New Re-route Open @ Lebanon Hills 6-2-08

[gopherhockey]

One of the only real flow issues at Leb (IMHO) got fixed today. Its the area where you do the last downhill before crossing a bridge and heading up to merge into the beginner trail. You used to come around a sharp right erroded corner, do some quick turns then take a sharp left right into a tree that has been wrapped in organge tape for years...

Now you come around the corner with a better sight line and a wider arc and sweep right up into a small new area of trail... ride around and merge back into the existing just below where that orange wrapped tree used to be. (marked in pink below)

The old trail (estimate) is in green. New re-route (estimate) is in red.

The area is a bit soft and not quite hand-finished yet. If it rains, you are not going to want to be riding leb as you will get muddy in this section until it hardens up.

Enjoy... oh, and thanks to Tim for doing the machine work today and for helping push all those fallen trees out of the way and correct that first turn. You can really tell Tim has a thousand+ hours using that machine...


http://www.morcmtb.org/photopost/data/505/LebRerouteBridgeArea.jpg

[BG128]

Looks great can't wait to ride it. No matter how slow I was going I always had too much speed into that corner.

[Steven W.]

I'm also pretty pumped to ride it. When we walked it last week it looked like a nice line. A little easier to carry some speed through that section w/o having to dodge the "big orange tree". Sweet!

[gopherhockey]

Wish we could have made it a bit longer, but they are planning to re-route the ski trail at some point and I didn't want to get into an area of conflict. Plus, this is a re-route of that small turn and so I was kinda pushing it a bit going that far out... but hey, I just coudln't find a better line. :p

I think eventually... someday.. there could be an optional trail off the end of that section. There is some nice unused terrain on the east side of the park near the road on back around to the zoo side.

We are planning to put some kind of jump at the very end of the new section just to give it some extra fun. Right now its kind of rough in that spot.

[charliebrown]

I like re-routes.

[strk9]

is this the re-route around the hidden pond?
if so wow that was quick..

[gopherhockey]

is this the re-route around the hidden pond?
if so wow that was quick..

No, this is a much smaller re-route. We weren't planning on opening this one right away with the other larger project going on, but there was a lot of skidding going on around the corner by that tree and it was actually becoming a safety concern.

We hope to open the larger re-route in July... depends on how many volunteers come out during trailwork. Besides just finishing the trail itself we have special projects on the new trail such as an armoring section leading into the new trail, 200' (appx) of boardwalk to install, a couple of high speed berms, and we're trying to work some nice launchers on some of the downhills that expert riders will see and use but intermediate riders will just roll over. Good stuff!

[strk9]

alright thats what i thought cool cant wait to ride it if the weather gets better!

[Danimal]

And the question that is always on my mind... is it uphill or downhill? The re-route that is. :)

Thanks guys for doing this. Sorry I couldn't get my Tuesday nights off from work to help with trail work. I think my patrolling counts for volunteer work doesn't it????

[gopherhockey]

And the question that is always on my mind... is it uphill or downhill? The re-route that is. :)


Its actually fairly flat overall. When you come around the corner it sends you just slightly uphill to scrub off all the speed, then it actually goes slightly downhill pretty much all the way to where it connects up.

[destrago]

Sweet. That corner was fun, but I'm looking forward to getting to actually flow out of that nice downhill right before it. Can't wait to try this. Sorry I haven't been to trailwork, I've been trying to but stuff just keeps coming up that I can't get out of! :mad:

-Tony

[gopherhockey]

Sweet. That corner was fun, but I'm looking forward to getting to actually flow out of that nice downhill right before it.


We may still have some tweaking to do with the first right hand corner... time will tell. It might need a slight berm for those who really fly through there. Right now its sandy/rocky and very soft, so we'll have to wait until it packs down before we know what further tweaks are necessary.

Its still a fairly blind corner for those who haven't ridden there before. I think the corrections we made will really help but when you are going around a hill like that there is only so much one can do. Tim really shaved off a lot of the side hill to help open up the sightlines.

I guess what I'm saying is if you know this corner well, don't carry quite as much speed into it as you used too until things pack in... then it will start to improve quickly.