I struggle to keep pace with two bikers weaving through berms and over jumps at Legacy Bike Park.

The duo I am trying and failing to catch up with are part of the park’s trail crew, and they know the mountain like the backs of their hands. 

We skid to a stop at three monstruous berms shaped in an “S” on a trail named Onyx where they explain that last season there only used to be one long turn, but riders were gathering too much speed into the jump that followed. They reshaped it into a snake-like path that slowed riders down.   

Tweaks and adjustments like the one on Onyx are what uphold Legacy’s standard of providing riders with seamless gravity-fed runs that prevent having to slam on the brakes or kick pedals. But getting there takes excavators, shovels and lots of trial and error.    

Trai design company Terraflow Trail Systems was the mastermind behind Legacy’s adrenaline-filled downhill trails.  

Founded in 2009 by local lifetime mountain bikers Pete and Linda Costain, Terraflow was involved in trail-building across the Flathead Valley, including the Whitefish Trail and Whitefish Mountain Resort’s first downhill trails.    

The company that works out of Whitefish and Big Sky often gets business from private landowners “that have the money to essentially create their own little playgrounds,” Pete Costain said. 

But that changed when he got a call from Marty Beale, owner of contracting business Mindful Designs who knew Costain through bike racing.  Costain initially thought Beale was going to ask him to build a few private trails for a landowner, but he had different plans.  

The two rented e-bikes from Sportsman Ski Haus and took them up to the 175-acre property. Eventually Beale revealed his intention to transform the old logging forest just south of Lakeside into a commercial bike park.  

“We spent the day monster trucking around all these overgrown roads,” Costain recalled. They began measuring the hill’s slope and taking soil samples. 

Good dirt consists of a balance of clay, silt and gravel, Costain said. While clay is good for molding, rain makes it slow and slimy. Too much silt makes dirt hard to sculpt, and rock can be helpful for laying the foundation for jumps and other features.   

A benefit was that the property's north facing slope kept the dirt from direct sun, meaning it could hold moisture that helps trails keep their structure.     

The tiered series of old logging roads provided maintenance and emergency access without interrupting the trails’ flow, and skid lines formed from hauling timber up and down the mountain proved a useful grid to map where trails would start and finish.   

By the fall of 2020, co-founders Mindful Designs and Terraflow broke ground. What followed was a flurry of construction.  

“That summer of building was so absurdly over the top,” Costain said. “[We] worked like actual freaking maniacs.” 

A steep headwall by the base and flat area in the middle of the mountain posed an obstacle for trail building, Costain said. “We’ve had to really get fairly creative with drawing out grade.” 

But trails were etched strategically into the headwall that fed into the shuttle pickup, and the flat zone became a homebase fitted with a pump track, airbag and picnic tables for riders to take a break before finishing their run.  

Costain remembered digging until the morning of opening day on July 15, 2021. 

“We were both still on the excavators. Looking down literally through the forest you could see the first shuttle truck picking up the first customers,” he said.  

But the end product was worth it.  

“To have a blank slate and just to make really fun trails that are going to appeal to a wide variety of riders with zero development restrictions or whatnot was unbelievably rewarding fun,” he said.  

JUST OVER four years since Legacy opened its doors, the bike park continues to fuel stoke with quality trails. With Terraflow’s operations expanding to other projects at Bridger Bowl Ski Area and Big Sky, upkeep falls to the trail crew working Monday through Thursday to maintain trails.   

“They’ve really become lords of trail work,” Costain said about the three crew members.    

Trails Manager Tom McDermott grew up in Iowa, building mountain bike trails with his brother in their backyard. Now, he builds full-time while living in a refurbished box car at the bike park.  

“I basically make day-to-day decisions on what needs maintenance, where we need to fix brake bumps or rebuild berms,” he said. 

“I know what little things I want to change on every trail. It’s just finding the time to prioritize these things,” he said. He usually focuses attention on heavily used trails like Bluetiful, which can become riddled with brake-induced bumps.  

Excavators, packers, hoses, rakes, shovels, chainsaws and handsaws are some of the tools used by McDermott and the crew.   

Kellen Culver began working at Legacy in 2022, shuttling riders up the mountain before joining the trail crew. Spending day after day on the mountain, Culver knows the trails well.  

“I have this place pretty completely memorized,” he said. “I can tell you exactly how many feet between berms and if it's a left-hand turn, what kind of jump, how many feet is the jump.”  

Costain also described needing a sixth sense to design trails.  

“To be a really good trail designer, you just sort of got to have this strange spatial awareness that a lot of people don’t have,” he said. “I’ve got this weird sense to see arcs and turns and grades and transitions.” 

Costain uses an inclinometer as a helping hand to guide the flow of trails, but it’s also intuition.  

“So much of catching air on a bike is having that constant sin wave, kind of a perfect arc to arc from transition to roll and whatnot,” he said.  

Seeing people ride the features that were altered or refined at the hands of the trail crew can be scary but rewarding, Culver said.  

“It’s really scary because you think, ‘Man, are they going to like it?’” he said. “These riders, whether they know it or not, they’re entrusting their livelihood with how good of a trail builder I am.”  

But any new features are often tested by people on staff and can take multiple rounds of trial and error. “I’m the guinea pig here,” Culver laughed.  

Culver and McDermott are also aided by a group of roughly 15 volunteers who help rake trails and pull loose gravel among other tasks. 

Riders can volunteer for two hours for a free day pass, working a full day earns two passes. Volunteers put in between 250 and 300 hours of trail work between the spring and June, according to McDermott.  

AFTER A few runs with Culver and McDermott, I take my all-time favorite route down the mountain before heading back home. From the shuttle drop-off I descend into the named Dogtown technical zone.  

There I can choose my own line within the web of thin trails filled with rumps, bumps and logs before eventually ending up on a portion of RADish, a flowy green-grade trail that’s surprisingly fun, even for experienced riders. I launch off the slew of side hits and catch air on some rollers before coming to a stop at the Meadow Village Zone to take a quick break at a picnic bench.  

Once I catch my breath, I pedal up the wood ramp that drops into Sparkle, a black-grade trail that squeezes 26 jumps within 130 vertical feet, a stat I learned from Culver. While my arm muscles feel they are going to wither away at the end of my run, adrenaline courses through my veins from spending so much time in the air.  

I roll into the shuttle pick-up zone where a group of similarly stoked riders are waiting to be scooped up to do it all over again.   

For more information, visit legacybikepark.com. 

Reporter Jack Underhill may be reached at 758-4407 or [email protected].

    A biker catches air off a jump at Legacy Bike Park. (Courtesy photo)
  

    A biker catches air at Legacy Bike Park. (Courtesy photo)
  

    A young biker rides a trail at Legacy Bike Park. (Courtesy photo)
  

    A young biker rides a trail at Legacy Bike Park. (Courtesy photo)