Rochester Active Sports Club

Photos courtesy of Dave Greymont. More photos can be found here.

Trail work officially started Saturday morning on the new multi-use trail at Indian Heights. Despite the chilly weather conditions for work excellent progress was made by Matt Kurke, Greg Rowley, Garry Gross, Dave Hallaway, and Paul Quiram – many thanks. Four chainsaws were busy clearing the brush and large downed timber from the eventual trail tread and the trail workers got their first look at the planned route for the new trail. Overall response for the new trail was great. Trail work this fall will focus on removing the brush and large dead trees from the trail so that once the ground thaws in the spring RASC volunteers will have cleared a path for trail construction.
Any interested volunteers should check the RASC Bulletin board or email JRob5630@aol.com to get email updates on trail workdays and times. Thanks to everyone who showed up.
 

Oct 16th 2009

The Time trials are now finished for the 2009 season. Many thanks to all who participated. see you all next Spring.

Charly Tri

We received approval for multi-use trails at Indian Heights on Tuesday (October 6).  When completed, there will be 4 miles of trails available for mountain biking, hiking, trail running and snowshoeing. The approval allows us to start clearing this fall and working on the existing trails - no digging on new trails. In the spring, there will be a walk through on the proposed new trails to determine if there are any portions of the new trails where native plants or unique plant habitats exist. If so, we can adjust the trail. We plan to start rough clearing this fall. Please check the RASC bulletin board for trail sessions. Also, I am updating my email list. Please contact me at  jrob5630@aol.com so I can add your name to my contact list.
Jeff Robertson

 

Even with the threat of severe weather looming we still had 6 hardy souls show up for the Tuesday night mountain bike time trial at Eastwood.  Course conditions were dry to dusty while the freshly mowed open field section added to the difficulty on the course by layering the trail with a thick mat of cut grass.  Several new features were added to the trail in the last week or so creating some fun b-lines and keeping the riders honest.  The course record still stands from several weeks ago at 27:29 over the 5.2 mile course.  We also had the youngest finisher in the Eastwood Time Trial series this summer in Tyler. Dave had the biggest gain of the night bettering his last time by several minutes.  Thanks to Dave G for coming out and taking the pictures. The results from 7/14:
 
Matt 27:35
Jon   29:50
Charly 31:30
Justin 33:34
Dave  38:34
Tyler  42:20

Date: 7/13/09
Thanks to Drew, Mike and Dave, who put in some hrs last weekend, there are 6 new technical obstacles on the Eastwood MTB trail.  The obstacles were built to challenge most, but only one of them is partially over the 'existing' trail (a low dirt covered log pile that everyone should be able to roll) and the rest are either just to the side of on very short new cuts through the woods.

All were built with nothing but handtools and existing materials we found in the woods. All were built with an eye toward keeping the existing flow going and to make them sustainable.

Please be careful and ride within your abilities. Care was taken to make bailing off of them as safe as possible, but the potential is there for mishaps.

Please send feedback via the RASC bulletin board if you enjoy the new stuff.  Below is a photo of one of the obstacles.

Mountain bike TT's are on every Tuesday. One minute intervals, stopwatch provided to record your time, informal, first rider takes off at 6:30. Meet at the East parking lot at Eastwood. Course will be marked and about 5 miles. There are currently arrows out there now on trees that mark the course. Just follow the numbers in sequential order.

Here is a brief update on our efforts to have more mountain bike trails in and around Rochester.

Carley State Park – I have been tracking the progress of our proposal to the DNR that was submitted in January. I discussed the status this week with Aaron Wundrow who is in charge of 9 parks in our area and he said that they have been gathering input from their Park staffs and resource specialist. So far there have been no major reasons not to proceed. Hopefully we will be able to have a meeting with them in the next few weeks to understand their staff responses.  If everything is still positive ( from both DNR and RASC) we may be able to start in September/October.

Mayowood – We have been in discussions with Tom Ryan regarding adding trails in the woods on either side of the bike path. Matt Kurke has developed a trail concept. These trails will be novice level. Tom has indicated that we will have to make a presentation to the Park Commission. I will be establishing a date.

Indian Heights –  A proposal to add trails in this park is being prepared. This is a small park, but, offers some interesting features and will complement Eastwood.  

Please get back to me if you have questions.
Jeff Robertson
Jrob5630@aol.com