Tues Ride Aug 14 Trailwork!

This Tuesday, August 14, will be our last Tuesday trailwork of the season.  We'll be working at the very top of Antelope Trail at Hall.  The goal is to funnify the upper section of crappy road.  Hope some of you can make it out!  We'll be riding Lyons Geto Singletrack afterwards before beers at OB.  Bring your lights!

Pssst, if you need lights, our Niterider preseason just arrived!

Antelope Trail trailwork, Tuesday 7/10 5pm

As part of our summer Tuesday trailwork days, we'll be working on Antelope Trail at Hall Ranch this coming Tuesday 5/10.  We'll start sending people up the road from the bike shop around 5pm.  This is going to be a fun one.  We'll be working on the lowest section of road, immediately adjacent to the trailhead.  We're going to do our darndest to make the road go away and turn it into more singletrack.  Please come out to help :)

Boulder County will have tools, refreshments, etc.  All you need to do is show up.  We'll be working til dark.  If anyone wants to ride afterwords, we'll don lights and ride some Lyons Ghetto Singletrack before moving on to Oskar Blues.

Thanks everyone for all the help!

Thanks to anyone and everyone that's helped with Redstone trailwork or trailwork anywhere.  You might appreciate this email trail from today...

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Hello Partners,

We would like to invite you to the department’s Land Conservation Awards to be held at the parks and open space building in Longmont on Wednesday, April 18.  We will be celebrating individuals and groups who have contributed to the success of our program.  This year’s Partnership Award goes to our partner, Amgen.  Amgen became an Alpine partner at the inception of the Partnership Program and has performed at least 2 projects each year since 2009, contributing over 575 volunteer hours, averaging over 130 hours of volunteer service each year.   Join us in congratulating Amgen and the other individuals listed below!

Happy Spring,

Boulder County Parks and Open Space 

From: redstonebike@hotmail.com [mailto:redstonebike@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 2:48 PM
To: BoCo Open Space
Subject: re: Land Conservation Award Celebration

How many hours does Redstone have?  I want to beat that.  :)

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From: BoCo Open Space
To: redstonebike@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Land Conservation Award Celebration
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:02:44 +0000

It’s good to hear from you.  According to our records Redstone Cyclery has completed over 273 hours of volunteer work since 2008 and maintained over 1300’ of trail including 7 water bars and armoring 30’ of wet trail.  Considering that you are a relatively small independent retail operation versus a large corporation you should feel incredibly proud of this accomplishment.  I have created one or two Executive Partnership Summaries for a few of our partners; these summaries basically outline an organization’s contributions and includes some narrative about the bigger picture.  I would be happy to create one of these for you if you thought it would be helpful for your business.  Just let me know.  We appreciate all of our stewardship teams immensely.  Keep smiling J  

Nah, just curious to see how a small business that actually cares stacks up against a mega Pharma company that does it for publicity ;)

Dave
http://www.redstonecyclery.com
http://www.facebook.com/redstonecyclery
http://twitter.com/redstonecyclery
Lyons, CO

Trail Work on Picture Rock's First Corner

Redstone Cyclery has been the designated trail steward of Heil Ranches Picture Rock trail since it's inception. Any time we'd have a trail work day set aside, County staff would ask us what we wanted to work on, we would figure out a place, and we'd get a crew out there to get 'er done.  About 8 months after the trail opened, it was obvious that the very first uphill right corner (and the very last downhill left hander) was built wrong.  Going up was no big deal, but coming down was a decreasing radius off camber corner.  In short, it was a corner designed to spit people off trail.  After a few years, the corner got more blown out with more braking bumps and just plain got worse.  We kept bugging Boulder County to let us rebuild the corner.  Always, the answer was, "No, that's too big of a project."  We kept plugging away with other trailwork sessions and continued to build our relationship with Boulder County Open Space. Finally, when we sat down to schedule a winter Saturday for trailwork, we once again asked about this corner.  Finally, we had our chance.

Heil Ranch Trailwork

Last Tuesday, we supplanted our normal Tuesday Nite Ride with trailwork on Picture Rock. We took out a couple things, added a couple things, and generally managed the flow of the trail to keep people on the line. We worked on a section directly above the old quarry where the line was getting blown out and folks were riding off trail around trees.


I revisited the area this morning and it seems to be shaping up nicely.



We are planning another workday for this fall, probably a Saturday affair so we can get more people and work a little bit more. We are definitely open for feedback on what Picture Rock could use and could not use as far as trailwork and maintenance goes. We would definitely love some feedback!

Couple of Trailwork Opportunities this Weekend

First off, BMA has been partnering with Boulder County Open Space to do some touch ups on the Wapiti Trail at Heil Ranch. It's coming along nicely - busting ruts, armoring historically problematic wet areas, etc. They're looking for more help this coming Sat, 4/16. Start off around 8 or so, ending time is a few hours past that. More info here if you're interested.

In other exciting, news, the gracious hosts at Glacier View Ranch, outside of Ward, are working on building 7+ miles of singletrack that circumnavigates their land. They are looking for help and it will be open to the public. Now here's the really cool part. You want all day long mega epic rides? This area ties in directly to Raymond, Miller Rock, Cerain St Vrain, and all of those parts just east of the Peak to Peak. More info is here. The Maintenance Ranger, Austen, is organizing trail days this Sunday at 8ish as well as the following Sunday. We're trying to get a crew rallied to go up there this Sunday. Interested? Let me know!

Trail Work Tuesday Niter 8/24!!!

