North American Bike Park Review Tour

SkyPark Bike Park

Located just a couple hours from the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, SkyPark at Santa’s Village is nestled up in the San Bernardino mountain range. As you may have guessed by the odd name, Santa’s Village was a North Pole themed amusement park that lay abandoned for years until the current owner envisioned a new future for it. Today, it’s a family-friendly amusement park complete with rock climbing, zip-lining, and of course— a bike park. It’s also one of the few parks in North America that allows riders to shred their eMTBs.

SkyPark Bike Park is a self-serve, pedal access bike park with around 300-500 feet of elevation. Before you scoff at that number, it’s worth noting that the trail builders have made the most of that elevation with trails that are easily three to four times longer than the climb. SkyPark is a great park for beginners and advanced riders alike. Most of the trails are friendly for a range of skills and abilities. Even the black trails have go-arounds and are easily rollable for riders with moderate skill to progress.

THE TRAILS

SkyPark Bike Park has a fun climbing trail to the top, with a mellow grade and wide, bermed switchbacks. While it does require some level of fitness, the climb is short and mellow enough for kids to still keep up with dad just fine. Of course, since the park is eMTB friendly, that climb gets a whole lot easier with a battery aiding your efforts. As a result, riders with electric assistance will get a whole lot more laps in, and we thoroughly enjoyed riding our Trek Powerfly eMTBs during our two days at SkyPark.

At the top of the climb is an area with benches to catch your breath and take in the epic view. After taking your Instagram picture, you can drop into any of the trails, with beginner to advanced options waiting for you. As you go farther down, each trail fingers and intertwines so you can mix tech with jumps or green with more advanced terrain.

Although there may not be tons of trails or elevation on paper, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a bike park with better trail conditions. We didn’t see a single braking hole, bump, or blown berm in the whole bike park. While they leave the black trail on the back of the hill natural and raw, the front trails receive regular watering and work, making conditions all time, all the time.

The black trail Comet and the double black jump trail, Neverland, are two of our favorites. The black trail has a great mix of tech and fun trail riding and even has an alternate line with a fun North Shore style skinny ladder bridge section to test your balance and commitment. While it caters to advanced riders, intermediates will still enjoy pushing their skills on a relatively easy bike trail compared to blacks at other bigger mountain parks. The jump trail is a perfect line of tables, step-downs, and step-ups connected with ripping berms. Everything is on the small side, making it friendly for less advanced riders, but still fun for experts utilizing the side hits and hip transfers.

ON-SITE ACTIVITIES

While the bike trails are more than enough to keep you entertained, for those towing around little ones or just looking for extra activities to do, SkyPark has plenty to offer. The best part is that all the activities are included when you buy a day ticket, so there’s no extra fee if you decide to hit the rock-climbing wall or shoot some archery after a day of riding. If you are towing the family along, there’s ice-skating, zip-lining, candy and souvenir shops, ropes courses, pedal carts, and more. As a kid, this park is pretty much heaven on earth.

SkyPark also has a small pump track, strider track, and a full-service bike park complete with parts, mechanics, and gear.

FOOD AT THE PARK

Dining options are also plentiful and go well beyond the typical burgers and pizza found at most parks. Whether it’s street tacos or sandwiches made to order, the various restaurants on site have you covered. If beer is your thing, there’s also a full-service bike-themed bar with beer and drinks for your post-ride.

WHAT BIKE TO BRING

SkyPark Bike Park is mellow in nature, meaning it’s perfect for shorter travel trail bikes up to enduro bikes. We’d say anything in the 120-170 travel category. You won’t find rock gardens or steep chutes, but Comet does have technical sections where an enduro bike fits well. However, we’ve seen plenty of riders out on hardtails and even full DH rigs at this park. While we had an absolute blast riding our Trek Remedy and Slash trail/enduro bikes, we have to admit that we spent most of our time banging out laps on our Powerfly eMTBs. You just can’t beat the efficiency of getting in those laps!

WHERE TO STAY

SkyPark does not currently offer lodging, so your best options are to stay in Lake Arrowhead or Arrowbear. Airbnb’s are plentiful, as are hotels and motels. There’s also plenty of camping nearby, ranging from paid sites at Dogwood campground just a few miles down the road, or free BLM camping areas with no amenities.

In the coming months, SkyPark Bike Park will also be debuting their own campground, complete with either RV or tent sites. Since that will be the closest lodging to the park, it’s going to be the preferred option for those willing to sleep outside four walls. It should make getting in multiple days at the park even easier!

LOCAL INFO

If you’re looking for a place to grab breakfast on your way up to SkyPark, our recommendation is to head into the town of Lake Arrowhead and visit Belgian Waffle Works. Located right on the lake, this place has incredible waffles and breakfasts that will keep you loaded up for the whole day. While the lines can be a deterring factor on weekend mornings, it’s still worth it for the extravagant options. The town also has plenty of things to do from shopping, sightseeing and water activities.

After riding all day at the bike park, our favorite place to stop is just down the road from the park. Lou Eddie’s Pizza sits atop the Rim of the World Highway and is the definition of a mountain town pizza joint. The lines can get long here, but thankfully the pub downstairs will keep you entertained while the hard-working crew cranks out pizzas on their rotating stone pizza oven upstairs.