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Moab News
News from Moab, Utah
Thanks From Poison Spider Bicycles For Miles Of Trails
Poison Spider Bicycles wants to extend an enormous THANK-YOU to the people who made 2011 a record year for mountain bike trail building in Moab. Nearly 40 miles of amazing new singletrack required serious commitment and dedication to the cause.
First, there are the hard-working government folks at the Bureau of Land Management who are implementing their Resource Management Plan, including mountain bike focus areas. Thanks Russ VonKoch and Katie Stevens, Rock Smith, Jen Jones, Miles & Todd! Trails couldn’t start without you guys working so hard for mountain bikers.
We would like to thank the people on the ground are who actually make the trails. Starting with Sandy & Geoff Freethey, who anchor the Grand County Trail Mix and live and breathe Moab trails. They are involved in every step of trail building from exploration, design and proposals, meetings with land managers and local governing bodies, to moving rocks, cutting tread and painting dots on slickrock. They make and install the map signs at all the intersections. They wrangle the professional and volunteer trail builders. They’re the bosses and the labor force. They do it all for the love of trails!
Thank-you David Olsen, Moab’s Economic Development Director, who’s enthusiasm has kicked Moab’s commitment to mountain biking back into gear. He rides a mountain bike and knows the Moab area very well. He’s the key behind the scenes trails advocate and money raiser. And he brings his whole family out on trail work volunteer days.
Thank-you from Poison Spider Bicycles to Scott Escott aka GPScott, Grand County Trail Mix Trails Coordinator, for his commitment to designing and building the best mountain bike trails anywhere! He envisions trails through impossible terrain and is not afraid to move boulders and build massive rock bridges to achieve the right line. He motivates us to put in hours of our spare time as volunteer trail builders. He always has the good word about more awesome trails in the works when he visits us at Poison Spider Bicycles. The boy’s excited! He get’s it done!
Thank-you to all the volunteers from Moab and to the groups from all over the country who donate your valuable time building mountain bike trails in Moab. School kids from California, Colorado and Utah, Boy Scouts, Grand County Trail Mix members, Poison Spider Bicycles staff members, David Olsen’s family, and lots of other citizens who want to learn how to use a rock bar, we thank you for your hard work! It really makes a difference!
Special thanks also to a couple of outstanding volunteers. Brooks Carter, Rim Tours mountain bike guide and designer of the EKG/Little Salty/MegaSteps trails, spent all his days off last year trail building. And to TJ Cowern, Poison Spider Bicycles repair shop manager who spent his days off constructing berms on Hazzard and Lazy trails, making them more fun for all. Also, Mike Holme and Maggie Wilson of Magpie Cycling Adventures for building and personally taking care of the trails they love to ride, with and without clients. And thank-you to Jeff Van Horn who fits trail building in between brewing batches of beer at the Moab Brewery.
In one short year, Moab is becoming famous for spectacular mountain bike singletrack. Thanks to everyone who desires, inspires, conspires and perspires to make this happen! You all rock! If anything can beat 2011, it’s going to be the 2012 trail building season. The Freetheys, David Olsen, and GPScott are laying out more miles of new trails as we speak!
Moab Mountain Bike Trail Builders In Action
Moab’s singletrack trail builders must never sleep!
More new trails are open to mountain bikers in Moab, hot on the heels of the official opening of the Pipe Dream Trail in late June. Moab Trail Mix trail builders have been working hard, adding to the Moab Brands Trail System, which is the venue for the Outerbike event in October. The Rusty Spur Trail is open to all riders, but is designed specifically for beginners. It’s a wide, non-technical mile long singletrack looping from the paved bike path to the Bar M road, giving novice mountain bikers an easy introduction to trail riding. The views from Rusty Spur are spectacular. Also now open in the Moab Brands area is the Long Branch Trail, which provides an additional challenging option for more skilled riders. It connects the Bar B Trail to the Deadman’s Ridge Trail, snaking through the steep boulder studded terrain pictured here. With so many loop options and combinations, for most skill levels, this area is becoming a Moab favorite riding destination. Come in to Poison Spider Bicycles for directions and suggestions.
