Trail Building at Whiteways

Saturday morning brought the usual downpour resulting in much discussion as to where we should: 1) avoid the wind and rain of the ridges by riding in a woodland or 2) avoid the mud of a woodland by riding on the ridges? We recently opened some new trails in Whiteways so we decided to return there with the objective of linking them together to make an extended singletrack loop and to hell with the mud.

We navigated a new 200 yard section through the trees that included some belting natural features including 2 steep tree root-ball holes, as the rear wheel is coming out of the first the front wheel is already going down the second. There is also a very large fallen tree and I reckon riding over the root-ball where the tree emerges would be a great challenge but good fun; however the approach needs much more clearing before it can be attempted - another job on the list. I had a major tumble resulting from one end of a log passing between the seat-stay and chain-stay and enbedding itself in the cassette while the other end was rammed into the ground. The resulting bike polevaluting demonstration dumped me into a pile of wood and twigs - not too much damage I only managed to impale my right knee on a stick!

This coming winter we hope to clear all the new sections so that a return group ride in 2008 will be on new trails with new challenges.