Tara SPRICKERHOFF
100 Mile House Free Press
A group of young 100 Mile House mountain bikers are rallying to fix their bike park in time for the memorial of Williams Lake teen Tyler Tenning after vandals damaged the park sometime last week.
“It is two weeks until we are hosting this memorial jam for Tyler and somebody comes up and does this. It’s just like icing on the cake,” says Clayton Chamberlain, who helps to manage and maintain the Slope Line bike park in 100 Mile House.
When the group showed up to bike at the park on the afternoon of May 5, they were shocked at what they saw.
Their hand-constructed park was ruined. Wooden jumps had pick axes smashed into them. One was torn down. Dirt features had shovels taken to them, ruining the smooth edges and rims that had taken years to construct. A water hose that flowed down to the creek had been cut in two places. A garbage bin, bike rack and recycling container had been pushed over. The tools the bikers use to construct the park were scattered, some thrown into the creek itself.
“I was livid. It was like a punch in the face,” says Dalton Anderson, one of the founders of the park.
He’s been working on the area for over three years to turn it into what it is today.
“Anything that had a bit of a wiggle, they pushed it out.”
The young men estimate the damage would have taken several hours and more than one person to complete and comes at a time when they were already struggling with the very recent death of Tenning, who helped construct a number of the jumps in the park.
The bikers are still planning on hosting a memorial jam for Tenning over the May long weekend and would appreciate any help in order to make the park usable before the memorial jam.
On Saturday afternoon about 10 people were up at the park with shovels, chainsaws and pickaxes already working to put the jumps back together.
“We’re just going to rebuild everything and start from scratch. Sturdy everything up so if they try to do it again, it doesn’t really happen,” says Anderson.
“We’re just going to make it beefier so they can’t take it down.”
Anyone wishing to help the group can contact Anderson at dalton727@hotmail.com or via the group’s Facebook page: The Slope Line.
They plan to be at the site every day until the jumps are usable again.
“This is our life, this is what we do every day. It’s what we love to do,” says Chamberlain.