World class skating

By Nick Gevock of The Montana Standard - 09/23/2006

A kid rides his bike Thursday up the top of the full pipe of the new Dillon skate park in Vigilante Park. Photo by Nick Gevock / The Montana Standard

DILLON — Cliff May has ridden in dozens of skateboard parks across the country, but said Thursday the new park in Dillon is one of a kind.

“I’ve never skated a setup like this,” the 22-year-old said, between runs on the skate park that has just been finished in Vigilante Park. “It’s kind of like a figure-eight; you can drop in at any point, keep going and never have to push.

“You can get so much speed.” Three months after breaking ground, a tremendous community effort that included more than a dozen businesses and people that donated time and materials is complete. The 10,000-square-foot concrete park that includes a full pipe, railings and nearly vertical walls for skaters to ride is already a favorite hang out for young people in Dillon.

May and a few other skaters tested the track Thursday, skating its features, riding the walls and catching air.

Sam Herzog, a University of Montana-Western student from Lake Arrowhead, Calif., was checking out the park for the first time. He said he was surprised how advanced the design is for such a small town.

“I’m scared to go in there, I’ll admit it,” he said, peering down one of the nearly vertical high walls.

More than a half dozen other riders showed up to ride right when school was out for the day. May said it’s been like that every day, with kids of all ages showing up to ride.

That’s exactly what organizers who planned the park had in mind.

Kathy Peterson has been working on the project for several years. But this year it finally got off the ground thanks to a $100,000 donation from local ranchers John and Phyllis Erb and the city in June approved its construction in the park.

In the end, the project cost $120,000. But that doesn’t include all the donated time and materials that the community pitched in, said Chris Hildebrand, general manager of Seattle-based Grindline Skate Parks, which designed and built the park.

Once work started in June, it didn’t take long to complete thanks to a lot of help from the community, said Mark Hubbard, Grindline chief executive officer.

“The budget was really small, we did it with lots of donated materials,” Hubbard said in a telephone interview while traveling to Telluride, Colo., where he’s opening another park. “It was a real community effort and a pretty fun job, probably one of the best ones for me.” Grindline changed the design after John Erb donated the full pipe that became the centerpiece of the park. Hubbard said once that pipe was put in the middle of the park, everything else fell in place.

The design of the park makes it possible for skaters to race each other or hold time trials, Hubbard said. It’s a design that the company, which has worked on more than 60 parks nationwide, has pondered for years but never built.

“It was unique to that park to have the donated metal full pipe,” he said. “As we dug to fit it into the ground, we made the ‘pump bumps’ and that pretty much made the park.” Watching the park come to life over the past few months has been a joy, Phyllis Erb said. She dropped in every few days throughout the construction and said it was gratifying to see kids help with the clean up on their project.

Giving local kids ownership in something was the whole idea when she and John decided to give for the park, she said.

“They needed someplace to go that is their own,” she said.

Dillon now has a world class skate park that will literally attract people from across the globe, Hubbard said.

“That’s what skating is — things that aren’t meant to be skated are the radest,” he said. “People are like ‘Whoa, how do you skate it?’” Reporter Nick Gevock may be reached via email at nick.gevock@mtstandard.com