Goldstream Sports Fairbanks Alaska

Birch Hill Nordic Area has a 1-2 inch packed base.  The skating is amazing considering the thin snow cover. I skied most of the trails yesterday and felt my skies hit some thing only a couple times. I would recommend rock skis. Time to ski, winter if finally here. Joel

Ski Trail work day Saturday Oct 24th at 11 am. We will be clearing trail that Tyson and I have marked out this week. We will be brushing with chain saws and a brush mower. We have 4 Km flagged that needs clearing. some of it is on existing trail that needs clean up and some is though birch that just needs some dead fall cleared. We also have some areas of small dense spruce that will be the most work. When completed and we have good snow cover we will have about 8 km of trail with a set classic track. Bring work gloves, if you have a chainsaw that you can bring the would be great.

We are building more classic ski trail this week. Last year we built and groomed 4 km. Our goal is to have 10km of trail right from the shop. We will see what we can get done before the snow comes. We will be marking new trail Tuesday and Wednesday and will start brushing it out Wednesday. We keep the trail as narrow as we can and still set a quality track. Joel

It is that time of year when I squeeze those last minute summer activities. I just finished a fun tandem bike ride with my son Luke.  The Ester Dome Single Track is quite a challenge for a tandem.  We had  a little trouble in one spot but managed to stay up right. Sharp steep turns are not easy to do on a tandem.  Needless to say the T&T was not possible with the tandems long wheel base and I had to skip the jumps. Luke said he wanted breaks and did not like the fact he had a large blind sport right in front of him, me. Thanks Luke. When we finished riding there we 8 cars in the parking area. Good thing we are adding trails next year.

Go Whitehorse! The other northern city is ahead of us in terms of a diversity of places to ride bikes. We’ve got some catching up to do, and it’s really encouraging to see it happening. Here’s their latest development, a bike park and skillz development playground. Have a look at that sweet sweet dirt. And start asking your friends to help you make one, too!

City Ian Stewart/Yukon News

After about five years of talk and planning, Whitehorse will soon be the first in the territory to have a professionally designed and developed bike-skills park.

There’s still much to do, with no name chosen and wooden structures yet to be built, but BMX and mountain bike riders may be enjoying the new facilities as soon as this week.

And it was a big community effort that got the whole thing together:

Construction on the park, located on Mount McIntyre off Sumanik Drive, began last week with the arrival of Jay Hoots, owner of the BC-based company Hoots Inc., a mountain-bike clothing and safety equipment manufacturer that has designed more than 30 skills parks throughout BC, as well as in Alberta and the US.

Although his arrival is recent, finalized plans for the park were developed almost a year ago in conjunction with the Contagious Club.

“What’s on the ground is awfully close to what we had in the design,” said Hoots.

“It actually turned out to be better!”

As you pull up to the skills park, it may look a little intimidating, but despite an usually steep incline under much of the ramps, the park offers something for riders of all levels, said Hoots.

“This grade is pretty steep; it’s about the limit to what I would normally build on,” he said. “What we started at is one, one-and-a-half foot high jumps and then we have two-and-a-half foot, four-foot and five-foot jumps.

“The hill itself has been adjusted to give you the exact speed you need to be able to do the jumps. When you show up, you don’t have to be afraid that you don’t know anything about jumping; this place really holds your hand through it.

“With the beginner jumps, the platform for the jump only allows you to go so far up, so you can only go so fast getting into the jump—you can’t get into too much trouble. To get the speed for the big jumps you have to go through the trees and take the tree-line to get into them.”

Normally a project of this size could come with a price tag in the area of $150,000 to $200,000, but about 80 per cent of costs have been eliminated through volunteer hours, plus material and excavation tools donated by local businesses, said Hoots and McDiarmid.

“This wouldn’t have happened without the support of the city’s Park and Recreation Department—they were huge—Icycle Sports and the people who have donated the machines, the dirt, the volunteer time and things like that,” said McDiarmid.

There’s more to the article here http://www.yukon-news.com/sports/14077/

Check out the Joplin seat post. It features adjustable height on the fly. I found myself adjusting it almost as much as I shift. One of those things that when you get used to it it will be hard to live without.  At least on the Ester Dome Single Track.  Three inches of  adjustment. I set it high for the climbs, a little lower for the rough areas and most of the way down for the jumps and drops.

I road the new single track and it is in great shape. A few small spots of snow. Further up the hill trails were snow covered and the upper part of Henderson Rd was icy. Time to get out and ride it for the last time before it snows.