Next week, 8/24, will be our second trailwork nite of the year. We'll be working on Hall Ranch this time around. You all know the "new" dangerous section near the bottom of Bitterbrush trail right by the bathrooms. We'll be reworking that. Bottom line is that it's a poorly designed, north facing, section of trail. We will be doing some berm and drainage work to hopefully get rid of the loosey off camber stuff.

I went over that section of trail today, in person, with the caretaker of Hall as well as the trailwork coordinator for Boulder County. Long term wise, we're going to try to reroute that entire section, and move it to the other side of the hill so the trail will be southfacing, less steep, and more sustainable. That's long term, though, because that requires more people to sign off than a day of trailwork.

Bottom line is that whatever we do next week will still probably be suboptimal, but we ARE working on a long term, 4 season fix for this small section of trail.

Tuesday ride and other stuff

So, what does everyone think of the recent trailwork on Picture Rock?
I think it turned out pretty good. All told, we donated approximately 50 labor hours! Thanks everyone that came out. We'll have another Tuesday nighter trailwork in July and probably one in August, too.

This Tuesday, 6/22 will be our annual Summer Solstice Tuesday Ride. Bring lights that are charged and ready to ride for a couple hours, food and beer. It's not likely that we'll make OB in time. Tell the wife and kids you'll see them in the AM - it's going to be a late one. We'll be driving up to Camp Dick and doing 3 to 4 hours up there. Get ready - we're going to hit some tech. SSV at night?

Tuesday Ride 9/1

This Tuesday, we'll be doing some more maintainence on Heil Ranch's Picture Rock trail. We will be meeting at Redstone around 5pm and riding Picture Rock in to the worksite. Bring boots and gloves and clothes you're comfortable working in. We will be cleaning up the tread of the trail and choking it down in several spots. We will work until almost dusk so we will have time to ride out in the daylight. Bring your lights, though. After we're out of Heil, we'll blaze the lights and hit a tour de Lyons ghetto alleyway singletrackin.

If you can't make it by 5, no worries. Just ride up to the worksite when you can - we'll be there with tools waiting!

Picture Rock trail day Tuesday Ride

Thanks for all that came out for this weeks Tuesday Ride, trail work edition. We were able to contribute 30 hour of labor on PR - great job! We had a good crew that rode in to the worksite from Lyons. There were/are a couple of spots by the silo on the PR trail where springs had sprung this spring and muddied and rutted up the trail. Our mission tonight was to go in to help Open Space staff armor those sections of trail. If you've seen the sidewalk pavers at Heil, then you know what I'm talking about. I now have a much greater appreciation for all of the work the county puts into armoring. Big flat pavers with vertical pitched rocks in between are definitely easier to ride over than to build!

We were working on 3 sections tonight. One was finished right after we arrived, one we finished about 75% and the 3rd got mostly doug out.

We shut 'er down around 8:20 so we'd have enough daylight to ride out. The descent was smooth and swoopy fun all the way. The dirt was perfect too. A short but great ride.

This is an intersection that I've become super familiar with in the last few months. I love the addition.

The sections we worked on were all on the brief part of the trail between the quarry/old car and the silo. We are welcome to feedback, too. We want Picture Rock to be used by many for long times to come. If anyone is interested, we'll be doing another 2 or 3 of these work days this summer. Stay tuned.

Buchanan Pass next week!

National Trails Day at Heil a Huge Success!

Saturday, 6/7 was National Trails Day. We had a huge project going in our backyard - the Picture Rock Trail that will connect Lyons with Heil Valley Ranch. Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance partnered with Boulder County Open Space to make sure that we could get as much done as possible. The last week here saw a flurry of activity as corridors were aligned and flags were set and reset to yield the trail with the most flow possible. When Saturday AM rolled around, over 220 volunteers showed up to work. The Boulder County Horsemen's Association kicked in breakfast burritos and donuts, and REI handed out tech t's to all volunteers. We were on our way.

I was in the last crew to go up the hill, so our crew was working closest to Lyons. And I mean close. We started right at the edge of the Olson Property. This view is looking to the south right as you get on the trail.


After working several hours, I got into the brown bag lunch that was provided. Yum. PB&J, carrots, and an apple. That's about as good of trail food as I've had in a long time.

Since I was lunch breaking, and our section was 95% complete I started hiking to the south. The trail meanders thru open meadows and up onto the hillside before sneaking into the trees.

There will be some fast open sections

and a few fun curvy sections with natural chokes built in.

After the work day was over, it was party time. The trail crews finished all of their work earlier than expected so that left the lunch crew scrambling to get things together for folks. The post work feedathon was very graciously provided by our good friends at Oskar Blues. Here is the man himself throwing down on the grill. It's hard to keep up when you've got 225 hungry volunteers but Dale is always smiling.

Chris too. Here, he displays that he really is THE man when it comes to throwing the party.


The line to eat seemed never ending. At least the Dales Pale Ale was flowing like water. I believe that 3-4 kegs were consumed.

And here is why Chris is the man. The finely tuned art of Beer Can Chicken.

Mark seemed happy as he staggered out of the bus.

And perhaps happiest of all was MtbMike, the president of Boulder Mountainbike Alliance.

Why was he so happy? Because we got 8400 linear feet of trail built, that's why! Where we ended up yesterday, you could see the other section of completed trail across the valley. We're left with only 1200' left to build. The time frame on trail completion got bumped back up to late August/Early Sept. There are still several structures that need to be built - retaining walls and such, but we'll be riding this trail before the snow falls!

I think that calls for celebration, don't you?