After a roller coaster ride with his buddies on his favourite mountain bike trail that put a smile on his face, 12-year-old Enzo Bracklow joined the crowd of dignitaries gathered at the foot of Pidherny hill.
That feeling of being a kid again is open to everyone now that the 650-hectare Pidherny area has gained protected status as a recreation site.
"I'm very glad we have these trails," said Bracklow. "I love it because it's just so much fun, and flowy. It's like riding a roller coaster on your bike."
Bracklow and his 12-year-old friends Kelton Rainbacher and Yanni Trujillo are regular riders at Pidherny, which they say offers terrain no other park in the city can match.
"There's lot of diversity with this stuff here," said Rainbacher. "There are lots of good trails and lots of good structures that teach you to ride."
"I just like the flow of the trails and how smooth it is compared to the other trails," added Trujillo. "It's really nice."
Pidherny was officially opened on Sunday in a ceremony attended by mayor Dan Rogers. The area's protected status is a result of the joint co-operation of the City of Prince George; the Prince George Cycling Club (PGCC); the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts; Ministry of Transport; Ministry of Forests, Ministry of Environment, First Nations; and the woodlot owner.
"Pidherny has been used for years and years by people in Prince George but it's never been recognized in a formal way by government as a place for recreation," said Mikel Leclerc, a district recreation officer for the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.
"The cycling club was determined to do some things about mountain biking and pushed a proposal forward to help our ministry come up with a recreation tenure with the other tenures in place already and everybody supported it."
Leclerc said Pidherny is an example of multiple interest groups and several levels of government working toward a common cause, and he'd like to see more recreational projects built that way.
"What's cutting our legs down a little bit in B.C. right now is there isn't enough of the true integrated resource management approach to things," said Leclerc. "This Pidherny spot is kind of dream come true that way. Everybody is working together to make it happen from the beginning and it's something for people to be really excited about. It's a playground for everybody."
The area, on the northwest corner of the city off North Nechako Road, is open to cyclists, walkers, runners, skiers, snowshoers, equestrian riders and, potentially, motorized recreation. Pidherny became popular two decades ago after the Nechako Ridge Trail Society started building trails there and the PGCC took on the project about four years ago.
"Now we have the security of knowing we have an area to come and recreate with and that there are other partners within the area and a lot of voices in here that have a say in how things will play out," said Nicole LeBlanc, president of the Prince George Cycling Club.
The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts sponsored a three-day trailbuilding workshop two weekends ago and a representative from the International Mountain Biking Association demonstrated to the volunteer crews what to do and what not to do to create sustainable trails that don't require much maintenance.
"It comes down to safety," said LeBlanc. "Pidherny has always been known as a radical extreme place where kids go out and break their necks.
"There are guidelines we build the trails to and there are people that will insure us now, so all these structures are built to certain guidelines. So now we can rate the trails (according to the degree of difficulty) to give riders a heads-up before they go on a trail so they know what they're getting themselves into."
LeBlanc said there will be significant efforts to build more trails on the west side of the property. The top priority right now is to build a cross-country trail tame enough for all types of riders that would suit the club's Sprockids learn-to-ride program. The cycling club has built a small-scale skills park to teach basic riding skills in a safe environment and wants to expand that to a much larger area to try and match skills parks that already exist in Burns Lake, Vanderhoof, Williams Lake, McBride, Fort St. James and Smithers.
"In 10 years I'd like to see this part of a corridor where you ride from Williams Lake all the way to Terrace -- it would be a big tourism draw for the city," said LeBlanc. "Now what's happening is the province is recognizing mountain biking is huge money, it's a huge tourism industry."
