LUDLOW— Okemo Mountain Resort is scheduled to open its lift-served mountain bike park for the season on June 23. The Evolution Bike Park at Okemo opened its first trail from the summit last summer and is adding two more trails to the upper-mountain system in 2018.
Scrambler, Okemo’s premiere summit trail, is 3.2 miles long and descends 2,000 vertical feet. It is an advanced-intermediate-level ride that returns to the base of the Sunburst Six chairlift or the Sugar House via a connector trail. Shake-and-Bake, a more challenging trail that starts at the summit and returns to the Sunburst Six, is EVO’s newest addition. Sluice, a connector trail that links Shake-and-Bake to Scrambler, also makes its official debut in 2018.
The Evolution Bike Park at Okemo opened in the summer of 2015. Anchored by The Green Mile and Flow Rider trails, it introduced terrain with berms, bridges, boardwalks and rollers accessible by chairlift. By its second season, the trail count grew to six – all served by Okemo’s South Ridge Quad A out of the resort’s Clock Tower base area.
Trails from the summit were part of EVO Bike Park’s original design created by Christian Robertson, who has been designing and building trails at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in Colorado, and Mount Sunapee Resort in New Hampshire, for more than a decade. When Robertson first explored the terrain at Okemo, he found it to be an ideal canvas for creating what potentially could become one of the best mountain bike parks in New England. The lower mountain area features gentle terrain offering something for the never-ever rider through advanced-intermediate levels. The upper mountain, served by the Sunburst Six, offers unique opportunities to incorporate the natural landscape into the trail design for more advanced and expert riders.
