Teen nears completion of bike skills park as part of Eagle Scout project
· KSL.comEstimated read time: 4-5 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Thomas Riffe is building a $366,500 bike skills park as his Eagle Scout project.
- The park, 92% funded, will offer trails for various ages and skill levels.
- Riffe aims to complete the project by July, encouraging outdoor recreation and community involvement.
LA CRESCENT, Minnesota — What began as an idea during a mountain bike trip to northern Wisconsin is now becoming a reality for one La Crescent teenager.
Thomas "Tommy" Riffe is leading the effort to build a professionally designed mountain bike skills park on 8 acres of school district property near the La Crescent-Hokah High School baseball field.
The project, which serves as his Eagle Scout project, has grown into a $366,500 community recreation space that is now more than 90% funded.
Riffe said the idea first came to him during a race trip with the La Crosse Area Mountain Bike Team in Cable, Wisconsin.
"I'm on the La Crosse Area Mountain Bike Team, and we had a race up in Cable and Hayward, Wisconsin, and they actually have a bike skills park, and that's kind of where I got the love for the idea," Riffe said. "We went to the local pizza place that night, and I looked at my mom and, I said, 'This is what I want to do.'"
The planned bike skills park will feature multiple riding lines and trail loops designed for different ages and experience levels.
"A bike skills park is an area for kids to put their bikes into use for bike coordination, handling and skills in an easily repeatable environment," Riffe said. "Bike skills parks are different from trails because they have features, and it's where you more or less learn how to use your bike, and then trails are where you put those features and those skills to use."
Riffe said one of his favorite aspects of the design is the variety it offers riders.
"My favorite part will probably be either the skill section or this one trail that goes all the way around," Riffe said. "There's so many different features on all these trails, and they're so different in so many different capacities. So you can do as many things as you want to without it getting boring or too repeatable."
The project is also helping Riffe work toward earning the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in the Scouting America program.
Eagle Scout projects are intended to demonstrate leadership, planning and service by requiring candidates to organize and lead a significant community project.
Riffe said the experience has challenged him to develop skills beyond mountain biking.
"This has taught me a lot not only about people but also about how things can be different from another," Riffe said. "Grants are a lot different from going in front of a business and asking for their support. Just with the way that you talk and the way that you show your confidence, it's a lot different from being behind the computer screen with grants."
Over the last two years, the project has required Riffe to work with businesses, community organizations, volunteers and school officials while navigating fundraising and grant applications.
Those efforts have drawn support from groups including ORA Trails, which has assisted with grant applications, volunteer work and promotion of the project.
"Honestly, I think the biking community and ORA and a lot of the non-profits are amazed," ORA Trails admin operations director Kayla Ryan said. "You don't hear of a 14-year-old, 15-year-old starting a $350,000 bike park. So it's incredible."
Ryan said the project will provide a space for riders of all experience levels while encouraging more people to spend time outdoors.
"It's not intimidating. You can kind of go where you're at and start where you're at," Ryan said. "I think the community absolutely needs those outdoor spaces to get people off screens, to just be involved in the community and be able to experience easy access to recreation."
The project is now just thousands of dollars away from the finish line.
"With all of their help, in-kind and monetary, we're 92% to goal, and that means we're only $29,000 left out of a $366,500 project," Riffe said. "So we are getting very close."
Riffe said donations are still being accepted through his fiscal sponsor, the Lancer Booster Club, or through the project's Zeffy donation page.
If fundraising and construction continue on schedule, he hopes to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the park by the end of June or sometime in mid-July.
For Riffe, the project represents an opportunity to create the same kind of experience that inspired him years ago while giving future riders a place to learn, explore and build confidence on two wheels.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.