Basin Recreation wrapped up its summer biking season last weekend with what coaches called “a big bike party” at Trailside Park.

The event combined the annual Downhill and Grill celebration, kids mountain bike clinics and the final Tiny Tires Showdown of the summer season. 

The Trailside parking lot was transformed into a racetrack with speed bumps, a sharp U-turn, bubbles and inflatable bowling pin obstacles. The competitors were all under the age of 3 and rode pedal-less balance bikes.

Racers took mixed approaches in preparing for the race. Some wore the head-to-toe mountain bike gear required for an extreme downhill ride, while others wore Hello Kitty shoes and dinosaur helmets more typical of a toddler. Most sat with their parents drinking Capri-Sun and eating Cheetos after a few practice laps through the course. 

Most of the 2- and 3-year-old Tiny Tires competitors were too focused on the race to comment, but 2-year-old Davion Acevedo-Jordan was willing to speak after his round-one win.

Davion, who said he considers himself a “professional kids mountain bike racer,” competed in the Tiny Tires Showdown for the first time this weekend and won his first race. He said he’s as fast as superhero The Flash when he races. 

His parents said they had to find a special balance bike with brakes since Davion rides so fast. Davion was very excited to show off his mountain bike gear, including gloves, knee pads and a full-face helmet. 

After two rounds of racing with 30 competitors, Davion finished in second place in the 2-and-under division.

While the Tiny Tires Showdown kept the toddlers busy, mountain bike coaches with Basin Rec led skills clinics around the Trailside Bike Park for older kids. They learned basic fundamentals like braking techniques and where to position their feet on the pedals while exploring the bike park and its features. 

Angie Greenburg, an associate recreation supervisor for Basin Rec, leads many of the district’s mountain bike programs. She’s worked with Basin Recreation for 23 years and has held her current position as associate supervisor for 15 years. Greenburg coaches different mountain biking classes, from toddler to adult lessons, coordinates program development and works with the mountain bike club. 

As a supervisor, Greenburg has been focused on improving the programs’ safety standards. She’s encouraged coaches to become certified with the Professional Mountain Bike Instructors Association.

The importance of safety, progression and building skills matches the overall vision at Trailside Park.

“It’s fun to see the expansion of the park over the years,” said Trails Supervisor David Paskoski. “It’s stayed true to being a progressive park.” 

A progressive park, Paskoski explained, is designed so riders can develop their skills and make progress all in one park. The trails and features are all built at different difficulty levels so that there’s something for everyone. 

“This park is just amazing,” Greenburg said. “It’s a great hub for kids. There’s just so much going on.” 

This is the first year for the Tiny Tires Showdown, but the Downhill and Grill has been an annual event for Basin Recreation for a while.

Phares Gines, trails and open space manager, said the event is a way to give back to the community. 

“At the end of the summer, we want to say thank you and we appreciate the community,” Gines said.

Paskoski added, “It’s been a good season. No complaints. Spirits are high.” 

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A project to make the Trailside Wheels Park more accessible and inclusive for people of all ages and abilities is moving forward.

The Administrative Control Board of Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District voted unanimously on June 11 to approve the conceptual design, which completely renovates the skate park with new street-style terrain and a warm-up/beginner area. 

The design also expands the skate park’s footprint from 16,000 square feet to a little more than 25,000 square feet. Included in that expansion are about 4,500 square feet of transition-style features and 3,000 square feet of integrated pump track. 

Phase two of the project now begins for Spohn Ranch, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in skate park design that was hired to overhaul the facility. This construction documentation phase includes finalizing drawings and specifications for the project. Spohn Ranch is handling all aspects of construction, including labor, materials and equipment.

The plan is to transform the skate park into a modern “wheels park” that serves a broad range of users, including those on skateboards, scooters, BMX bikes and inline skates. 

The skate park was created at Trailside in 2010 by placing prefabricated features on an outdoor skating rink. 

“This approach limits performance and durability when compared to purpose-built skateparks,” a district staff report says. “After more than a decade of use, the facility has outgrown its original design, and a renovation is now needed to replace and modernize aging components.”

