Bringing more PBR to Fruita, Colorado

Starting in April, Singletrack Trails will be on the Colorado Western slope building more new trail in the North Fruita Desert. More commonly known as 18Rd, these trails have been a spring and fall destination for mountain bikers for nearly 25 years.

Last summer, Singletrack Trails flagged several different routes for COPMOBA and the City of Fruita in the 18Rd area. Over the winter the Grand Junction BLM completed the EA process to approve three of the routes for construction this spring.

The first priority is the Pumptrack Trail. This trail will start near Chutes’n'Ladders and end back near the trailhead. It will consist of pumps, berms, and rollers or PBR. Pumptrack Trail will be laid out in a fashion to be enjoyed by everyone. Ridden slowly, PBR can provide large grins of joy with the tires on the ground. Need some air? PBR can provide plenty of gravity induced endorphins if a rider is willing to do some hard pedaling to gain and maintain speed.

Needless to say, those familiar with the riding in Fruita know the smile factor that the trails can induce. Plenty of people can be found complaining about sore facial muscles after a day of riding in the spring. Pumptrack Trail will only add more to the smile factor.

Want to see all three trails built? Want to complete your ride down Joe’s Ridge with a bigger version of Kessel Run? Do you think there should be a singletrack connection from Western Zippity back to the trailhead? Help COPMOBA raise the money to get this done. Every $5 you contribute builds a new foot of trail. Really? $5? For a foot of trail? What a great deal! You and 9 other friends can make sure another 100ft of pure lusciousness is built on the ground this spring. Help get it done now, to make sure there are three more trails for you to ride on you next visit to Fruita from the dark, gray, wintery climes East of the Mississippi and beyond.

Be sure to check out the Fruita Singletrack site for more information on how to help out during the project.

You can ensure that there is enough PBR for everyone.  Donate here.

Switchbacks

Switchbacks have a negative connotation in the trail building world.  In fact, they are commonly despised.  They are hard to build and hard to navigate.

The reason is that the currently accepted design is not suitable for how trail users actually use the trail.  Singletrack Trails is currently working on a how to section of the website.  In that section will be more details on our thoughts to properly build a sustainable switchback.  But for now, enjoy this video that gives you some of the concepts.

Colorado Mountain Bike Summit

Each year, Bicycle Colorado, IMBA, and the Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado State Office host a summit for mountain bike advocates and land agency representatives.  This year’s summit will be held in Salida, CO on April 2nd and 3rd.

Singletrack Trails will be there.  Greg will be helping with the presentation on Saturday about mapping trails.  He will focus on how to use a GPS and manage the data recorded properly.

Here is a link to the registration.

Hope to see you there.

Trail Layout Clinic

Back in Fort Collins this past weekend, I worked with the local mountain bike club to educate more trail users on the guidelines of sustainable trail layout.

I had about 25 people from the Overland Mountain Bike Club attend an evening presentation at the New Belgium Brewery.  On Saturday about 15 of the presentation attendees and a couple returnees headed up to the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area to corridor flag about a mile to a mile and a half trail that will connect into Red Mountain Open Space.

The terrain that we were dealing with was quite difficult.  The group was tasked with flagging a trail that had portions of trail in very shallow cross-slopes that limited the ability to climb to the elevation we needed.  The group was able to achieve the control point B without any climbing turns.  Hopefully, the crew from the City of Fort Collins Natural Areas will adopt much of the flag line we left behind.

Some photos:

Tools and fun

Working away here in Grand Junction for Bicycle Colorado and the BLM.  Not much of an update other than a couple photos showing the crew having fun while working and a tool doing its job.