Thunder Mountain Bike Park

Photo: MTBVT

Overview:

Thunder Mountain Bike Park, or Berkshire East Ski Resort, is located in Charlemont, MA in the northwest corner of the state. The bike park opened in 2015 and has everything from gravity logic jumplines like Gronk, Hawleywood, and Fort Hill, to bermy tech like Trillium and Billy Badger, and even loamy fall lines with some rock slabs like Back of the Shack and Cliff Claven.

Pros:

Thunder Mountain is a great place for all skill levels, in fact I thought the green trail was super fun. There is also more than enough to please the most talented riders like Fort Hill which are the biggest public jumps on the continent, Wine Tree which is packed with super sketchy rock features, and Too Easy which is known as the steepest trail in New England. As I said before, Gravity Logic has built every single trail in the park so this place is basically a mini version of whistler, and all the trails have a very modern feeling to them. One surprising thing about Thunder Mountain is despite how popular it is, there are almost no braking bumps which is something I can get behind.

Cons:

The lift lines at Thunder Mountain can get pretty long. In addition, once you’ve waited for the lift you have a very long ride up the super slow chairlift which makes it hard to get in lots of laps here. As stated above, the park has only been operating since 2015 so there aren’t too many trails, but each year they seem to be adding something new here so this isn’t really a negative.

Rating (Bike Park Scale): 7/10

As long as you brave the long lines and slow chairlift, you are in for a good time at Thunder Mountain. Every single trail is just so well built that there isn’t much to complain about.