Season 1- 2013- Building the Mt. Bachelor Bike Park- Post 4- Getting ready for Opening Day

(Dan, the newest member of the Trail Crew, test riding on Last Chance in the days before our soft opening)

As September began, we trail crew was in full swing in our last efforts to open up the trails we had only begun to build 2 short months ago. We all upped our workload to 5 ten hours worked days a week, an effort that forced us all to dig deep as we gave the trails everything we had in us, just so that we could open the trails we said we would. We hit the trail system with as much energy as we had on the day to day battle against ourselves and the terrain in which we were attempting to create these new trails for the public’s enjoyment. We saw ourselves pushed both mentally and physically as we attempted to work together in this last push to make the most of all our summers efforts before the critiques of those who never even lifted a shovel came rolling off there tongues and into our minds. We were all proud of the hard work we had put into the side of this volcano over the last 2 months, which left us all sensitive to the opinions of others, and some amount of anxiety welled up in us as the final countdown to opening was upon  us.

Trails that were planned to be open for opening weekend:

Lava Flow (machine built blue flow trail)

Rattle Snake (hand built black downhill single-track)

Blade Runner (connector trail to get back to West Village Lodge and Pine Marten Lift)

Last Chance (hand built, black diamond single-track, more enduro than downhill at this point in the building process)

Cone Run (machine built connector trail for the first season to get people off of Lava Flow and back to West Village Lodge and Pine Marten Lift)

We focused most of our trail building attention and energy in two fronts, one group of us out pounding away at Last Chance, while the other group ran water truck laps to assist the pate compactor in it’s mission to turn all the machine built trail into a good hardened riding surface. The days were long, and we all ended up beaten down at different times, having to take up the slack of those who didn’t have it in them on any particular day. We really worked on operating as a team for the most part, sure we did not all get along the greatest, but for the most part by this time we had all become friends and found mutual respect for each other and what we brought to the trail crew as a whole.

(Last Chance, with South Sister and Broken Top in the background)

The learning curve became more mellow as the days rolled into weeks and we began to not only seen and better understand the flow of the terrain and land, but also to understand how to approach building turns and berms, which was something that at first we were building too small and sharp to be able to really carry or gain speed through them. everyday we worked long hard hours that brought us closer and closer to the goal in sight, to be able to ride all the trails that we had been working on all summer by the soft opening day on September 13th 2013.

(test rides, looking at the line and what needs to change to make it work better, and trail crew critiques)

Trail Crew cohesion also began to strengthen as more of us spent time together riding the trails together at the end of the day and going out for beers after work, which helped the work environment become more and more productive since we began to value each others input more as the season ran along. It was a pleasant change from the beginning of the building season when none of us really knew each other very well, so making decisions on what to do in certain complicated trail building situations began to take less time and the building also saw some serious improvement as well.

 

(Last Chance, with Mt. Bachelor’s summit in the background)

 

Industry Day- Our “Soft-Opening” of the Mt. Bachelor Bike Park

(one of the first riders to enjoy the fruits of our trail crew labor on Industry Day)

Almost one month to the day we had ourselves a little test ride what we have ready Industry Day at Mt. Bachelor. Essentially this meant the bike shop employees, professional riders/racers. industry reps, trails advocates, and mountain bike internet types and photographers we invited to come and see what we have been up to, all totaled about 40 riders showed up on everything from 29er XC race bikes, to full on downhill bikes, as well as everything in between (enduro/trail/all-mountain’who even knows anymore bikes). Everyone showed up at the bottom of Pine Marten lift and Tom Lomax gave a brief introduction to the trails, what was to be expected, and what has gone on since we broke ground on July 1st. From there, the group go on the lift and headed up to the top of the lift to make our way down to Lava Flow for the first “real” group of riders to see the work we had done.

(The group of riders gathered to ride for our Industry Day/soft opening)

In preparation for this, the trail crew was busy putting final touches on a number of projects throughout the “finished” trails. Paver stones were installed in a few areas to reinforce things we assumed would see a lot of abuse once more than just trail crew tires were touching the trails.

(Dustin, on the day of Industry Day placing the last of the pavers into the roll in of the half-pipe)

We all split up in small groups the last few days before our first riders were to arrive,and worked down the list of things we wanted to see improved before they showed up. Since more than a few of the berms on Lava Flow were almost sand boxes, a number of palettes of pavers went up the mountain to their strategic placement for moving into the trails and turning them into a more ride-able surface.