Moab Trail Mix is also working on lots of new singletrack in the BLM’s Klondike Bluffs Mountain Bike Focus Area north of Moab. The first of these trails to open is the EKG Trail. Ninety percent slickrock, it’s called EKG because that’s what it looks like on a map, and because your heart will be pegged while riding its many ups and downs. It gives mountain bikers riding the Baby Steps Trail the option to return from the north end on singletrack rather than road. It’s challenges match the nature of the Baby Steps Trail, which is fun for fit and skilled cross country riders. Future plans by the Moab Trail Mix designers and builders, who never sleep, include more tough trails and lots of moderate mileage as well. So stay tuned and plan a week long trip to Moab, because there are more than a weekend’s worth of new mountain bike trails to ride!
Pipe Dream Comes True- Moab’s New Singletrack
Imagine riding your mountain bike around a blind singletrack corner high on the boulder-strewn bajada above Moab.
You might be nervous about what lies on the trail ahead, except for your experience on the last corner and the one before that. You have learned to trust the trail builder, so you make the turn with confidence, straighten out for a smooth drop down a rock ramp, then roll across a beautifully built stone bridge. Looking ahead, you see a banked switchback, leading to another, then the trail disappears between a boulder and a tree. No fear, just focus!
This is the Pipe Dream Trail in Moab. Long a dream of Moab locals to have an awesome mountain bike singletrack ridable from town, the years of planning and working through the land access issues have culminated in a year-long push to get it built. Moab Community Development Director and avid mountain biker, David Olsen hired a merry band of like-minded cyclists and other trail enthusiasts, who became stone masons under the guidance of Scott Escott. Together with volunteers from the community, including lots of Poison Spider Bicycles employees, these “cobblers” have turned their shared vision into an incredible trail in impossible terrain right in Moab. Boulder bridges cross dips and drainages. Rock causeways connect corners. Switchbacks climb to bench cuts which curve high above the Moab Valley.
The Pipe Dream Trail has become the favorite lunch ride for the Poison Spider Bicycles’ cross country riders. It’s not an easy trail! It was designed to reward technically skilled bikers with a great challenging ride, and some say it’s the best ever! With an elevation difference of only 500 feet between Moab and the south end of Pipe Dream Trail at Hidden Valley Trailhead, it may sound flat. However, the terrain is always changing, up to down, left to right, never straight, never flat. The climbs are steepest from either of the two Moab trailheads, Aspen Street or Jackson Street, but once some elevation is gained, the steepness mellows to easier grades for the rest of the trail. For a more “downhill” feel, riders can start at the Hidden Valley Trailhead and ride to Moab, either shuttling or riding paved and dirt roads back to the start. The singletrack is open both directions, so mountain bikers can choose any length and section for out-and-back rides. Plan on riding for an hour plus each way, end to end. Come in to Poison Spider Bicycles for directions and suggestions for your best choice.
The Pipe Dream Trail is a non-motorized multi-use singletrack. It has become a cool challenge for local runners and hikers who love this amazingly beautiful trail with its views of slickrock fins and the La Sal Mountains. All users share the responsibility to yield to each other as appropriate, due to the narrowness and technical nature of the trail. When a rider is “gettin’ it”, the runner steps aside. When the runner is flowing, the hiker steps aside. The biker who is hike-a-biking steps out of the way of others. Downhill cyclists yield to uphill traffic, but uphill traffic should always keep a heads up. This sharing attitude keeps it fun for everyone, and keeps it single!
The Pipe Dream Trail will be completed and signed by the June 17, 2011 Grand Opening Celebration and Ribbon Cutting, with cake and speeches and all manner of fun, sponsored by the City of Moab. After the party there will be group rides and hikes on this awesome new singletrack in Moab. Come join the celebration!