My Soapbox Rant on Mountain Bike Trail Building

I don’t normally do this on Mountain Biking by 198, but I am now. One of the benefits of having a blog is the ability to speak your mind on subjects, and one of the great things about the comments section is that you can share yours! So here it goes…

I am sick of seeing trails built for the lowest common denominator. Not every local trail in the Atlanta area has to be a beginner trail. We have the ability and technology these days to build trails very quickly with the use of machine cutting. This gets more trails built in a lot faster time period which is great all around. Unfortunately, when you machine cut trail, it becomes a paved highway. To make machine cut trails more advanced, the trail features have to be built back into the trail.

Here in lies the problem. When the trail is a super groomed highway, beginners are able to ride it pretty easily. When you start to add back in features, or even talk about doing it, the local boards go crazy. On local trail systems there should be a balance. You do not have to be able to ride every trail at a particular trail head. It is ok to have something to work up to. I do not hear anyone complaining about the presence of black diamond slopes at ski resorts, so why are mountain biking trails held to a different standard? I want to have technical trails at my local trail heads, but I also want to have beginner and intermediate trails for riders to improve their skills on.

If you can’t already tell, I am referring to Blankets Creek in Woodstock, GA. The new loop (Van Michael/North/Area 51) has turned out to be an incredible ride. Right now the trail is “super groomed” as I was alluding to before, and the original intent of this trail was to add features back in once it was open and ridable. Other riders are already asking them not to include these features when they already have 3 very groomed trails in that system (Dwelling, Mosquito Flats and Mosquito Bite). I want technical trails in our local Atlanta area! I have never heard of anyone taking out features in North Carolina or anywhere else for that matter. For some reason, in Georgia, there are a lot of riders who do not like riding over rocks and other TTF’s.

I say bring on the technical features. The same riders that are telling you not to do it now are going to be bragging to their riding buddies about how they cleared it later. I just wish the peanut gallery would stay quiet while they did it. There is a lot of hard work that goes into building trails that we get the benefit of riding…quit the complaining and start enjoying it. Who knows…you might end up being an even better rider because of it! Maybe one day, you will actually try another trail too!

That was my soapbox rant of the day. What are your thoughts?