Cathy and I attended the National Trails Day Festival activities in Asheville this weekend.  

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Amazingly enough, for years, there has not been an organized mountain bike club in the Asheville area.  But things are changing in a big way for the region.  

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With literally hundreds of miles of trail in Buncomb County and beyond, an effort to build and maintain the trails was of the utmost importance…

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Pisgah Area SORBA was formed in November of 2005 as an effort to gather the collective resources of the mountain bike community topromote land access, trail preservation, and new trail development.   Visit their website at: (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Friday night’s festivities kicked off with a meet and greet at Asheville’s Stone Ridge Tavern.  Saturday’s announced work plan, a rework of the treasured “Greens Lick” trail in Bent Creek, was discussed.  

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Apparently, in July of 2007 alone, almost 60 riders were evacuated from the trail, indicating the advanced level trail needed choke points and deterrents to keep the lesser qualified riders from getting in over their heads.  

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The plan included high skill rock gardens at the trail head to make a rider think twice before attempting the trail.  Plenty of rock amouring of creek crossings, moving lines and berms, and modifying the final leap of faith, a three tiered tabletop system, giving riders a choice of a go-around and three increasing levels of jumping difficulty.  130 workers were on hand to assist in the process!

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I was fortunate to meet with the IMBA Trail Crew of Kelly and Collins Bishop.  It was quite interesting to hear that they were well aware of the Trailblazers physically challenged trail at Jetton Park.  Apparently news of the trail had come up in a conference in Knoxville, just a few weeks ago!  Word does travel fast.

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In addition, I was introduced to Brian Williford, IMBA’s North Carolina Rep.  Brian has many great ideas for interlocking clubs across the state, getting us to work together to secure grants, rally politicians and continue to grow NC as the southeast’s mountain bike capital.  Brian will be attending the IMBA Club Care Clinic in Charlotte this November and we’ll discuss a roundtable of the NC clubs in the same time frame…

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Walt Bready of SORBA was on hand to discuss the regional SORBA involvement.  It was again interesting to note that our club, while not SORBA affiliated, is looked upon with much favor by the larger organizations.

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I met with Van Rogers, the Pisgah Area SORBA president.  Van is interested in linking with our club to assist in the development of their fledgling organization.  I assured him that we have probably made every mistake a club can make, so our knowledge would go a long way to making certain that they more forward quickly and avoid some of the pitfalls that we have fallen into as a club.

We’re off to ride DuPont State Forest under the direction of Woody Keen.  We’re looking forward to seeing the much discussed and recently rebuilt Burnt Mountain trail.

Yes, really cool!  (Sorry for the delay Tom. I had read this & meant to come back & make some comments...)   

The summary & pics are much appreciated!  Its so nice to have dedicated members like yourself continue to promote the club, make key contacts and just advance overall interests in this sport/hobby/passion of ours.

Thanks!

I think it was the last Thanksgiving weekend when a few Charlotteans went up there and rode Burnt Mtn trail (we're talking Dupont, right? Unless there's another one by that name somewhere else). Woody had just cut the new trail configuration in, and done some of the armoring etc. It was still very soft and it had rained so things were mucky, but it was clear that it was going to be a fun new trail.

On the Trail with IMBA:

Short write up and pictures on their blog:
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cmowery3 wrote on 06/12/08 at 5:50pm:

And the best part was, all I had to do was show up!  So much more enjoyable when someone else is sweating the details...

I received this in an email this morning...This was the rock armored section that we spent 6 hours constructing...Sad, really sad...

Rode G.L. this morning and there has been some de-constructive work done to some of the rock armoring. The very first rock section has been almost completely destroyed (rocks removed and thrown into the woods) and what remains will surely become a huge mudpit. I can’t tell you all how frustrated I am right now. It’s not just the hard day’s work that went into making that section, but all of the effort that went into making N.T.D. happen. A lot of people joined together to do something really positive and 1 or 2 people decide that it doesn’t work for them… and they do something really negative. I’m guessing that these aren’t the type of people to be involved with trail building in any other way. As angry as I am about this, it just proves that:

1) The technical trail feature that was designed to get people’s attention at the start of a difficult trail…got people’s attention.

2) Unskilled riders are making it to the top of (and riding) Green’s Lick

As always, I enjoyed riding G.L. this morning, but our work there is not done. We’ll need to schedule some time in the near future to deal with this and other issues.

flyinelvis wrote on 06/21/08 at 1:24pm:


Sackcret works.... trust me I know

Gramps