Durango Parks and Recreation

Dirt Lovers Mountain Bike Program

The Dirt Lovers Program focuses on learning to improve mountain bike skills while having fun on our local trails! Participants meet coaches at the Durango BMX Track / Cundiff Park to start and end all of their rides. Coaches create a fun environment to educate riders on trail etiquette, technical terms and skills of riding, basic bike maintenance, trail familiarity, basic first aid, and focused improvement for each rider.

We offer sessions for beginner, intermediate, and expert bike riders. Some sessions combine some of these groups, while others have specific groups.

Beginners + This group is for those kids who have never tried mountain biking, or have ridden on dirt a few times. Participants should be able to comfortably ride a bike safely, be able to use hand brakes, and have a bike that switches gears. 20 inch wheels and up are OK. Emphasis will be on proper riding techniques, bike handling, safely operating a bike on different terrain and having fun on local trails. Trails this group may explore: Slime Gulch, Meadow, Stacey's, BMX track, and Rim Trail.

Intermediate- This group is for those kids that have a couple years experience mountain biking and can successfully ride 7-15 miles with 500-1,500 feet elevation gain in 3 hours. 26 inch wheel bikes or larger are required. Some of the trails this group could ride include Star Wars, 8 Bells, Ella Vita, Mikes, and Telegraph.

Expert- This group is for those kids with multiple years of experience mountain biking. They should be able to ride most of the trails in the Durango Trail network. Riders should be able to successfully ride 10-20 miles with 1,000-2,000 feet elevation gain in 3 hours. 26 inch wheel bikes or larger are required. Some of the trails this group could ride include Telegraph, Sidewinder, Skull Rock, Dalla Mountain Park, Animas Mountain, Skyline, and Raiders Ridge.

After school sessions in May, September and October. 4-6pm two days/week

Summer sessions- June July, and August 9am-12pm two days/week.

**Not ALL Offerings are available all year.