Kicking Horse Bike Park - Trail Crew Update #5

Posted: Aug 11, 2009

The straight goods on Kicking Horse Bike Park, straight from the trail crew's fingertips.

This one goes out to our man Bruce Lessor, who is staring the biggest gap jump of any of our lives straight in the eye.

Learn how the trails are holding up inside,

This was going to be my introductory paragraph when I wrote this yesterday, frustrated and full of scorn for the sun: Do you ever get that parched feeling when your skin dries up and cracks, your throat burns from choking on dust, and each and every cell in your body aches for water? Well, the earth around here is feeling a bit that way. For a human, this condition can be cured with a tall glass of sweet water. For a bike park, it takes numerous days of constant drizzle. But then it rained all night last night and a weight was lifted off my chest and angels sang and peace reigned throughout the world. So now this is my introductory paragraph. Keep in mind while reading the rest this was written before the rain (also keep in mind it only lasted for one long night, so the deep soil is still dry), and I’m not going to rewrite this whole thing.

What do you do if you are a bike park trail crew and there is nothing you can do with the dirt that is baking into dust? Well, at Kicking Horse we build with wood! After a brief hiatus, we are back at Stickrock III, or Y-Not, or Why-Knot, or whatever its final name will be. We will continue to develop her for the rest of the season, so it may be open this year. But if it ever rains, then we need to go spend some quality time with our poor, withered dirt trails and patch some gaping wounds. Those trails would weep from neglect if there was any moisture left in them to make tears.

To warm up for Stickrock, to get the ol’ creative juices flowing again, we spent some time on Rock Garden and Blaster. Rock Garden now has a new blue line entrance that runs alongside the existing, intimidating boulder climbs.


Blaster got a new exit option to replace that rock drop to flat that used to kill flow and bewilder the uninitiated. This new TTF has been labeled “Horsefly” in honour of the flock of miniature airborne dinosaurs that joined us there daily to ensure we never sat down to relax. A word of warning: after the initial step-up, just roll into the creek bridge. That’s all the speed you need. It has a sniper landing because we had to hide this beauty from the voracious appetite of wood-eating snow groomers that nocturnally prowl the area in the winter.


A new little bridge has replaced the decimated skinny after the first berm on Showdown, and the bottom of Northern Lights was improved with a much better bridge. Speaking of Northern Lights, the patrollers have been putting good efforts into the berm on the one wacky corner. Have you ever tried riding downhill with a pulaski? Me neither. Those guys are hardcore.

After a few weeks of getting ridden, we realized the new DJ line needed tweaking. The landings on the black line were too narrow and short. So the heavy machinery is back as I’m writing this (waiting patiently with my rake), adding truckloads of more dirt (19 more!). The blue line is going to get love too. Here’s a word to the unwise: if there are Closed signs in the jump park, that means that it is not open. ‘Not’ is the important word. That dump truck in there is not a transitory hit. You know who you are.


Final thing: the Terminator Endurance race had to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. Unfortunate yes, but we’d rather not hold an event than hold a crappy one. Next year hopefully we’ll have more time to properly develop it. But if you have your own stopwatch, have at ‘er.

Ride on.
Crowe
www.kickinghorseresort.com
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