End of April 2008:
Here are the most recent photos taken 4/26/08. The snowpack is between 2-5ft. depending on sun exposure. This includes from Berger Campground to Butcher trail. Our estimated time for shuttling is still Memorial Day weekend.
For more info check out the Downieville Outfitters Trail Conditions page.
I don’t race much, the plan is 2 races this year, the Lemurian and this last weekend the Coolest 24. For some reason 24 hour races are a fascination with me. The last few years I’ve done 4 man and 5 man team 24 Hour events. This year I decided to step it up a notch and race on a 2 man team, a big step up actually going from 3 hour breaks between laps to 1 hour and going from 5-6 laps for the race to 9+. At 12+ miles and 1500’ of climbing per lap, that’s a lot of riding. My team mate was a friend of mine I’ve been riding with for about a year now named Seth. I’ve been quite anxious about this race and my personal fitness and weight over the last few months. Not seriously training, just focusing on getting long rides in on the weekends and riding 8 miles to and from work every day.
Seth is faster than me and as such I had him do the first lap. Overall a great choice. Seth managed to be in the top 10 of the team riders out of the gate and then got back in 5th overall at 55 minutes, giving me a traffic free first lap. We managed to stay ahead of most of the traffic, leaving the dust and constant passing to the other teams. My times were about on par with the second place team but Seth continued cranking out amazing lap times, putting 10 minutes per lap on the second place team. By sunset our team was 30 minutes ahead of the second place team. Read the rest of this entry »
Well long delayed but here are my pictures from Easter this year. Try out the slide show or you can go to the regular Gallery Page.
Well my web host’s performance has been quite disappointing lately and I’ve gotten quite frustrated with it so I decided this last time the host just slowed to a crawl for a day solid to just switch web hosts. We’ll see how this one works out. Right now I’m still working the kinks out of the new webhost so please bear with a few bumps and bugs. If you notice any problems please use the contact form or email me at mtbogre at gmail.
Update 4/14: D’oh! So my Contact Form was one of the things that was down. Turns out I thought I had most of my site back online I still have a long ways to go. Thanks for being patient! The Contact Form is now working so please accept my apologies. Still broken is my newer image galleries/ ride report along with the Trail Map. If you find anything else let me know.
One of the Premier MTB races in Northern California the Lemurian Classic is a great race held annually in June. There is a long course which is a single 26 mile long lap, a shorter 20 mile loop, and the beginners loop is 8 miles. There is no sandbagging at the Lemurian, you chose which course to race on and a Pro class but otherwise it’s just simple age sex categories. Even better, the Lemurian course is mostly singletrack.
The real kicker that makes this the king of Grass Roots racing is the fact that the proceeds from the race all wind up going directly to improving the trails in the Whiskeytown/ Mt Shasta Area. Combine this with a great great atmosphere, awesome trails, and a laid back group that puts on the event and the $35 entry fee is dirt cheap.
For people in the South Bay area, you can head down to Fort Ord for a series of 9 weekend races (3 races are over already). These are put on by Central Coast Cyclo Cross (CCCX) and you can find a schedule of events here. There is racing for all classes and ages and from what I understand it’s a very fun series. Entry fees are $35/event.
Here’s some more fun for Sacramento area racers. There is a series of events at Granite Bay (NE of Sacramento) including several Friday Night MTB races, some Duathalons and mini-Triathalons. The races are put on by TBF Racing and there is a schedule if you follow that link. There are 3 MTB only races in June for all classes and age groups. Entry fees are $20.
I don’t race much, but there are a few races which I enjoy. These are generally the sort of grass roots or fund raising events where the fees are usually low and the atmosphere is generally awesome. I’m going to try and report on all the local/grass roots races in Norcal that interest me. Don’t expect to see Sea Otter or any of the big venues show up here. They just don’t interest me a lot and get plenty of coverage elsewhere. The first grassroots race I want to cover is actually a weekly series in the Sacramento area.
The Prarie City Race Series is a weekly mountain bike race series held at the Prarie City OHV park located between Rancho Cordova and Folsom off of Grant Line Road. The races are held every Wednesday evening at 6:15 PM (show up early for registration) starting April 2nd. The only prizes awarded on race day are random door prizes. This event has been growing significantly over the last few years and currently they average over 350 racers per week. The laps are short, 3-4 miles and the different classes all race varying lengths; 2 laps for beginner, 3 for sport class, 4 for expert and 5 for expert ‘plus’ (instead of pro). The course is very fast, SS friendly with lots of short ups and downs rather than any prolonged climbing.
Over on MTBR I stumbled across a thread with a fairly decent map of some of the trails near Folsom. Mostly just Dike 8 and some of the surrounding El Dorado Hills area urban trails. I don’t consider these to be destination trails but they are great for people that live in area or just happen to be passing though. It’s also a good place for beginning riders in the greater Sacramento area to get some mountain biking in without any huge hill climbs or super technical riding. Make sure you scroll further down in the thread to catch the second map with a few more urban dirt trails. You can also check out the maps below as well.
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