The Williams Lake mountain biking community will get a chance to celebrate the newly reworked and restructured Boitanio Bike Park this Sunday, Aug. 12 with a Boitanio Park Bike Jam.
The Williams Lake Cycling Club has been working with local professional mountain biker James Doerfling, under the guidance of lakecity mountain biking pioneer Mark Savard, and with the city’s support, to overhaul the bike park in an effort to make it more interesting and accessible to all levels of riders.
“We got started on it last year and didn’t finish, obviously [due to the wildfires], including putting on any events we had planned, and then the whole year went by,” Savard said.
“Tyler Keep had been volunteering there forever, but he moved, so we were kind of scrambling and James Doerfling came out of the woodwork and got himself a mini excavator and started working there.”
Doerfling has started a new company, Jimco Services, focused on building machine-built mountain bike trails in the area.
“I started about the beginning of July, and spent about 10 days there,” Doerfling told the Tribune. “I’m getting a little bit older so I’ve started my own side company. I’m still doing the riding stuff, but I’m trying to establish a company for later on, and I’d been talking with the bike community and the bike club about buying a machine to get involved with the machine-built side of it and pulled the trigger.
“So I got that gig to help maintain and build new stuff at the BMX track, and everyone’s been pretty stoked with what I did so I think it turned out great.”
Doerfling said it’s fun to give back to the community and to be involved in the whole trail-building side of making things better for mountain bikers.
He added he’ll be there this Sunday to help celebrate the event.
“I put a little twist on the build of it,” he said. “There’s so many ways you can build things now so everyone can ride it and have fun, like making things rollable, but bigger jumps on the side, so everyone can have fun on it: all skill levels and all ages.”
Savard, meanwhile, said the youth have had an instant buy-in to the new, reworked bike park.
“It’s been transformed where things that had been kind of laying dormant are now really cool lines, and he’s just been listening to the kids and putting his own professional rider flare in there.
“It’s a little bit of the vision I’ve been asking for the whole time: something for everyone.”
At this Sunday’s Boitanio Park Bike Jam, Red Tomato Pies will be sponsoring the event, along with Savard’s Red Shred’s Bike and Board Shed, and the Williams Lake Cycling Club.
“Jason from Red Tomato Pies will be there providing food, we’ll have some beverages, and just let everybody rip around, have fun and give some feedback and hopefully get the community out,” Savard said.
The Boitanio Park Bike Jam is slated to run from noon until 3 p.m. this Sunday.