Michael, like other difficult technical features, the Murphy skinny will only be ridable by about 10% of the riders. There is no way it can be used as "normal" route and serve a second purpose.
Murphy already has several cool bridges for everyone, but they are about 4 feet wide so that even novice bikers can use them. Similarly, we are in the process of putting in two bridges at Leb, each of them being nearly 100 feet. But they will be 3 ft wide, and cross a marsh area.
You are right in your assessment. These features are only so that skilled riders have something cool to look forward to in their ride. Kind of like the Leb teeter totter, ride-over rock, etc. Hopefully, we can make the trail interesting enough so that renegades don't start trying to build their own. The trend is to have an "A" and "B" line, so that the trail is available to a wide range of riders, but that the skilled riders have somewhere to use and sharpen their skills. Plus, they are fun to ride.
What you probably don't realize is that most of the "natural" rock gardens and features were also placed there by humans to make the ride more interesting and challenging. The places where the trail happens to go over or down a big rock or natural obstacle are a function of routing usually a quarter mile before and after, just to make use of the natural obstacle.
Similarly, if you scrape off the dirt in several of the low but fast areas on the trails, you will find that MORC actually removed the dirt, put in rock "armoring" underneath, then put the dirt on top of the rock, making it look like we didn't do anything.
In general, it takes a lot of unnatural work to make a trail that is ridable, but gives the appearance that we didn't do anything.
Originally Posted by RoostRider
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