Get ready for the upcoming COMBA Buffalo Creek build weekend!

Thank you to the crew who has volunteered their time to help us build a new trail in Buffalo Creek which will be made by mountain bikers for mountain bikers. We will be building this Saturday and Sunday, May 30th and 31st. We will be meeting at 8:30 AM on Saturday and again Sunday at the Miller Gulch trailhead south of Bailey. Please be at the Miller Gulch trailhead and ready to go at 8:30 AM. We will be camping at the Miller Gulch trailhead as well. Don't forget to bring your own food and water for the weekend (we will be packing our lunches into the work site), sturdy work clothes and boots, and your bike!

How do I get there?

We will be meeting up and camping at the Miller Gulch trailhead south of Bailey. Please use this map to help guide you to the Miller Gulch trailhead.

• From the intersection of Highways 285 (Hampden Avenue) and C-470, take Highway 285 south (also west) to Bailey.
• At the bottom of Crow Hill just as you’re entering the town of Bailey, turn left onto Wellington Lake Road. Look for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms store and you’ve made the correct turn.
• Go approximately 5 miles on Wellington Lake Road (also Forest Service Road 560). Bear left onto Forest Service Road 549.
• Go approximately 2 miles on Forest Service Road 549 and bear left onto Forest Service Road 553.
• Go approximately ½ mile on Forest Service Road 553 and turn right onto Forest Service Road 554 and into the Miller Gulch trailhead.
• Look for CoMBA event signs along the way.

What should I wear?

Dress in sturdy work clothes. Boots, long pants, and work gloves are recommended. Hats, sunglasses, long sleeve shirts, and your camelback are important too.

What should I bring?

Our trail building weekends will be friendly, back-to-the-basics camping weekends held at the Miller Gulch trailhead. Bring food and water for the day or weekend depending on whether you committed for a single day or for the full weekend. If you are camping bring your camp gear. Tools for trail building will be provided by COMBA. Bring your bike!

Jason Bertolacci
Colorado Mountain Bike Association
jason@comba.org
www.comba.org

Social Ride this Thursday - 5/28!

WHEN: Thursday May 28th
WHERE: Lair o' the Bear main parking lot
TIME: Meet at 5:45 p.m., wheels down at 6 p.m.
WHAT TO BRING: A working mountain bike and all the fixins' (water, tubes, shoes, gloves, helmets, etc.)
CONTACT: Please RSVP for this ride or shoot questions to grouprides@comba.org

NOTE: for this first Social Ride, the Board of Directors plans to join, so come on out and meet COMBA leadership!

please join us in creating a sustainable designed-for-mountain-bike trail with advanced features in Buffalo Creek

Calling all crew leaders and volunteers: please join us in creating a sustainable designed-for-mountain-bike trail with advanced features in Buffalo Creek...

The quick and dirty:

  

We are going to purpose build a "black diamond" level mountain bike trail in the Buffalo Creek area of the Pike National Forest.

  

The project is sponsored by the Colorado Mountain Bike Association (COMBA) and will be built in partnership with the US Forest Service, Front Range Mountain Bike Patrol (FRMBP), International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) and  Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew, and local bike retailers and manufacturers.

  

The trail will have advanced features like drops, steep rollers, wall rides and other technical problems which utlize the unique local terrain found in Buffalo Creek. Alternate lines will be built around the advanced features to make the trail accessible to a wide audience of experienced mountain bikers.

  

There are three build weekends scheduled for 2009: May 30th and 31st, July 18th and 19th, and August 15th and 16th.

  

Volunteers will have an opportunity to build a great mountain bike trail while learning advanced mountain bike trail building skills, including the opportunity to participate in the free  Subaru/IMBA TCC Trailbuilding School to be offered in August.

  

To become involved please RSVP for our May 30th-31st trail building weekend at: http://go.imba.com/site/Calendar/1648131972?view=Detail&id=104541

The full story:

As background, Scott Dollus and the South Platte Ranger District of the US Forest Service have been great friends to the mountain biking community. This friendship is a result of the outstanding shared-use trail system the Forest Service has created in Buffalo Creek with the help of volunteer labor provided by mountain bike groups such as IMBA, COMBA, Team Evergreen and the Front Range Mountain Bike Patrol. The FRMBP, led by Keith Clarke and Stu Miller, and local mountain bike author Tom "Barn" Barnhart deserve
special praise for the success of this partnership, having developed and maintained the relationship with the South Platte Ranger District for 12 years and having donated 4,668 hours of volunteer labor in the process.

One product of this community partnership is the desire and willingness on the part of the Forest Service to expand the total mileage of trail in Buffalo Creek, including building black diamond level trails to round out the already outstanding trails in Buffalo Creek. There are plenty of trails in the Front Range which are technical due to poor construction, decades of erosion, and rough natural terrain, but sustainable public purpose-built gravity trails are missing from the Front Range.

In Buffalo creek the Forest Service has given us a granite boulder strewn ridgeline to purpose-build expert trails. It is unfortunately not shuttleable terrain, but the climb is manageable and the terrain technical, making it a good black diamond trail candidate. What is a "black diamond" trail? When I think "black diamond", I think of the opportunites and lines that open up on trails like Amasa Back and Rock Stacker in Moab, UT when riding a stouter trail bike with 5 or 6 inches of travel. 

