Morgan said.
