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).

 

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!

 

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Building the Bachelor Bike Park- Season 4- Post 4- the completion of Rock Fall

Towards the end of season 3 we began building Rock Fall, a trail designated as a double black diamond, the most extreme designation in bike parks and ski areas. While Rock Fall is definitely the most challenging trail we’ve built yet in the bike park, and by far the best example of a downhill race track, it could’ve been designated as another black diamond trail. While it is much steeper than any of our other black trails, and also more challenging, it’s still in the grand scheme of things, not double black, the drops are small, and the jumps are caseable, but it is also much more challenging than Rattle Snake, our first black downhill trail, and most likely our best trail on the mountain at this point.

We broke ground on Rock Fall half way through the 2015 build season. To keep people from poaching the trail, we began our building below the beginning, at the first road crossing, but it’s difficult to build a brand new trail almost directly under the chair lift and not attract a lot of attention. We spent a good part of the last month of summer creating the new trail, and then put it to bed for the winter.

(upper Rock Fall, this was the first section of trail we broke in 2015)

Rock Fall was also the first trail where I was given the opportunity to lead the build, and also make decisions to follow or  not follow the flag line depending on our opinions. Up until this point  Tom had always wanted us to stick almost directly to the flag line, but after almost 3 full seasons of proving myself as a builder,  I was finally given some free reign in the decision making process. Not being someone who let’s power go to my head, anytime we found the flag line not working we came together as a group and all came up with a line we liked and then we would pick the best choice, you know democracy. In my opinion, the best trail has the character of all the builders involved, anyone that thinks they know better or best, is full of themselves. It was a great way to end the third season of building.

When we returned to the 2016 build season, we found Rock Fall buried in snow, so we focused on maintenance and other projects until the long hot days of summer melted the snow, and allowed us access to begin work again. We had a goal to complete the trail in time to use it in the Oregon Enduro Series race we were hosting at the end of August. The aim was to include every aspect of a downhill race track we could in the final build, and I think we did a great job. We’ve got big jumps, steep lines, banked and flat turns, and some small drops. It’s gonna be the most challenging trail in the system when it’s all said and done, and after a few seasons of being ridden it’s gonna be really fast.

Rock Fall is a hand built trail except for one section. In 2015 Carson Storch brought his trick jump.up to the mountain and we built him a landing so he could work on his bag of tricks when he wasn’t traveling for FMB contests. The landing was right under the chair lift and when we connected the trail I to this section. We figured why not use this as the line, so we built a step up and then 2 stepdowns with the mini excavator and they turned into the best 3 jumps on the mountain. We got Rock Fall ready to open the week before the race, we cut a section that we  are planning to build in 2017 out to save time and made a fall like e section as a go around instead. Although the trail was very soft when it was opened, it has revieced a lot of positive feedback from the community of riders, and I feel we finally built a trail that challenges even expert riders. I can’t wait to see what comes of this trail in the next few seasons.