The design was developed with the help of community input. Staff members and Spohn Ranch representatives made presentations at an open house and a town hall-style meeting of proposed features, took feedback from attendees and offered an online survey. Two conceptual designs were shown at the town hall and there was a clear consensus among participants that one of them was preferred.

“We wanted to create something that’s wheel friendly,” Jason Baldessari, Spohn Ranch’s global director of skatepark development, told the board. “So as long as you don’t have a motor, we want you to be able to come here, use this facility, and not only have fun, but also challenge yourself. We designed features in here that can be used by adaptive users.”

The design also focuses on the experience of non-users, such as parents who plan to stay at the park watching their children skate, Baldessari said. No one likes waiting in a car, especially on a warm day, and a plaza provides a comfortable and shaded space for them to sit, he said.

In addition, he said the skate park is not going to have a negative impact on adjacent amenities, including a basketball court and a shade structure, as well as a future parking lot expansion.

After the public engagement, additional geotechnical work was done on the site and showed extremely shallow bedrock, the staff report says. 

“This shifted the extent and depth of some features, but the design was still within the public’s expressed acceptable range,” the report says.

The approved project cost is $1.85 million and the funds are coming through Basin Recreation’s capital improvements budget and impact fees. In addition, the district staff applied for a grant from the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation and was awarded $500,000, which will offset the cost.

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The Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District is seeking feedback from community members regarding its overhaul of the Wheels Park at Trailside, an almost $2 million project intended to increase the park’s accessibility for wheelchair users and other sports.

“The current skate park that’s up there was adapted from an outdoor skating rink in 2010,” said Basin Recreation Director Robert Parrish. “It has pre-fabricated features on a concrete slab that’s up there, and a lot of the features that are built up are aging and need a replacement. Instead of replacing them in-kind, we’re looking at doing something different.”

The district recently hired Spohn Ranch, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in skate park design, to create a “wheels park,” which offers experiences for skateboarders, rollerskaters, bikers and wheelchair users.

“Within our own mission, vision and guiding principles for Basin Recreation, we’re trying to make things more accessible and more inclusive for people of all ages and abilities,” Parrish said. Basin Recreation opened an all-abilities playground at Willow Creek Park in October 2023.

The project will increase the park’s footprint by 25% to 50%, depending on the final design. It’s being funded through Basin Recreation’s capital improvements budget and impact fees, and Parrish estimated the overall cost to be around $1.8 million.

Spohn Ranch is both the designer of the park and its general contractor. Parrish said the contract with Basin Recreation requires the company to finish the job by February 2027, but he expects construction to begin over the summer, with most of the work completed by fall.

However, Parrish said he wants the design process to be a collaborative effort between Basin Recreation, Spohn Ranch and the community, which is why the district is offering three public engagement opportunities over the coming months.

“We really want to get the public involved, people of all ages and people of all abilities, to come in and listen to what the designers are proposing, to hear about what they’ve done and other wheels parks around the country and have an opportunity to voice what our residents would like to see in this newly redeveloped park area,” Parrish said.

The first design workshop is from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the Trailside Park administrative offices, and Parrish encouraged people to attend with ideas to give Spohn Ranch concepts to explore throughout the process.

“We’re looking for skateboard enthusiasts, scooter enthusiasts, parents with younger kids who are just learning to ride, to tell us what they would like to see in a pump track or people who use mobility devices,” Parrish said. “At this point, I would say the sky’s the limit because we want people to come in with an open mind and with a lot of ideas to give our designers some direction and some things to think about.”

Spohn Ranch will develop an initial plan based on community feedback from the first open house and bring that draft to the second public engagement meeting for further discussion. The process will repeat itself for the third session, during which Spohn Ranch will present a revised blueprint based on reactions to the conceptual design.

Parrish said he hopes to set up a way to virtually participate in the second and third meetings, but the first open house will only be available for in-person attendees. He said Basin Recreation is also working on creating a survey to be displayed on its website for anyone unable to attend the three sessions.

“People think we’re doing things just to do them, but we’re really here to do things for our residents, and this is one of those instances where we want to build what the residents want, and the best way for us to be able to do that is to get public input,” Parrish said. “Come and represent yourself and other members of the community who would use it so we can really make this an inclusive and universally accessible recreation feature for the community.”

