Hillside Park — Attraction in Elk River

I’ve only ridden occasionally for a few years so I’m not a great rider. But I do remember Hside (my old nickname for the trail) being amazing five years ago when I was last able to go mountain biking. Tight switchbacks and rooted climbs were challenging and made sections three and four a great time and was a perfect challenge to aspire to as a beginner. Since then I’ve haven’t ridden the trail and was surprised to see the changes. Most of it is just tame especially section three. Old section three (some of section 4) had lots of steep climbs and decent with roots that made it fun and probably even challenging for good riders. The decent under the bridge was great, the boulder gardens are fun and is they’re just gone. I liked all the hard work that went into the trail but all of the difficult sections need to come back even if they erode. They are meant to be hard just let them be challenging. Basically it went from Hside to...

MORC has been really turning this park into something amazing! Since the city turned over management of this park to MORC in late 2016, there have been many improvements to make this trail more sustainable, less prone to erosion and more accessible to beginner riders. Sure I absolutely loved the trail before and was worried about the remodel, but after riding the new section three with my son, I am very happy to report that he is able to ride it without falling down. Prior to this there was very little he could ride at the park and so this is great to allow younger riders to come out and have fun here. The city has kicked in over $50k in 2017 and both section three and four have been redone. I'm glad that they are updating the trail to modern erosion free design and meeting the IMBA standards. In the coming years I believe this is going to...

Three years ago, I would probably rate Hillside as a 2 star trail, a place mostly for members of the 'tribe', and pretty much riddled with snarky technical climbs and eroded descents. Not so any more. It's been groomed, massaged and sculpted into one of the most fun and flowy trails in the metro. They've managed something pretty cool as well: most of the trail rides very differently for a less experienced/fit rider than it does for a strong one. The rollers and features are well set up for a flow trail, but crank it up and many become fairly sendy. There's not much technical here, parking is limited, but the trail is...