Mystic Bike Park has been through a tumultuous couple of years, facing closure on multiple occasions. First because the bike park was unable to meet key terms of its lease agreement relating to financial viability.
The solution was to introduce the membership model, which, despite some initial grumbles, has largely been a success—especially considering the second option was to close the park.
About 12 months later, when it came time to renew the leasing agreement for the bike park, HVP said it would ONLY negotiate with the Alpine Shire Council. The Alpine Community Plantation, which had run the park up to that point brought several governance options to the table, ranging from continuing the current volunteer-run model to bringing on full-time paid staff, among others.
HVP was not interested in anything the ACP presented and essentially said either the council takes over, or we won’t renew the lease, and Mystic will close for good.
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In November last year, the Council voted to take on governance of the park under a sublicense agreement, where the day-to-day operations would be contracted out to a professional operator through a tender process.
That tender closed in mid-February, and Elevation Parks, Dirt Art’s bike park management and development arm, had won. On Tuesday, April 30, the Council voted to officially bring the Tassie-based outfit on board for five years.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind in Bright, but we managed to catch up with Dirt Art and Elevation Parks Director Simon French to find out more about their role in Mystic and what’s planned for the bike park.
What is Elevation Parks doing, and how long for?
Put simply, Elevation Parks will assume the roles that APC and Blue Dirt held within the park and its management.
The ACP contracted Blue Dirt to run the shuttles, later to perform trail maintenance, and was in the process of launching bike patrol. The second entity was, of course, the Alpine Community plantation, which was made up of all the park’s stakeholders and was responsible for everything else—financials, operational management and safety, marketing, etc.
“In that system, Blue Dirt was paying fees to the Alpine Community Plantation for operation in the park, and then Alpine Community Plantation paid Blue Dirt to undertake maintenance work in the park. And then all of the membership revenue from day passes and annual memberships went back to Alpine Community Plantation, and then some of that was going back to Blue Dirt to pay for the maintenance. To be honest, it was a pretty inefficient system,” French says.
The key change going forward is that rather than splitting management between two entities to run the park day to day and then having more outside contractors come in to build new trails, Elevation Parks will be in charge of everything.
“It will be similar to what we do in Maydena, where the whole area will be under our lease and under our responsibility. So we’ll manage the trail development, the trail maintenance, and the general operation of the park, including safety management and putting on bike patrol,” he says.
In essence, French explains that it will simplify everything. Elevation will take on everything, working with a contact manager who works for the council to make everything work. They will then pay a lease straight to the Council to operate in the park, as opposed to different bits and pieces going back and forth.
What happens to the folks from Blue Dirt who are currently working in the park?
One of Bright locals’ biggest wins from the membership model being introduced is that it created quite a few jobs. As Blue Dirt’s presence in the park increased, they were putting on more shuttle drivers, maintenance crew and bike patrol.
We asked French about what would happen to all of those folks who were employed through the park.
“Our intention is to employ as many local people as we can,” he says. “We’re hopeful that the existing staff will be happy to come over and that they are a good fit for the way we do things — that is certainly the aim.”
With the new trails they are planning to build, French says they plan to bring over a couple of specialty trail builders from the Dirt Art team, but they plan to backfill those select few with local staff.
The other staffing point French made was that locals will manage the Mystic operations.
“We’re going to use our Maydena management team to help upskill and train a local team over this winter period — because we’re obviously shut over this period anyway (so it’s great timing),” says French.
What about the community trail building and maintenance in the park?
Dirt Art had previously put together a master plan for Mystic and, through that process, had conducted quite a bit of community consultation with locals and all the various stakeholders to gauge the situation.
“There has certainly been a lot of water under the bridge, and Mystic has a long history in various management iterations. Some have worked quite well. Some have been challenging, and some haven’t worked,” he says.
“We’re very aware that there are some people out there, that perhaps would like to see change or would like to be involved in change. What we’ve said for now is that we’re here to listen and work with everyone to get the best out of Mystic,” French says.
One of the big incentives that French says they’d like to achieve is to re-engage the local riding community, get folks involved, and give them a say in the park’s future.
They also want to ramp up volunteer trail building, as it was the genesis of Mystic. There has always been an appetite for it in Bright, but it has become more difficult with some of the new management models.
“We have said we will run some training courses and get volunteers out there and then reward them with access and uplifts and other things — similar to what we do at Maydena. We’re really keen to build that community again,” he says
Is Mystic going to get more expensive?
Nobody likes paying for something that was once free. Unfortunately, due to the unique circumstances, Mystic is a victim of its own success in that it’s grown to a level where it can no longer operate without a regular income stream, as the other option was for HVP to shut it down.
The challenge of generating a stable revenue stream to cover the costs of running a bike park is also not unique to Mystic and is something trail networks across the country are grappling with—we’re working on a feature about this topic as we speak, so stay tuned.