Only the date and time of the first open house have been announced as of Monday afternoon, but Parrish said the following two sessions should be scheduled within the next few weeks.

Information on the Wheels Park at Trailside project, including details on Wednesday’s event and a tentative timeline, is available online by visiting basinrecreationutah.gov/trailside-wheels-park-project.

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Abraham Hernandez-Duron, 40, has formally been charged by the Summit County Attorney’s Office with six felonies in connection with an incident that began at the Park City Gun Club on Sunday.

Hernandez-Duron faces one count each of aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony; felony discharge of a firearm with injury, a second-degree felony; theft of a firearm, a second-degree felony; prohibited possession of a dangerous weapon, a second-degree felony; property damage more than $5,000, a second-degree felony; and failure to stop at an officer’s signal, a third-degree felony.

Prosecutors filed the charges on Thursday after Hernandez-Duron was medically cleared. He had been taken to an area hospital with injuries after the situation with local law enforcement at Trailside Park, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.

Summit County Dispatch received an alarm from the Park City Gun Club around 5:30 a.m. indicating someone was inside the building. A deputy arrived about a block away and heard five gunshots. He stopped to observe the business while a group of Park City Police Department officers took up position on the south side of the business on Forestdale Drive, according to the Third District Court filing.

Deputies surveying the area heard an additional five shots fired, and one of the deputies was “nicked on his thumb by an apparent bullet.” 

A man, later identified as Hernandez-Duron, left the business in a white van. A deputy pursued the vehicle using his emergency lights and siren, but Hernandez-Duron allegedly ignored the signal to stop and continued northbound on Old Highway 40.

Another deputy in the area had been waiting near the roundabout at Silver Summit Parkway and took over the pursuit of the suspect vehicle. Hernandez-Duron allegedly accelerated to 60 mph, ran a stop sign and entered the parking lot of Trailside Park. The van then sped through the parking lot, drove over a curb and “catapulted into the air landing on a basketball court where it became high-centered”.

Law enforcement surrounded the vehicle and assumed positions of “overwatch and community protection” until several SWAT team members could assemble. The Sheriff’s Office also urged residents to shelter in place during the situation. 

Hernandez-Duron remained in his vehicle for more than an hour. Eventually, he opened the door and tossed out the rifle. He then emerged from the van and complied with deputies’ orders until he was taken into custody. 

A crime scene investigator searched the vehicle and identified five firearms that had been taken from the Park City Gun Club, including the rifle. There was also a pipe with several pieces of burned tin foil that investigators believe was used to ingest methamphetamine, according to court documents.

Investigators also found 16 9mm cartridge casings and seven 5.56mm rifle cartridges on the floor of the Park City Gun Club. Security video allegedly shows Hernandez-Duron filing a rifle and a handgun in the area. Other surveillance shows the suspect striking the glass entrance with a hammer to gain access to the building.

There were also numerous bullet holes in the walls and windows, including 13 bullet holes in two windows in the direction where the deputies had positioned themselves. There were three other bullet holes in the windows to the east. The court documents noted there are businesses and residences in both directions.

Park City Gun Club owner David Raffone told the Sheriff’s Office the business was not open to the public on the morning of the incident and no employees were inside. Raffone does not know Hernandez-Duron.

Raffone estimated the damage to the business will likely exceed $40,000 from bullet holes, broken ballistic windows and damaged display cases.

Hernandez-Duron allegedly admitted to deputies that he smoked methamphetamine and drove from the Salt Lake Valley to Park City, and he said he located the Park City Gun Club from an internet search.

Hernandez-Duron does not have legal status to be in the United States, according to court records. His last known address was Midvale.

Third District Court Judge Richard Mrazik agreed to hold Hernandez-Duron without bail following his arrest. He will be held in the Summit County Jail after being released from the hospital. Hernandez-Duron had not retained an attorney as of Thursday afternoon.

The investigation is ongoing, and prosecutors may file additional charges as new information is discovered.

A court date had not yet been scheduled.

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