 

Long Term Bike Review- Prophecy Oracle- Post 1

The modern mountain bike has gotten to a place where we are able to ride more and more challenging terrain, and has lead to a renaissance in modern trail building. For the last 10 or more years I’ve exclusively rode full suspension mountain bikes, claiming with each new purchase to be riding the best bike I’ve ever ridden. And for the most part that’s true, these 6″ travel, air sprung, 12 speed, dropper post, big wheeled bikes of 2018 are game changers, but is it always necessary?

As I approach my midlife, I personally am embracing the so called crisis and am attempting to add some new adventures to my life. In my mountain bike life I’ve been craving a more utilitarian bike, something that slays trails but doesn’t attract the attention of the bike thief locked up out in front of the grocery store or bar, something that looks at home in an xc race as well as at the dirt jumps, something that more resembles the romantic idea of what a bike is than these multi link crazy moving machines.

This search lead me through the internet, looking at smaller, younger brands, bikes that less people had seen or ridden. About a year ago I discovered the brand Prophecy Bikes (https://prophecy.bike) out of Camarillo CA. They were just launching the Oracle their first frame, and right off the bat the geometry really spoke to my riding style. I also liked that I could choose the color and that the options for build were wide open.

See this year I was talked into racing the Singlespeed World Championships as they were being held in Bend and a riding buddy from Pennsylvania was gonna come out and race it and he thought I should join in the festivities/ suffer fest that is a 50 mile race on a singlespeed mountain bike as I would come to find out. So this summer I made the leap and joined the curmudgeons of the singlespeed society, but on my terms of course.

The guys at Prophecy were pumped to help me with my project as they had yet to build one of their bikes up as a singlespeed. The frame can run 29″, 27.5+, and/or 29+, I went with 27.5+ and a 2.6″ Schwalbe Rocket Ron’s set up tubeless for my tires and so far I’m loving them. Fork is a Rock Shox Pike 140mm, brakes a Magura MT5 trail, with a RaceFace mechanical dropper post.

As I write this first post I’ve put about 300 miles on the bike, and I haven’t ridden my Nomad once since I got this built up and I really am in no hurry to return to my full suspension anytime soon. I love the challenge of singlespeed mountain biking and it’s the perfect bike for winter riding here in Bend Oregon. Plus I love looking at lines with a hardtail underneath me to navigate through and over the technical sections on some of the local trails. We can so easily forget the joy of cleaning a rock garden on a bike that monster trucks through everything unaffected, but on the Oracle I find myself finding fun new lines that recreate fun in trails I had been overlooking in seasons past.

 

Long Term Bike Review- Post 2- 2018 Santa Cruz Nomad

I’m moving into my third month of owning the 4th generation of the Santa Cruz Nomad, and if I’m being completely honest, I fall a little more in love with this bike on every ride. While it’s still a new bike in most ways, at this point it’s safe to say, I feel right at home on it.

This bike inspires exploration and is the perfect way to get there and back. In the past few months I’ve gotten to ride it in most trail situations Central Oregon has to offer, and it has always excelled. Luckily riding this time of the year in and around Bend offers a lot of opportunities to test the bikes limits, of which at this point with more than a few hundred miles on it, I still can’t find anything to complain about. 

This bike imspires me to explore my personal limits on a bike and helps me get off the riding plateau I had found myself on, which is something I look for in all the bikes I own or ride. I’m loving all the places this bike has already taken me and look forward to exploring more riding options outside of Oregon. I can’t wait to take this bike on the road with me next year as I get to travel during the trail building season, because I want to see how this bike does in the bike park, and unfortunately this time of year all the lift access riding is in support of snow sports.

The riding this time of year is mostly cross country, so I have spent a fair amount of time climbing, and the Nomad continues to be a very capable bike for going up hill with almost no bobbing, the VPP rear linkeage really does what it’s supposed to while climbing and descending, and I never have to set the rear shock to climb, it’s always all the way open and doing what it’s supposed to.

So far my only complaint is that I waiting this long in my mountain bike life to bring a bike from Santa Cruz into my stable, and I’m having a hard time at this point believing that I’m gonna want to ride anything else. Enough about the bike, it’s time to hit the trails!

