Bike Trails on Hold
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- Created on Monday, 01 April 2013 20:24
- Written by Samantha Knight
BURKE- Kingdom Trails has been operating through the winter for many years and director Tim Tierney has had the pleasure of watching it grow.
After a short winter season, Kingdom Trails thought that they would be getting ready for bike season sooner than imagined "we did close for about a week during the thaw period, but this little bit of snow gave us a great weekend," Tierney said.
Since there was more snow on the mountain, Kingdom trails was able to extend the Nordic Skiers and Snow Shoers season. Kingdom Trails was excited about the extended season, considering a lot of people came out this weekend to enjoy the wonderful weather. The trails mainly accomadates thier members, but saw more numbers of Nordic Skiiers last weekend.
"People keep coming and I think that people are starting to see that, oh my goodness this is something." Tierney said adding "people are like what is this mountain bike system, but now we are an economic player. We bring enough people now they know that this is a variable way of bringing in passive income into the area."
In the slow season there are only three full time employees working on every part of the business, but in the summer Tierney will hire about 21 additional staff members.
"We are a non-profit organization so we have to have many tasks" Tierney said, "we are a jack of all trades, you could be grooming one day on the snowmobile, go to a meeting right afterwards, and put back on the clothes and go groom again. All of us do that kind of thing here, it's just how the job works."
During high volume times he hires mostly high school and college students and believes they stick around each summer for the love of the job and a decent summer wage. Tierney hopes to have their bike season up and running May 1st, but will only be decided upon the weather. Burke Mountain did annouce their winter season will end in two weeks which will put Kingdom Trails right on schedule.
