Picuris Pueblo leader revels in newly built bike park

PICURIS — Craig Quanchello, Picuris Pueblo’s lieutenant governor, has been dreaming of big air since he was a kid.

In the ‘70s, tribal elders would shake their heads as he and his friends rattled along the arroyo on their White’s Auto banana-seat bikes, past the tribal offices and over a jump they’d scooped out by hand. To them, every inch off the ground felt like freedom — a way forward, if not a way out.

Last month, Quanchello’s dream of helping future generations fly even higher became a reality.

Picuris officials and their partners unveiled a new progressive All-Wheel Park on July 19 with a series of competitions open to the public, awarding a total of $8,000 in prizes to riders from all over the region.

Bikers vied for best tricks in the new jump park and fastest times in a pump track, a loop of rollers completed in 2023 not unlike the jumps that helped Quanchello and his friends get airborne all those years ago.

“It needed to be on the edge, right?” Quanchello told the Journal this month as he described Picuris Bike Park and the towering jumps recently installed there. “It needed to be something that they work up to and something worthy of competition. Being a kid, we always wanted the biggest jumps, and when freestyling came in, we wanted to be able to do what we saw or heard about in the magazines. Now it’s come full circle.”

The idea to develop the park was born out of the doldrums of the pandemic, during which tribal youth and elders were under strict orders to stay on Native land. The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, which in 2022 scorched the southeastern corner of Taos County where Picuris Pueblo and nearby Peñasco sit, also underscored the need for more activities for tribal members.

“We had a swing set, but, you know, that’s for the younger kids, so we never had anything for our older kids,” Quanchello said. “That became the mindset from there on, and we were very lucky to get some funding from the state.”

The tribe started with building a skate park in 2022 with the Missouri-based American Ramp Co. before building the pump track a year later. Last year, as plans coalesced to construct a more expansive bike park, the tribe added a bowl to the skate park.

To fund the All-Wheel Park, Picuris consulted with the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division about six months prior to applying for a $500,000 Trails+ Grant, which has awarded $30.6 million toward local economies and industries aimed at “enhancing community well-being,” according to the division’s website.

Picuris won the $500,000 grant and matched it with $200,000 of tribal funds.

“Our mission is to really increase outdoor access for New Mexicans,” said Karina Armijo, Outdoor Recreation Division director. “When somebody’s interested in not only doing something like this for their community, but also to benefit the whole region, that’s something we get really excited about. This fit really nicely into our mission, and we were happy to do it.”

To build the park, Quanchello hired Santa Fe- and Chimayó-based builders Rocket Ramps to create a cutting-edge course. Teddy Jaramillo, co-owner of Rocket Ramps, said he and his partner, Henry Lanman, saw an ad Picuris had placed in a local newspaper and picked up the phone, assuming it was a long shot.

“We just kind of cold-called them,” Jaramillo said. “We just said, ‘Hey, we’re based out of Chimayó and Santa Fe, and we design and fabricate ramps.’ We clicked when we first met (Quanchello), and we came back a second time to do a PowerPoint presentation. They gave us the contract, which was amazing since we’re a really small company. It was cool that they gave the little guys a shot.”

It was a tall order, literally, as Quanchello and other tribal officials envisioned a park to encourage kids to advance and bikers from around the country to see Picuris as a destination for mountain biking in the Southwest.

“They didn’t want any extra small or small lines,” Jaramillo said. “They just wanted medium through extra-large so that kids wouldn’t get bored of it. And so it’s a little more exciting and advanced, which I think is really cool, and there was only so much space to utilize, so it worked out super well.”

Quanchello still remembers skimming through pamphlets his dad brought him as a kid. They showed BMX riders flipping and tail-whipping off jumps similar to the ones that now sit not far from his home at Picuris.

He said he at one point aspired to gain entry to the X Games. He hopes that tribal youth today will, too, find the inspiration to aim high.

“I still ride my bike,” Quanchello said, “but I might have to upgrade it now.”