Robert C. wrote on 06/29/18 at 3:27am:


I really miss Poplar...

I've ridden 800mm bars before and there are many times that I was nervous riding through trees.  I'm on 760's right now and honestly, I have no intention of going wider.  I ride WWC and Poston regularly and anything wider than 760 takes a lot of extra concentration.  Especially Poston!

msedly wrote on 06/27/18 at 3:36am:


I agree with everything you said, except the first sentence. Not trying to argue, but 99% of the time a go-around starts there is some little dinky root that's gotten just a little eroded or heavily eroded that caused someone to make the go around. Most time its the little roots. I'd bet you a couppla beers its true 95% of the time. 

I like most of the roots, most of the time, but if I'm just ridin' and not thinkin' about it, I'll normally just ride around a root  (hopefully still in the - now widened - trail tread). I think its a natural reaction for most of us. Look at where the trail is wider than initially built (that prolly describes a LOT of our trail tread) and its because we've just been avoiding those roots in the center of the tread. Generally those roots "grow" or get eroded more and more and push the riders further to one side of the trail or the other. This really widens the trail a lot. If we get rid of the "offensive" roots that appear when they first start, I'm convincved we'd go a long way to keeping our trail at its intended width. (Some widening on our most heavily used multi-use trails may be natural and good as it allows the competing users to go by each other more easily, but that's another issue.)

To your point, if we really had hard blues and true blacks, most of the better riders might follow your example, following the trail tread and doing the features as intended. But most of our trails can be ridden by fairly inexperienced riders or others who may not consider the challenge  of "roots" or harder features to be part of the fun/ experience.

One notorious example are the two step ups on the Beatty Zig-Zag Bridge Loop. Its a "black" section due to 3 or 4 features, the step ups being the hardest. Most riders don't ride this section. The start of the loop had a somewhat difficult roll/step up out of a small ravine that wasn't too hard at first (10 years ago). As it eroded, your line had to be better around the rocks, but most of all you need good momentum at the top to keep going over the roots on the top. That feature was left alone for years untill recently as it got harder - now someone started an easy roll up to the left of the feature.  The bigger step up is in the middle of the section, after the Zig-Zag bridge. It likewise has gotten harder over the years. I used to clean it fairly easily, but it became harder. Now, I gotta be on my game. (OK, I ain't no expert). Like the feature at the beginning, the step up itseff isn't too high, but you need a lot of mo to keep going over the roots at the top. In the last year or so someone did a go around on the left side of that step up too. I've covered it up 3 times (there's no damn excuse for not working to try to make it or instead walking it) but someone keeps pulling the trees and sticks away.

A good story on taking out roots: Years ago Vasco was "accosted" by a walker one day yelling at him for de-rooting Beatty. After he settled the guy down, he went so far as to meet him back at the trail at a later date with a highly experienced arborist (mountain biker) who explained that taking out roots won't kill the trees (considering normal exceptions as to drought, disease, etc.). As I recall, the walker wasn't fully satisfied, but the long and short of it is its damn hard to kill even a small tree by cutting out 1 or 2 or 3 of its lateral roots. (Don't quote me on that - ain't no arborist either.)

One thing I did learn pretty early on, when it comes to trail building and even trail maintenance, if youve got 3-4 folks on the job, you'll probably get 3 or 4 differemt opinions on how to tackle an issue. Never fails. Lets just keep working to make 'em better together!

Speaking of which - ya gotta go see what's happenin at Beatty - more fun in the woods!