The Driving Range - Richmond, VT

don

Well-Known Member
I was up in the Stowe area on and off for the last couple of weeks. I have been hearing a bunch on the Driving Range in Richmond and decided to get over there to check it out. I unfortunately didn't get to ride all the trails as I was having some "stressful fun" dissecting the Upper Hot Dogger line the first time I was there and only had a little over an hour the second time and wanted to try out the ladder drop.

Over all the place is very impressive. It has easy access with good parking and close to the other spots in the area (about 30 minutes from Stowe and Burlington, and within 10 minutes from Waterbury). Parts of it are gnarly. The Diving Board and the Don't Panic roll in had my eyes spinning just looking at them (I did not do either).

Once you park it's a short flat pedal to the main area. Then you climb taking Green Fee. Green Fee all the way up takes you to the start of Hot Dogger and Heavy Duty which can go into Skidmarks. That splits the area into half and the Green Fee climb isn't bad so a good option to lap that a few times. The other option is to go to the top and take Sugar Road to Iteration about half way up on Green Fee. That will get you to Brush Fire and Double Bogey.

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Green Fee - nice switchback climb route. It had good traction and drainage. I like how in intersects in a few spots with Hot Dogger so you can session certain areas.

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Some nice rock work on the beginning of Double Bogey. I didn't ride it as I wanted to warm up on Brushfire. Brushfire was good but not sure if it's worth that extra climb.

Brushfire leads out to the top of the Green Fee climb. You can split into Heavy Duty or Hot Dogger. Hot Dogger starts with a drop over the trail that goes into Heavy Duty. It took me a number of tries but I finally did it. Overall it's ok but I feel the berm that you land into could be built up in the sweet spot/corner pocket of it.
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There were a a few tabletops, rollers, and berm on upper Hot Dogger. Decent and pretty fun but not as manicured and mature as Cady Hill's Florence that I rode the day before.

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Here is a one of the example I had that I was scratching my head. The sender lip is on the inside and the landing was pretty eroded so transfering to the optimal line outside could be hazardous. Landing straight puts you in a weird spot for the berm. Watching Green Mountain Biker's vid of it shows how oddly setup it is the landing looked way smoother in his videos.

Right near the drop in which is by the on-off was the Diving Board feature. Skills with Phil has a video of him building it:

The Diving Board - The easy side (right side) looked hard as I'm guessing the material got eroded away.
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Middle Hot Dogger had some fun sets and I found this area the most fun and spent most of my time there. The best being the left side skipper line right before it meets up with the intersection of Green Fee and lower Hot Dogger. I'll post pics and a run down on it in the next post.

Lower Hot Dogger was ok. The landings seemed like they had lots of rocks in them. The berms - while big kind of "feel off" at the last third althought the entrance to them felt good. The middles of some sections were rutted from rain. And while I like steeper lips and landings I feel for a public park it's not the best move unless they are maintained frequently. I would mellow /smooth the tables out or keep the lips and make the landings a stepup. Or maybe it just needs some smoothing - weather in Vermont is tough and it being a newer system might not have the bugs worked out of it yet.

Towards the bottom there is a roll in that was wild! It's called Don't Panic. I just looked at it. Here are a couple of pics but they never look as big as they do in person.

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I know Skills With Phil has a bunch of videos from there but that guy is a cyborg or something and he rides too fast and makes everything look easy :smh:

The Green Mountain Biker is still really good but more in line with mere mortals:



 
Middle Hot Dogger

Starting from the On Off feature there were some decent berms and then into a skipper that feed into the ladder drop. The ladder drop had me thinking for a while before I tried it. The skipper before it is smooth and works well but the ladder drop is a little off sloped, has some play at the end of it, and I needed some cranks to make sure I had enough speed. And even then the landing was on the head jarring side.

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Skipper was fun! Wish there were a line of these!

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Going off the ladder. You can see the out slope of it from the pic. If it was pitched the other way it probably would have ridden better.

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GoPro in the leaves shot


The jumps right after this were really good. Definitely on the big side for me but I picked them off one at a time and did a bunch of run ups to get them figured out.

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This is the second one in the line of 3 and the most fun one.

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The last one was a good sized. Doesn't look like much in the pic but at least 3 bikes lengths and totally blind landing.

I would love to have a few of my NJ buddies, some shovels and tools and a day to dial and ride that section. In a perfect world the landings would be step ups and maybe a little more punch on the lips. But for a public trail spot - really good!
 
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haha - I was thinking it would be nice to have Ryan P around to speed test the features and follow on them!
Would have loved to session those with you . Agree on that bonner log being kinda awkward , i went normal speed and fast and deep both resulting in pretty harsh landings . Those jumps are fun and the fact that you jump over the go around is pretty wild . I'll definitely be heading back next year as I passed on the diving board feature so now I'm obsessed with checking that off .
 
On my list for next year
There is so much to ride in that little pocket of Vermont!

Hopefully they tune up some things next spring. It's still worth a visit but on certain sections I kept thinking with a little more dialing this could be so much better. Can't wait to see what the place develops into!
 
Would have loved to session those with you . Agree on that bonner log being kinda awkward , i went normal speed and fast and deep both resulting in pretty harsh landings . Those jumps are fun and the fact that you jump over the go around is pretty wild . I'll definitely be heading back next year as I passed on the diving board feature so now I'm obsessed with checking that off .
We would have a good time there!

I'm glad you had the same experience on the bonner log. I thought it was just me as I hit it solo and no one to talk to or watch hit it. The bummer is the skipper before it was really good. And I really hate pedaling for something in the middle of a line. I would cut that log down and bring in the landing or make the features before it bigger/closer or a little bit of both.

That 3 pack jump line was fun - but could be a lot better. I like that they had an A and B line with the berms in between but I think a C option could be mixed (hip lips before the 2nd and 3rd landings coming from the berm line). It would help people get a feel for the bigger line. Like the other features at Driving Range I hope they continue to debug and get better. If only a third of that place was available near me in NJ 🤤
 
It is, its called Hartshorne. Try it!
I meant the size of the area of features not a third of the actual feature size (if that makes sense).

And truth be told the "features" at Hart are about a 1/10 of the size of the stuff at the Driving Range.
 
I meant the size of the area of features not a third of the actual feature size (if that makes sense).

And truth be told the "features" at Hart are about a 1/10 of the size of the stuff at the Driving Range.
And yet I still crashed at Hart today.
 
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