Crown Point Trail Closed

Crown Point trail is now closed through to the end of the riding season due to logging activity. The trail is located on Beaumont Timber Company’s private land, as are a significant number of the trails in our network, and we appreciate their ongoing support for trails. However they are a logging company, and cooperating with them as they conduct their business is something we should all support. They’ve told us that they’ll be logging the bottom 200 meters of the trail as part of a larger logging program over the next few months. There will be trucks hauling logs on the Gas Line Road and on 007, so it’s probably best to avoid this area entirely during the working week. We’ll have the opportunity to go back in and rebuild the bottom section of the trail next Spring, but for the rest of the year, we’ll all have to give Crown Point trail a miss.

Red Summit Trail Finished.

Sarah – Trail Testing.

After 3 months of hard physical trail building we’ve completed the new single-track trail to the summit of Red Mountain. We take great pride in the craft of trailbuilding, and this new trail is the best work we’ve ever done. It’s also makes for a great hike and mountain bike ride, Check it out as soon as you can. A brochure on walking trails, which includes a map and description, will be circulating soon.

The 2008 Trail Crew.

A huge thanks to Rose from Idgies and the Ram’s Head for shouting the Trail Crew to an evening at Idgies. It feels great to have our hard work acknowledged.

We’re now scaling back to a smaller crew through September, and will be focusing on maintenance issues on the rest of the trail network.

August 15th Update

Old Rossland Cemetery access trail

It’s hot dry and dusty out there on the trails, not exactly ideal trail building conditions, but we’ve been making great progress on the Red Summit trail. We’re still a couple of weeks of fine tuning to go until completion, but already it makes a spectacular hike or ride. I’m starting to make a habit of sunset rides, and the descent is my new favorite.

The access trail to the Old Rossland Cemetery has been in poor condition since it was re-routed a few years ago. We went in this week, installed a few bridges, brushed it out, and realigned the trail so that it doesn’t take users over the graves. It’s a beautiful and interesting historic site, well worth checking out, and logical route back to Rossland if you’ve dropped Milky Way, climbed Green Door, and traversed Roger’s and Cemetery.

The bypass of 50’s Ski Movie peak on the Seven Summits trail is completed, and is integrating seamlessly with the trail.

The Seven Summits Poker ride is scheduled for Sunday September 7th. Your $25 for race entry includes, a shuttle to the start, a cool t-shirt, snacks at the feed station on Granite, fun and games at the card stations, a beer at the finish line, a shuttle to the Lions Campground for a laid back party with free beer, burgers, live music, and tons of prizes .. it’s go to be the best deal in the Kootenays. There are only 100 spots available, so register at Revolution Cycles asap.

On a bit of a sour note, it seems that ATCO Lumber who privately own the property on and around Deer Park Mountain (aka Asshole Mtn) have decided to prohibit public access to their property. It’s a complicated and delicate issue which I won’t try to do justice to here, but it does effect about 300m of Drakes trail at the Southern (Trailer Park) end. We’re investigating options, but for the moment recommend that the public avoid this area, else risk confrontation with the landowner.

August 4th Update

Jana – A misty morning on the Red Summit Trail.

This August long weekend has been a great opportunity to get out and ride a bunch of the local trails. I got to ride Larry’s, Curly’s, Miners, Redhead, Centennial, Moe’s, Kootenay Columbia, KC Ridge, Milky Way, Green Door, Roger’s, Cemetery, Technogrind, Full Monte, Coffee Run, Whiskey, Crown Point, and Flume, and apart from a bit of mid summer dust, all are in pretty good condition. I’ve made notes of a few minor issues that we’ll get back to fix.

It seems the Seven Summits trail is attracting ever greater numbers of riders, I’ve never seen as many (at least 30) as I saw milling about at Nancy Greene Pass on Saturday.

After clearing all the recent windfall, the trail crew have been hard at work on the new trail to the summit of Red Mountain, and on a bypass of 50s ski movie peak on the Seven Summits trail. The Red Summit trail is a great walk and mostly rideable now, but both will be finished soon.

The Caldera Connector

We recently closed Red Mountain Resort end of the Centennial trail and again re-routed the trail connecting the Old Red Mountain Road through to the Centennial trail in order to keep trail users away from imminent construction associated with the Caldera development. Watch for Red’s more detailed signs for the latest info on what’s going on.

Stewart – Raking the Oasis trail.

The bottom section of the Oasis trail is getting ridiculously loose and dusty as per usual this time of year. We recently gave it a touch up with the rakes, but there’s only so much we can do as it is cut into a sandbank. I’m going to ride elsewhere until we get some substantial rains.

There’s going to be a Poker Ride event scheduled on the Seven Summits trail for September 7th. It’ll be a similar format to previous years, and is sure to be lots of fun. Check in with Revolution Cycles for details.

July 18th Update

We’ve now cleared the Seven Summits trail, Flume and Doukhobor Draw. We still have to get to a few logs on Drakes and Stunted Growth, but the trail network is essentially back to great condition. If you’re looking for a interesting walk this weekend, check out the new trail to the Summit of Red Mountain (which branches off Redhead). It’s not yet finished , but is walkable all the way to the top. I’m going to see how much of it I can ride.