The trail can be ridden on a short-travel cross county mountain bike -- even a rigid bike -- but aboard a bike from the evolving class of good pedaling long-travel bikes, the trail becomes a whole different beast.

Our new trail in Buffalo Creek will cater to this type of riding with drops, steep granite rollers, and wall rides all built in a sustainable manner and blending with the character of the unique local geography. The top of the ridge offers some of the best views in the Buffalo Creek area. From those views the trail's descent follows long expanses of granite slickrock giving sweet line options weaving around, over and between boulders from the size of cars to small homes. Alternate lines will offer routes around the bigger moves keeping the trail accessible to a wide audience of experienced mountain bikers. If you have ever looked up at the granite domes and boulder fields along the ridges in Buffalo Creek and wondered what it would be like to ride a line up high -- this is our opportunity to build that line.

In the Fall 2008, a group of local riders led by Keith and Stu flagged a trail corridor climbing to the top of the ridge and descending back into the valley. The corridor has received the approval of the  Forest Service and we are ready to put shovel to dirt beginning the weekend of May 30th-31st. These trail building weekends will be friendly, back-to-the-basics camping weekends held at the Miller Gulch Trailhead with easy access to vehicles and facilities. We welcome volunteers on either day, but we encourage everyone to spend the weekend and join us around the campfire. You bring food, water and a tent, and we will bring the beer.

In addition to a great new trail in Buffalo Creek, we hope this project will build a new community of IMBA educated trail builders in the Front Range. Many of you participated in COMBA's  Forest Service led crew leader training  last summer. This is an opportunity to take those skills and expand them into building sustainable designed-for-mountain-bike trails. The Subaru/IMBA Trail Care crew will be joining us on the weekend of August 15th and 16th offering our vounteers the opportunity to particpate, without cost, in the TCC Trailbuilding School.

This is an incredible opportunity to build a new advanced trail on public land, but the project will not succeed without your help.  Please join us a volunteer or volunteer crew leader by RSVP'ing to our May 30th-31st trail building weekend at:

http://go.imba.com/site/Calendar/1648131972?view=Detail&id=104541

Jason Bertolacci

Colorado Mountain Bike Association

jason@comba.org

303-956-9099

Inaugural Socail Ride - 5/14!

The first ever COMBA Beginner Social Ride begins Thursday evening, May 14th. Let your beginner riders know all about this!! It's a great way to get familiar with the trails, learn the rules of the trail and meet new people!

When -- May 14, 2009
Where -- South Table Mountain Trail head-- 5:45 with wheels down at 6:00pm

What do you bring with?

• WORKING bike


• helmet required


• appropriate riding clothes and shoes


• water


• energy gels/bars


• wind/rain jacket


• extra tube


• pump


• patch kit


• BIG SMILE

Directions from Denver: 6th ave west to the Indiana St/Colorado Mills Mall exit. Exit to the North on Indiana St. Go straight across Colfax (Indiana turns into South Golden Road). Stay on S. Golden Road and turn right onto Quaker St. (at light). Go to the end of the road to where it curves left. Go about 1/4 mile and you will see parking on the right at the base of S. Table.

Google map link to Quaker St. and Golden Hills Rd.

Who to contact: grouprides@comba.org for info and to RSVP

Apex Review: JCOS Seeking to Improve Visitor Experiences

Give Jefferson County your Feedback on Apex Park!

Jefferson County Open Space (JCOS) managers recently contacted COMBA to inform us they are beginning a public input process to consider opportunities and methods to improve visitor experiences at Apex Park. Their goal is to increase the safety of park users, and provide more positive experiences for visitors.

The public input process has four parts that require your participation and awareness:

1) Written Input: JCOS is soliciting pubic input on visitors' preferred management techniques. To streamline the submission of requested feedback from the cycling community to Jefferson County, an electronic version of the JCOS feedback form has been made available by the Colorado Mountain Bike Association (COMBA) and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). Please go here to participate. Upon submission, a copy of your answers and comments will be automatically emailed to Thea Rock, Jefferson County's Manager of Citizen Outreach. The deadline for submitting Feedback Forms is June 30, 2009.

2) Open Houses: Two open Houses will be held in June at the Open Space Ponderosa Meeting Room located at 700 Jefferson County Parkway in Golden. A large turnout from mountain bikers will help ensure our standing in these important discussions! Mark your calendars and attend if you can: Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m; Saturday, June 20, 2009 from 9:30 - 11:00 a.m.

3) OSAC Report: Findings from public input will be reported at the Open Space Advisory Committee’s regular meeting on July 2, 2009 at 7:00pm. COMBA will be there to make sure our input was captured fully, and hope you will be too!

4) Spread the word! Please forward a link to this post to everyone you know who values their mountain biking experience at Apex, who will want to be part of this important process. Our voices matter!

COMBA is encouraged that JCOS is conducting extensive outreach in this process, and appreciates that its managers are asking all park visitors and stakeholders to take an active part. Open Space managers want to put as many ideas as possible on the table for consideration before any decisions are made. COMBA has been assured by all levels of JCOS management that the public input process now underway is meant to generate ideas and foster outreach, and that no changes in Apex Park management are expected this year.

As always, thank you for your support of COMBA, and being an active member of our Front Range mountain biking Community. (PS to Facebookers: Stay in the loop by joining COMBA's Facebook Group!)