Silver Mountain, ID, Report: A Very Tall, Long, World-Class Bike Park in the Panhandle of Idaho

Tyler Mayer getting the goods at Silver Mountain’s bike park in the Idaho Panhandle. | Photo: SnowBrains

Report from June 8-9, 2024

Views of lush green forests and deep blue lakes came more and more into view as we gained elevation on Silver Mountain’s gondola on Saturday morning.

Idaho’s Panhandle is even more gorgeous from the air, I thought as we sailed along America’s longest gondola.

The day was sunny, warm but not too much so, and there was no wind; it was perfect weather to check out Silver’s Mountain Bike Park.

We got to the top of the gondola, hopped onto our bikes, and then took a blue trail called Jack Ass back down to town.

This was not your regular mountain bike trail; it was eight miles long with a vertical drop of over 3,000 feet and it took over 45 minutes of continuous biking to get down.

I’ve never ridden a trail like that before.

Silver Mountain is known for being one of Idaho’s premiere ski areas but what may not be as known is that it also has the #1 rated mountain bike park in the Pacific Northwest for four years running.

An assortment of green, blue, and black trails are accessible right from the top of the gondola; some are shorter and go straight to Chair 3, where you can hit multiple laps back to back, while others are long and enduring like the ones that go for eight miles down to the town of Kellogg where the gondola terminal is located.

Silver’s Bike Park has a little bit of something for everyone.

We started with Jack Ass, a blue trail, then hit another blue called Burro Loco, which was slightly more technical.

That was insanely fun.

The trails under the gondola start in an open field where some ski runs are then descend into thick forest.

Once in the forest, the trails branch off and you have dozens of options for more trails to hit, from green to blue to black flow and technical trails.

We had to take frequent breaks because our hands got so tired from the epically long downhill trails—a good problem to have.

The trails just went on forever here…

Wildcat, a blue trail, was one of our favorites of the trip.

We had to stop for lunch at Noah’s canteen to refuel and the food was excellent and not too expensive (go for the chicken sandwich!)

After mostly riding blues on the first day we felt ready to take on some black trail on Sunday.

We started with Snake Pit that led to Chair 3, a steep technical trail.

It was exactly that: steep, rocky, technical, and challenging in the best ways.

By the bottom, I was worked but extremely stoked.

More black trails, please.

Then we hit a couple of black flow trails from the gondola down to town called Hammer and Ghost Pepper.

These were steep trails that cut through the woods with playful jump lines all throughout the trails.

We caught some good air and landed on some very well-constructed landings all while keeping a nice flow through the endless twists and turns of the trails.

The berms were smooth and fast; a couple of them were huge and had you accelerating at uncanny speeds.

The vibes were high and everyone at the bike park we encountered had smiles on their faces.

That’s what a nice bike park does.

At one point we hit a technical black trail called Snaggletooth and I biked the rockiest, most technical section of trail I ever have and flowed it.

I only did it because I was following Tyler who was following a local who made it look smooth.

Then a crew of more locals followed us and rode the technical section with ease and we all exchanged stokey high fives at the bottom.

Bike culture is fun.

Ghost Pepper black trail. | Photo: SnowBrains

After miles upon miles of long, tall downhill trails through gorgeous, thick, moss-covered forests, we were officially tired.

Tired, but happy.

We elected for one more ride down Ghost Pepper and after that decided to call it a day.

Each day we rode last weekend, the weather was beautiful, the dirt was beyond beautiful, the trails were completely uncrowded, and the stoke was high.