No More Winter Blues

Ray’s MTB is Bigger and Better

For much of the country, winter is a time to hang up the bike in the garage and embrace other activities until the snow has melted. For eight seasons now, however, Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park has given mountain bikers an alternative to taking the winter off. Now with two locations, new ownership by Trek Bicycles and the promise of additional locations, the future of Ray’s MTB is looking brighter than ever. We traveled to Cleveland for the grand opening of the current winter season to meet up with Ray and a host of visiting pros, and we rode until our legs fell off.

HOW IT BEGAN

Ray Petro first got the idea for an indoor mountain bike park in 1996. He was a contractor who specialized in putting additions on houses. “It was becoming fall, and I got really bummed out,” he recalls. He had been mountain biking all summer on his days off and winter was coming. He didn’t have anything else that he wanted to do in his spare time. “I tried to make it happen in ’97 and ’98, and then again in ’99, but it wasn’t happening, so I put it to rest.”

Then, in 2004, a visit to an old friend proved to be instrumental in making his vision a reality. “He was asking me if there was anything I wished I would’ve done. I told him I had this idea, and he said, ‘It sounds awesome. I think you should do it.’ “So I got a newspaper, looked in it and found an ad that said, ‘Clean space, low rent.’ That was Susie. It was the first ad I saw and the only number I called. She invited me to come over and take a look.”

Susie agreed to let Ray rent the run-down former parachute factory for free for the first year in return for fixing up the place and building his mountain bike park inside it. Ray needed $50,000 to fix up the building and another $50,000 to buy the lumber for the park. He financed it with a second mortgage on his house, maxed out his credit cards and got some of his buddies to help build the park in exchange for lifetime rights at the park.

When Ray’s Indoor MTB Park finally opened in 2004, word spread about how good the riding was. Ray added more features to the park every year, living by the mantra, “You keeping coming, we’ll keep building.” The park started making money, and after a few years, Ray decided it was time to open a second indoor park. He chose to create his second facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2010.

TREK CONNECTS

In the heat of the recent banking crisis, Ray had just begun building his second park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Two months into the construction process, Ray’s bankers told him they couldn’t lend him as much money as they had initially planned. Doubting that the park would become a reality, Ray called park sponsor and Wisconsin neighbor Trek Bicycles to explain the dilemma. After a meeting at Trek’s headquarters in nearby Waterloo, Ray agreed to let Trek buy the business
 and handle the funding necessary to keep the parks going. Ray took on the position of Creative Director for the parks. “It gave me the freedom to do what I’m good at, which is dreaming up and building these parks, without having to worry about the financial side of things,” Ray said.

GOING MAINSTREAM

Ray and Trek are already looking at new locations for their next park, with the intention of opening for the 2012/2013 season. Most likely it will be located in New Jersey, close to New York. One of the main goals that both Ray and Trek share is to go mainstream with the parks. They want to dispel the notion that the parks are primarily for expert riders and those looking to hit the jumps. The parks have always been designed to be accessible and welcoming to new or first-time riders, although they have the reputation of being an advanced-rider environment.

An addition for this winter season is the Novice Room, designed for people who have never ridden a park before, haven’t ridden in many years or seasoned riders looking to warm up before tackling the more advanced sections of the park. The room features signs that give riders tips on how to ride the park features successfully. “You can go into the Novice Room by yourself or with your buddy and have your own self-taught riding class,” Ray said. The entire park is designed for riders to advance from one area to the next as they get comfortable with each level of terrain. “If the entire park is
 a bicycle, the Novice Room is the training wheels,” said Ray. The park is very intuitive to progress through, from curving paths painted on the ground to North Shore-style skinnies that twist over rocks and logs.

INSIDE THE PARK

Ray describes the park as a physical realization of how his own mind works, so it was fitting that Ray give us our first tour himself. From the front desk there are “trails” painted in different colors leading off in various directions. You start out following a trail, and before you know it, you are immersed in the park. Initially, the space is almost overwhelming; measuring in at around 140,000 square feet, it will take you half a day or more to even find—much less ride—every section in the park.

One of the main veins of the park is the Gary Fisher XC Loop, a half-mile path that winds between nearly every section of the park. This allows riders to jump on the “singletrack” trail and veer off into one of the many sections to ride some lines, then continue back onto the cross-country loop to another area. Before we started riding, we didn’t expect to spend much time on the cross-country loop, but it was one of our favorite aspects of the park, featuring rollers, berms and some fun jumps along the way. With its punchy climbs that ascend into the rafters, the loop is also a viable option for staying in shape in the winter; two hard laps will have you sweating.

With everything from painted pathways on the ground to 7-foot-tall box jumps, it’s too much to try to describe all the riding available in the park. With visitors driving hundreds of miles every weekend just to keep riding the park, it’s no wonder that the International Mountain Bike Association has named it one of their “epic” trail systems, a designation reserved for the best mountain bike trails. Now thanks to the recent additions to the park, Ray’s “epic” trails are more accessible than ever.

Reprinted from our February issue. Like us on Facebook