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!

 

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!