Kinosoo Ridge Aerial Park design chosen

While Kinosoo Ridge is open for the season with new rules, the popular snow resort will soon be a year-round destination.

The Aerial Park build is set to begin soon after the M.D. of Bonnyville council picked out a design structure from the consultants McElhanney Ltd on Dec. 9.

The $1.5 million park is a seven pole, four-level customized climbing structure that gets more difficult the higher you go. With high ropes, beams, ramps, tires, and bridges, M.D. council is excited for the park to be built.

“It’s about 16 meters high, it has a great big platform on the top,” said Reeve Greg Sawchuk on The Morning After.

“The bottom levels are fully accessible for anybody to use and as you go up in the different levels, the adrenaline level will also go up. Maybe not for the faint of heart–the top level,” he said.

Work began in the fall with design and site clearing, with options when completed to allow for expansion in the future, from seven poles to ten, and so on.

The consultants believe it is reasonable to project 3,000 and 6,000 visitors to the Adventure Park within the first year–compared to 42,000 visits during a typical skiing and snowboarding season, that’s 14 per cent of the winter traffic.

There will also be themed elements to the park to make it a made-in-the-Lakeland activity space as you move through the park.

“The Air Force, agriculture, [Cold Lake] First Nations as well, we’re getting their involvement in this alternative focus on what the area has to offer. But I think it’s going to be a really unique place for families to go. And it’s just one of the first cogs in the wheel that we’re trying to develop out there at Kinosoo to make it a multi-season,” said Sawchuk.

The project timeline aims for construction to finish by the end of June, in time for Canada Day 2021.

The closest similar parks are in Edmonton with one at Snow Valley Aerial Park and Birch Bay Ranch.

Sawchuk said there could be more development in that area at French Bay after meetings with Cold Lake First Nations with more opportunities for camping and a boat launch.

“The whole area in regards to French Bay, and the potential to increase the size of our lease, make trails available, more camping available, that sort of thing, really to make it a spot where people can go not only for just a couple hours, but to spend days,” Sawchuk said. “I think that’s what we’re kind of looking at in regards to the development of tourism.”

Rigging Specialists is the construction firm that will build the park.