July 15th Update

We’ve now cleared Whiskey, Crown Point, the connections from Crown Point through to the Rail-grade, the connection from Birch Main to 007, and Cherry Poppins (though there is still one complicated blow-down to get back to) trails. I’m told that Going Down on Nancy has been cleared.

Trails Clean-up Report – July 14th.

Looking towards Kokanee from Cherry Top.
Dave and I went to ride the Shannon Pass loop above Nelson on Sunday, but managed to hitch a ride all the way to the top of Baldface, and dropped the full 6000′ to Kootenay Lake. The Meadow trail is bit of an eroded disaster, but fun in a challenging sort of way, while the Shannon Pass trail has seen some recent attention and is better than it’s ever been. A beautiful day.

Following last Thursday night’s windstorm, the KCTS trail crew has been busy clearing windfall from the local trails, and here’s how it currently stands (number of trees we cut today in parenthesis) :

Back of KC – Cleared (2).
Cemetery – Cleared (12+).
Centennial – Clear.
Cherry Poppins – A few trees reported down.
Crown Point – No Reports (Connections to the Railgrade have been cleared).
Curly’s – Cleared (8).
Dewdney – Reported that no trees are down.
Doukhobor Draw – A large tree reported down.
Drakes – A few trees reported down.
Flume – A few trees reported down.
Full Monte / Coffee Run – Cleared (30+).
Green Door – Reported Clear.
KC Ridge – Cleared (3).
Kootenay Columbia – Cleared (4).
Larry’s – Cleared (2).
Milky Way – Cleared (3).
Moe’s – Clear.
Monte Cristo – Clear.
Mount Roberts – No Reports.
Oasis (Lower) – Reported to have been cleared.
Oasis (Upper) – Reported to have been cleared.
Old Glory – No Reports.
OO7 – Upper section reported clear.
Plewman – No reports.
Railgrade – Cleared (40+).
Redhead / Miners – Cleared (5).
Roger’s – No Reports.
Rubberhead – Clear.
Seven Summits – A few trees down.
Snake – Reported clear (3).
Spring Cleaning – No Reports.
Stunted Growth – A few trees down.
Sudden Exposure – No Reports.
Techno Grind – Cleared (8).
Wagon Road – Clear.
Whiskey – Lots of trees down.
Yellow Submarine – Clear.

We’ll try to get to most of the others tomorrow.

July 11th Update

Following last night’s wind-storm, it seems likely we’ll be spending most of next week clearing windfall from the trails. I’ve had reports that Oasis and Full-Monte trails have lost of trees down, and I’d welcome any reports from the weekend. From the past week:

New Bridge on Redhead / Red Summit Trail.
The new trail to the summit of Red Mountain is progressing well. We’ve built up as far as Poochie’s cabin. On the lower section the new trail will also function as a new upper section to Redhead trail. It winds through some really interesting terrain features, and includes this new bridge. It’s not finished yet, but is mostly rideable – continue climbing on the road past the current start of the single-track, and keep right, you’ll soon reach the new start, just below Dale’s trail.

Replaced Ramp on Whiskey
This ramp on Whiskey had broken, so we rebuilt it. It’s amazing it lasted this long (about 7 years) given that it was built of dead windfall I found on the ground. The new ramp should stand up considerably longer.

Paving replaces Rock-step on Seven Summits.
The Seven Summits trail is open and getting lots of use. I rode it, and it’s definitely in great condition. The rock-step on the traverse of Saddleback peak (just before the Plewman trail junction) was getting critical, and although rideable by some, was going to cause a serious injury one of these days. We put alot of effort into filling in and paving this section.

Jana – Digging New Single-track on the Seven Summits trail.
When we built the trail in 2004, we ran out of time and budget to complete the section of trail which was intended to traverse 50s-Ski-Movie Peak (the sub peak South of Plewman). Most riders have been pushing up to the peak, and skidding down the other side. We’ve started digging in the single-track traverse, and will have it completed as soon as we’ve dealt with the windfall.

July 2nd Update

Seven Summits – Plewman Trail Junction.

I was up on Old Glory skiing the North Chutes for Canada Day yesterday, and was able to check out conditions on the Seven Summits trail. It seems these warm temperatures of late have melted all but the deepest drifts, and I talked to hikers who’d seen riders on the trail. We’ll clear windfall from the remainder of the trail and will assess the extent of the remaining drifts over the next couple of days, and I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to declare the trail officially open for the weekend. Be warned, it’s probably best avoiding the Plewman trail on a bike until we’ve had a chance to cut out all the windfall, which we’ll get to sometime next week.

Masonry on the Kidney Stone

Before

New and Improved

The Kidney Stone is an alternate expert line on the Whiskey on the Rocks top section of the Whiskey trail. It looks particularly intimidating, but actually rides smoothly, as long as you stay on the line. The wooden ramp which bridged the gap in the rock spine was attached to an adjacent tree, but the tree has been dead for a while and recently fell over, taking the ramp with it. With nothing else to easily attach wood to, I used rocks and cement/dirt mortar to brick in the gap. I tested it out this morning, and if anything it rides smoother than that which it replaced.