MTB Project bills itself as the “next generation of mountain bike trail maps” and is in partnership with IMBA. Among their many map-related features and tools, they make it possible to embed their maps on a website. I’m the webmaster for CROCT and we now have a Sechler Park Trail page where we’ve done this.
The results are in for the 2014 Top Ten Difficult MTB technical obstacles in Twin Cities Metro area.
See all the details for the whole project here.
I rode the new South Wirth trail at Theodore Wirth MTB Park in Minneapolis on Monday afternoon. It’s a hoot. It’s crammed with flow features that can be rolled for intermediate level riders. But advanced level riders (or wannabes like me) will have a rollicking good time. There’s nothing like this trail in the metro area. It’s like having a slice of the intermediate/advanced flow trails at Cuyuna, Spirit Mountain and CAMBA , all packed into a very small area. Truly amazing. Props to MORC, MOCA, and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board for making it happen (details below).
Here’s a 1 min 45 second video clip, taken with my GoPro in a chest harness. You’ll see when I got to the drops that I stopped and walked them, turned around and walked back, then rode them but not fast enough to clear them. I sorta rolled them and was lucky I didn’t crash. I’ll be back asap to try again.
Yup, voting is now live. Deets here, including photos and videos of all the candidates.
Stage 1 voting ends midnight on Friday, Oct. 31, 2014.
It was an all- MORC weekend. I rode Murphy-Hanrehan & Lebanon Hills by myself on Saturday. And then I rode Theodore Wirth and Elm Creek on Sunday with Chris Heineman and Mike Loerzel.
Can you tell that a certain someone was out of town?
I attended the Woolly Bike Club‘s 2nd Annual Woolly Day in Saint Croix Falls, WI last Sunday.
I’d never ridden their trails and they were using the occasion to open their brand new flow trail, Erratic Rock. They timed it right: blue skies, warm temps at the peak of fall colors.
WBC club vice president Mark Fisk (@markbfisk) greeted the 2 dozen+ riders and sent us out en masse to ride the nearly 3-mile trail. (I’d forgotten that I’d met Mark back in June of 2013 at the IMBA Upper Midwest Regional Summit in Cable. Duh.) Among the group were my fellow MORC members Issac Niebeling and Michael Guinee.
I finally cleaned this log skinny both ways at Lebanon Hills Mountain Bike Trail yesterday. It turns out that the instructional series on ‘holding a line’ I’m doing for Thick Skull Mountain Bike Skills is actually benefiting the instructor. Whodathunkit?
55-second video:
I cleaned The Browner stockade skinny today at Hillside Park Mountain Bike Trail in Elk River. Toughest skinny I’ve ever ridden. Props to designer/dirt boss Rich Omdahl and the rest of the Dirt Wirx crew for building it. Rich wrote in the MORC forum:
The Browner is in its own class of evil. I’ve never even made it half way across it. I designed that thing to have 8 layers of difficulty. The first one you contend with is that I built it at the top of a climb on an uphill slope with an off camber entry. Then it gets harder.
The Browner is named after Ray Brown who was the first one to clean it (YouTube video here). I’m the second. I’m particularly pleased to accomplish this on my 65th birthday.
Here’s my one-minute video. I only show two of my dozen+ failures:
FlowRide Concepts and MORC volunteers have been putting in long hours this past week to build the dirt jumps at Cottage Grove Bike Park.
Photo album:
Video
Here’s a 40-second video clip of some pump track action at the Cottage Grove Bike Park last Saturday, featuring Clay Haglund, Brandon Charboneau, and Josh Sipma.
My apologies for the shaky video. I was, um, breathing hard.
After a dozen tries, I finally cleaned this rock skinny yesterday at the Lebanon Hills Mountain Bike Trail skills park, riding it backwards on my 29’er, no hopping. The rear wheel just caught the edge of one of the planks.