 

Project Report- Dirt Mechanics- Deschutes River Trail Expansion-

A few weeks after coming home from Windham NY, I got a text from a friend who owns a trail building company based in Bend Oregon. He and his crew had been working at a project at Anthony Lakes Resort and were evacuated due to a wild fire in the area. This lead to him rearranging his projects for the remainder of the season and this put him and his crew in Bend working for Oregon State Park on a new section of the Deschutes River Trail that connects Tumalo State Park to Ryan Ranch (think Shevlin Park outskirts of Bend city limits.

An Oregon Youth Corps Trail Crew had broken ground earlier this year and created a basic tread, then we we’re brought in to finish the tread and work through all the skips sections. This section of river canyon is littered with lava rock of every shape and size, often heavy in accumulation and weight in more than a few areas.

This project was a hand build, while we had a Candy Com to move dirt and tools, and a come-a-long to move the rocks that we’re beyond he strength of our four man crew. On the easy days we were mainly creating consistency in tread width and removing organics from existing tread and bench cut. But on the hard days we spent all our time and energy moving rocks and trying to find dirt beneath lava flow.

This becomes…

This, becomes…

This.

A project like this through the lava flow took three of us the better part of four days to complete, and it took multiple holes and Candy Com loads to fill in the area. It was a real battle, but I think the final project speaks to the attention to detail and skillset that the builders at Dirt Mechanics possess.

Here’s a shot of Derek using the come-a-long on one of the many too big to move by the hands of man alone rocks. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with Dirt Mechanics. The owner Paul and I met a decade ago when we both were volunteering on trail projects with Central Oregon Trail Alliance and we also spent a few sure.mers working together at the Bachelor Bike Park, so it was nice to finally get a chance to work for him on one of the many trail projects nhis company works on every year!

This particularly sweet section of trail overlooks the confluence of Tumalo Creek and the Deschutes River (seen below).

 

Bike Park Report- Windham Mountain Bike Park- Building Kaaterskill Cruise over/under

Designing a trail system is one of the things Gravity Logic does best, just take a look at the most popular bike parks in North America and most of them have been designed and built with our assistance (and I’m super stoked to be able to now be apart of this). In a perfect scenario bike park trails don’t intersect, but sometimes trails need to cross each other, and then it’s up to the builders to get creative. About Midway down Kaaterskill Cruise, it intersects the blue jump trail Widlerness Roll, and the best place to cross it was right through of if the best tabletops on the entire trail which caused some concerns among trail crew and the locals alike. 

So our challenge as builders was to go through the jump without changing the lip or landing. To do so Keith designed a metal frame that we could set in the jump and then cover on three sides with wood to create a tunnel through the jump. Neither Gregg or I had ever built an over under feature so we were excited to see how it would turn out. Once the frame was completed, we set about removing the dirt needed to get the tunnel in place.

Once the earth was removed we set about moving the frame into place. After that we moved the dimensional lumber in and began construction on the side walls. Trail crew stayed late on their Friday afternoon to see the project through to the end so that we could open both trails for Saturday.

We completed the project without having to change the lip or landing at all, which was our goal. The tunnel allowed us to open over one mile of new trail to the public, and in doing so has increased access for beginners to get a better understanding of bike park riding on a green trail!

The crew that stayed late and made it possible! What a fun project to be apart of, bike park riding is getting better all the time in the Catskills thanks to the efforts of the Windham Mountain Bike Park Trail Crew, make sure to give them a high five the next time you’re riding there!

 

Bike Park Report- Windham Mountain Bike Park- Building Kaaterskill Cruise

I arrived at the Windham Resort in the heart of New York’s Catskill mountains in the middle of June, becoming the fourth machine operator from Gravity Logic to come lend a hand in the building of Kaaterskill Cruise, the newest trail in the Windham Mountain Bike Park. This green trail we are building was the missing piece in the existing trail system.

Windham Resort is most well known the the mountain bike community as the most recent host to UCI World Cup racing on American soil, but it’s more than just a few race tracks. Gravity Logic had spent a previous summer there, building two blue trails, Wilderness Roll a blue jump trail, and Batavia Skill a blue hybrid trail with singletrack and machine built turns. The park was missing an easy green trail to get beginner riders started in the building of the skillset that park riding takes, so that’s why we have returned in 2017 to fill the void and in the process build one of the longest green trails in a bike park here in America.

Gregg Winter was running the show on the ground when I showed up in Windham. A long time machine operator with Gravity Logic, he was overseeing the building of Kaaterskill Cruise. With four Bobcat mini excavators and operators we were busy chasing each other down the mountain, working in groups of two, one operator out front grubbing and creating the initial trail and the other following behind doing the finishing work. 

