Park Rat Thread

stb222 said:
Saw the infamous @Ryan.P from a distance many times but timing was always wrong to say hi.

My son checked off everything he wanted to try, pipeline drop, all the salvation features and the stuff in tempest. 20+ lap day. ‘Twas a good day. The pipeline drop was the first thing ever that my son did before I did. The tides are turning…
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That's a solid day for sure . If your son can ride salvation clean then he's more than capable to ride some of the bigger features , next time hunt me down I love toeing people into things for the first time . That first time stoke is hard to replicate on your own .
 
Props if you can conquer Fort Hill. Having seen those jumps in person, I doubt my 50+ year old butt will ever attempt those. Maybe the first drop and jump. Maybe. But 20' gaps to wood bridge landings... Yeah... Nah.
 
I think i'm going to ride Blue Mountain for the first time ever on Friday as a change of pace from Creek. I've been following them on social media but have never made the trek but since its about the same distance away its worth a visit.

Does anyone have any suggestions for trail progression? At Creek, trails like Breakout, Deviant, Tempest and Alpine suit my current skill level whereas Dominion is a bit too sendy and the technical Double blacks are a bit too rocky at this point (but i'm warming up to them with the technical blues like Bluephoria and DMLH).
 
Most of Blue Mtn will probably feel like blue trails compared to Creek, with the main difference being the trail surface is usually more loose.

I usually start out with Boulevard - TBD - Boulevard - Ewok Village. A bit of warning about Ewok Village - the jumps are a little more lippy and shorter than most of the jump lines at Creek. A few of them are pretty easy to over-shoot and flat-land.

Shakedown Street looks like it should be fun on the map. Unfortunately, it is possibly the worst bike park trail I have ever ridden. While I applaud the desire to build a long green trail - something the mtn was rather lacking - the trail is amazingly boring and has pretty much zero flow. And because of the aforementioned loose surface on most of the mtn, if you get off the ridden line, it can get sketchy really fast.

Upper King Tut is another questionable trail. It's a jump trail that sort of works, except the surface is soo effing rocky it's really hard to maintain flow, so you have to pedal your ass off between jumps to maintain speed.

All that said, there's a strong chance I'll be riding there on Sat as a couple of teammates from DC and NJ are planning to go.
 
Ian, appreciate the guidance! I was checking some YT vids and it seems you're spot on about shakedown street. If there were at least some berms and mild jumps or bumps to pump it might be fun but i think i'll go straight to the blues like you mentioned. Seems Empire is popular there but its probably the equivalent to dominion/pipeline/salvation so thats a pass for me.

El camino looks like it might be fun. I think a day of exploration starting with blues is a good strategy, then maybe head to the other side of the mtn and see whats doable.
 
I don’t remember all the trail names but there’s some fun stuff there. Formula, OCD, whatever the other one is over on that side are pretty steep and fun. Wild Turkey is another good one.
 
Formula->OCD->OCS->Loose Cannon->Happy Ending combined is essentially the DH race course. Fast, rocky and loose, but generally not very steep.

Where OCS goes into the woods from a ski trail is a rock drop that is probably the biggest on the mtn. Maybe 8' if you really send it; 5' or so if you just roll off it. The fast racers usually pre-jump it in order to get back on the ground ASAP to line up for the right berm at the bottom. The berm shoots you into a typical Blue Mtn rock garden.

Running DH casing tires or inserts is a good idea at Blue. There are numerous places where you can enter a rock garden at speed with little warning, so rim-hit flats are common.
 
Ian F said:
The fast racers usually pre-jump it in order to get back on the ground ASAP to line up for the right berm at the bottom
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I rode this dozens of times without even registering it as a drop and then overshot it at my last race, flew straight over the berm and tumbled down the mountain like a thousand feet into a huge pit where they were pulling dirt for the new jump line. It was epic.

