Pine Needle Bike Festival helps Little Red River Park

Herald photo by Tyler Clarke

Pine Needle Bike Festival organizer Mike Horn, city parks manager Alissa Baker and Coun. Don Cody are seen at a recently built retaining wall at the northern section of Little Red River Park.

It might look like a run-of-the-mill retaining wall, but the new structure at Little Red River Park ensures success for the local skate skiing community.

During a Friday press conference, the city and Pine Needle Bike Festival organizer Mike Horn announced the retaining walls completion, shoring one of the parks northern trails from tumbling down an embankment.

The $41,700 project cost was pared down by a $6,000 donation from the Pine Needle Festival -- an annual event that gives back to the community every year.

Little Red River Park is an ideal beneficiary, Horn said, noting that the summer event is held at the park every year.

Although the provincially funded Pehonan Parkway Reserve funded the basic structure, added funding from the Pine Needle Bike Festival helped widen the northern river trail to accommodate more user groups.

Since this wall needed to be replaced, it was a good opportunity to also widen the trail and enhance he usability of the trail and encourage more people to come out and use the park, city parks manager Alissa Baker noted.

Specifically, the widened trail will benefit the skate cross-country ski crowd, which has become the majority in recent years over the traditional trail-based cross-country skiiers.

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Pine Needle Bike Festival helps Little Red River Park