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Gravity Logic goes solo

Bike park planning group spun off from Whistler-Blackcomb
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The Progression The Gravity Logic group, which has helped design the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, is in demand around the globe.

Three years before there even was a Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Dave Kelly and Rob Cocquyt were cutting trails on Whistler Mountain with Eric White of Whistler Backroads Adventures. Before that they were building trails in Squamish, including legendary Powerhouse Plunge, 19 th Hole, Power Smart, Pseudo Suga, and others with a distinctive freeride bent.

When Whistler-Blackcomb decided to open a bike park in 1999, Kelly, Cocquyt, and Tom Prochazka were the obvious choices to plan and build the new trails. Since then the size and scope of the bike park has increased every year, while ridership has increased by double digit percentages annually.

“When we built those first trails on the park in 1996 a busy day was 25 riders, and we were all making single digit hourly wages,” said Kelly. “I never thought in a million years that I would be heading to China or Norway or the Mediterranean to build mountain bike parks and making a legitimate career out of it.”

The success of the park has prompted other mountain resorts around the world to sit up and take notice, which more than two years ago prompted Whistler-Blackcomb to create the Gravity Logic group to serve as consultants for the growing lift-assisted mountain bike industry. They also hosted Gravity Logic forums in Whistler, inviting other resorts to take part.

Last week Gravity Logic’s principal employees — Kelly, Cocquyt and Prochazka — confirmed that Whistler-Blackcomb was transferring ownership of the company to their group.

“It didn’t really fit into (Whistler-Blackcomb’s) business model,” said Kelly. “They are a ski company that runs lifts, restaurants, and stores, but they’re not really in the business of being mountain bike park consultants.”

Kelly confirmed that the newly created Gravity Logic Inc. has a five year deal to provide trail design services to the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, as well as to dozens of other clients around the world who are looking to build, diversify or upgrade their bike parks.

To that end, Kelly credits Rob McSkimming, Whistler-Blackcomb’s vice president of business development and the former managing director of Gravity Logic, for his forward thinking.

“The reason we did this is because Whistler is by far the most successful mountain bike park in the world, nobody else is even close,” he said. “Last year Silver Star had just over 15,000 rider visits, when we were over 100,000 — and Silver Star is one of the better examples.

“There is a parallel to the ski world. There are ski areas all over North America, but ultimately the goal for most skiers and riders is to come to Whistler and ski the mountains, which is how they’ve achieved over two million skiers visits a year. The sport of downhill, lift assisted mountain biking is still immature, but if we want to grow our visits to the bike park we need to grow the whole business. In that sense what’s good for Silver Star is good for us.

“We’re basically looking at the product around the world, and saying the reason why the sport hasn’t taken off is that the product is substandard pretty much everywhere except for Whistler and Silver Star. If we can improve and better the rider experience around North America and around the world, we’ll grow biker visits to the Whistler-Blackcomb park.”

Some of the projects planned include a competition park in China, ski resorts in Norway, France, and Austria, and closer to home in Winter Park, Jackson Hole, Steven’s Pass, Bitterroot, and Calgary Olympic Park. Some projects are starting from scratch, while others are redesigns.

For example, Kelly says attendance at the Calgary Olympic Park has actually started to drop recently, which he says is the result of the park being too difficult. “They basically outbuilt their customers, and went to the triple black diamond crowd, which is really only five to 10 per cent of the market. They need to diversity their product, and offer more trails to a larger market of people.”

For Whistler, this year’s jobs include planning and maintaining the courses for Crankworx, adding intermediate trails to the Garbanzo Zone, and building a trail down from the Roundhouse. The goal of the last project is to be more efficient when visitor numbers drop after Labour Day, and service the park with the gondola instead of the Fitzsimmons and Garbanzo Lifts.

Gravity Logic is also doing a feasibility plan for mountain biking on Blackcomb, which is one of the ideas put forward to handle busy days in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park. Adding more trails to Garbanzo will help spread out traffic, but it may not be enough.

“It’s critical to increase our lift capacity, (Whistler-Blackcomb) wants their numbers to grow,” said Kelly. “It’s satisfactory right now to have 100,000 visits, but the goal in the end will be to have 200,000 mountain bike visits per year and to handle that we’ll need to have more lifts running.”

It’s shaping up to be a lot of work, but Kelly says it doesn’t feel like it.

“I can tell you that in the last two years I’ll occasionally get tired of the travelling, the airports and driving back and fourth, but when I’m on site I haven’t even had five minutes where I might have regretted my career path here. Speaking for Pro (Prochazka), Rob and myself (Gravity Logic) truly is a dream job come true, and I couldn’t envision doing anything else right now.”