The hardest part of building a good green trail is keeping the trail in the green designation and not allowing it to become blue. No jumps no banked turns, just rollers and canted turns, it’s a great challenge for a builder to keep a trail green while making it flow and fun.

Week after week we continued to create more fun green trail for the masses to enjoy. Over the course of the five and half weeks I was in Windham we completed new sections that allowed us to open Kaaterskill Cruise farther down the mountain before tying it in to Wilderness Roll to get riders back to the bottom of the mountain. While the entire trail will not be completed and open to the public until next summer, Windham Mountain Bike Park now boasts almost 3 miles of green trail that is open to the public!

 

Sustainable Trails Conference- 2017- Bend OR

The Professional Trail Builders Association (PTBA), brought its annual sustainable trail conference to Bend this year. This week long event had hands on learning sessions out at multiple sites in he area (Smith Rock, Tumalo State Park, Tetherow, Inn of the 7th Mountain, and Rock Ridge Park), while sessions, talks, and indoor and outdoor tradeshow and demos went on at the Riverhouse on the Deschutes. 

I started my attendance of the conference out at Inn of the 7th Mountain at the mechanized trail building training on Monday morning. With a collection of nearly ten machines ranging from mini excavators to walk or stand behind skid steers and earth moving machines. Experienced machine operators demonstrated best practices with the machinery and then gave instructions to builders who were there to use a machine for the first time or learn some new skills behind the controls. It was a nice laid back format that allowed time for everyone to get some hands on the controls while a few trails were built in the meantime.

Classroom sessions began Tuesday and ran through Thursday a few a day with networking time in between. Sometimes it was hard to pick the session to sit in on, as the topics were all pertinent to where we are as trail professionals in this ever growing and changing industry. 

Nearly 250 trail professionals from mostly North America were in attendance at the conference. Business owners, members of trail crews, land managers, and others came to listen, learn, and share their own experiences with others who could benefit from the sharing of information. It’s great to see this industry taking the initiative to create opportunities to share new information and best practices with others in the business of designing, building, and maintaining trails all over the country and world.

While I’ve known members of the PTBA over the years this was the first event of theirs that I’ve attended, and I found the whole thing informative and enjoyable. Being the bike/trail nerd that I am I took notes in every session, and tried to think of ways of sharing this information with others when I return to dirt work for the season. It’s was a great conference and one that I will most likely attend again in the years to come.

 

Fat biking in Bend recap

Winter still has its cold grasp on the mountains of the Oregon Cascades, even as the days get longer, and spring is a mere 3 weeks away the snow continues to fall in the upper elevations, keeping the dirt and singletrack we long for buried for a bit longer. This winter I have spent almost all my time on a bike, riding fat bikes in the snow. it’s been a interesting experience, learning this different style of riding, and finding new enjoyment in my ever evolving mountain bike life.

Guiding fat bike tours has proven equally interesting. Unlike the summer season, most of the clients who have booked tours are first time fat bikers, and as often as not mountain bikers in the first place. Instead they are tourists interested in checking out these strange bikes and seeing what riding bikes in the snow is all about. 

Creating first time experiences for people is interesting, and it’s made each of these tours a different experience. Guiding appeals to my personality because I enjoy getting to know new people while sharing my passion for exploring the forest by bike. This is an environment where I can shine, and give people a part of myself and my experience. I love taking folks who have never been to Bend before out into the woods to play. The pace of fat biking is great for creating a social environment while exercising, and provides an opportunity to share some of ourselves while out for a ride. 

Group sizes have varied for tours, I’ve gone out with as few as 2 and as many as 10, and each tour has proven challenging while still providing a lot of enjoyment. It’s great watching people do something for the first time, while getting g to help make the experience more enjoyable either through instruction, encouragement, or just leading the way through the experience. 

Having the opportunity to create these experiences has made my normal winter dudrums more manageable, and opens up new ideas for how to explore my world on 2 wheels. I look forward to seeing where this fat biking revolution takes me in the seasons to come!

 

Check out what I’m up to on Instagram

Follow me on Instagram! Username: sethwgehman

When I’m not working on content for my blog, I’m still capturing images from my mountain bike life and other shenanigans on my Instagram, so if you enjoy the posts it’s another fun way to see what I’m up to.

Oh and I started the hashtag #mymountainbikelife as a fun way to share similar photos and it’s kinda taken off, so if your into that type of thing, join the crew!