Given that Elevation has not taken over the park yet nor officially signed the contracts, French wasn’t able to give an exact picture of what the membership model would look like going forward, but he did say the general model will remain the same.
“We’ve definitely said that we will hold the day pass costs the same as a worst-case scenario, and we’re looking at options to make the membership more effective. We’re looking at options where we can streamline family memberships, bundle things up, and make it a bit simpler and hopefully cheaper to ride,” he says. “There is no escaping that it costs a lot (to run a bike park), and we are proposing a lot more trails than what’s there at the moment.”
French says they are looking to introduce a lower mountain style uplift as they offer at Maydena, which would be available on a single-run basis and to implement a bit more flexibility in the way uplifts run so that you don’t necessarily have to commit to a whole day.
French said they are also looking at creating some definition of a multi-park pass where a Mystic membership would offer a benefit at Maydena and vice versa. However, quite a few nuts and bolts still need to be worked out.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to provide the best riding experience, and that’s not a cheap thing to do. But, we do need to make it as cost-effective as possible because we don’t want to exclude people because they can’t afford to ride at Mystic — that’s not good for anyone,” he says.
What about new trails?
Many people seem to forget that Mystic Bike Park sits on an active pine plantation run by HVP. While HVP doesn’t own the land, it is leased to them in perpetuity based on government legislation that mandates the primary purpose of that land is timber production.
While Mystic has become an extraordinarily popular tourism asset, it’s a pine plantation first, and HPV allows riders the privilege to recreate on the land. In the next couple of years, locals and tourists alike will be starkly reminded of this fact because several of Mystic’s most loved trails will be levelled when the trees are harvested.
“A lot of that Mystic Bowl area is being harvested at the moment, and further harvesting will happen over the next one or two years — which will actually knock out a lot of the classic Mystic trails, ” he says.
“It sucks losing a bunch of good trail in the short term, but it does give us the chance to get in there are re-develop a bunch of new trail that will be there long beyond our current lease,” continues French.
Dirt Art was contracted to put together a master plan about 12 months ago to look at the future of the park. As part of that they designed several trails on Emily Spur, some of which has just been built, to offset some of what will be lost in Mystic Bowl.
French says they also plan to go in after the trees are harvested to build new trails in the Mystic Bowl area. And with the landscape pulverised by the logging, it’s almost a blank slate as far as what they can build.
“From a high level, there are a couple of things we really want to achieve on the site, not just offset the loss of trail that’s coming up,” says French.
As we touched on before, a top priority is to bring in a lower mountain, beginner shuttle experience similar to Dirt Surfer at Maydena, which offers 200m of elevation and a green flow trail. French tells Flow this would ideally be serviced by ATV uplift though further investigation is needed to see if that last part is feasible.
French says they’re also prioritising a group of easier trails from the top of the hill.
“We’re looking at both flow and technical trails. Obviously, Hero Trail is pretty popular, but it’s harder than most riders who are riding Hero Trail are ready for in terms of the jumps. So we are keen to make a lot of easier trail (up there),” he says.
The other big one French hit on was building more bike park-type experiences.
“Intermediate jump trails are some of the most popular trails no matter where you go, so we really want to grow that out. And then obviously looking at some of that technical classic singletrack that Maydena is known for,” he says.
But the future of Mystic is not just about gravity, and French tells Flow a major part of the development plans involves improving links and connectivity and building new climbing trails.
“The cool thing about Mystic is that there are so many logging roads crisscrossing the hill. With some careful planning, you can make it a really cool trail riding experience with a few links here and there,” he says.
Events and the trailhead
As part of taking over park management, French says they’d like to bring events to the park. They’d like to get the Mystic Downhill running primo again so they can start considering bringing DH racing into the park.
They are also planning to port the Maydena portfolio of events to Mystic, and French says to expect Enduro Jam and Phat Fridays, but it won’t be limited to just those events.
“We’re certainly keen to get high-level, gravity-based racing back in Bright. Cross Country has traditionally not been too much in our wheelhouse, but we’re still keen to look at it if there is local interest and we can help support it,” he says.
One of the other big development goals is to create a trailhead space that will bring the riding community together.
“Right now, the riding community feels a little fragmented, and people have moved off in different directions, and it’s always been such a mountain biking town. I’d like to think we can play a part in reuniting everyone and getting everything in a good place,” French explains.
“We’re not going to have a massive building or small suburb or anything but just giving someone a place to sit down and have a bite to eat at the trailhead. We’re looking at building some infrastructure around the trailhead and encouraging people to hang out and socialise a little bit more,” he says
French says the goal is to create a hub with snacks, coffee and potentially beer if legislation allows.
As it currently stands, there are still a few t’s to cross and i’s to dot, but all is going according to plan. Elevation Parks will get the keys to Mystic in July and will be aiming to launch some of the development goals outlined here by the end of the year.
Photos: Sam Purdie, Campbell James, Flow MTB