Side note - do not get open wounds stitched up at the local urgent care. They will get infected. Ask me how I know…
 
shrpshtr325 said:
pretty sure you were warned about this when it happened . . . . just saying.
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Yeaaaa…. @UtahJoe gave me that lecture already. Fun fact, I just got the medical bill for it being out of network. So not only did it get crazy infected…I now owe them thousands of dollars a year later. Biking is fun!
 
Blue was a refreshing change from the usual Creek trails. The blue freeride trails are fun and varied and the black tech trails are largely a bit more friendly than the massive chunder at Creek. The stone there is all very loose on all the trails so expect lots of rock pinging on your frame. I didn't hit them all or very hard since i'm not running any inserts or have DH casings on the enduro bike. The need for this was evident after the first tech trail (or any loose trail with speed for that matter). I'd def make another trip back knowing which trails are the more preferred ones. That and when they develop the new trail Ripple further, that will be a blast.

My takeaways:

Upper section of boulevard has fresh dirt and is very smooth. After that section its back to the same loose shale. But boulevard is pretty much just berms which was a bit boring but good to warm up on.

They have recognized that some of the jumps on various trails were not quite right for the trail speed and reworked those. The general consensus was they are a lot better now.

The new jump line Empire is massive. The scale of the trail and jumps certainly eclipses Dominion by a good margin. Folks complain its hard to clear them without serious speed and i would believe it. I rolled it and could only clear a couple of the smaller step ups on the upper section but the lower section is a lot more milder with small/med tables and ramp cannons.

There is a new blue freeride trail called Ripple still under construction. Its located next to that awful pedal-ey green trail and you can ride the upper section but its still a work in progress. There are no huge features on this trail yet and i say yet because it seems clear that they are going to go back and add some more to it given how much room they left on the flats. The scale of this trail is massive from the width of the flats to the massive sweeping and banked berms to carry serious speed. Pretty much the same scale as Empire (or more i'd say) but lacking the big features. There's some smaller rollers and a couple tables but the long stretches of featureless trail seem ripe for some fun additions. The are also working on the lower section of this but it is not yet open and so it dumps you back onto the green trail which means lots of pedaling back to the bottom.
 
I was at Blue on Sat riding with a couple of teammates. I'm way out of DH practice (first time on the Megatower this year) and only got in 5 runs before I was feeling tired. These days, when I feel tired riding DH, I'm done for the day. Shoulders and arms are still sore. My jumping is rusty, but by the end of the day I was doing OK clearing jumps I attempted. Mainly the slalom course. The other guys I was riding with aren't big jumpers, so we didn't do many of the jump trails. I didn't know about Ripple - I'll have to check that out the next time I'm there.
 
Ian F said:
Props if you can conquer Fort Hill. Having seen those jumps in person, I doubt my 50+ year old butt will ever attempt those. Maybe the first drop and jump. Maybe. But 20' gaps to wood bridge landings... Yeah... Nah.
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It happened and it was amazing.
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My son spent all last week at highland for their AYR summer camp. Loved it. Its not cheap and you have to sign up in December when it first opens, but he loved it and clearly his skills ballooned. I dropped him off at creek today (I'm just too tired after 11 hours of driving yesterday to ride park) and he calls me after one hour: "Dad I did phantom drop. Also I can now clear ever single jump on upper and lower dominion. Also I did crape chute and tempest. It's all easy for me now."

If that doesn't sell you on the highland camp for your kid I don't know what would.
 
Taking my son for his first time this week. Total cost with lift and bike rental was $235 🤬 And I thought snowboarding was expensive! We don’t have room or the money for more bikes so renting is our only option. Not sure how often we’ll be able to go if he really likes it. 😕
 
a.s. said:
Taking my son for his first time this week. Total cost with lift and bike rental was $235 🤬 And I thought snowboarding was expensive! We don’t have room or the money for more bikes so renting is our only option. Not sure how often we’ll be able to go if he really likes it. 😕
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That explains your defeated look when I saw you 🤣🤣
 
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