Been a while

Its been quite a while since I've done anything with this blog. I have been working at Rocky Knob MTB Park here in Boone as an intern. We are so close to having it finished, but it looks like it might not be feasible to open the park until the weather turns around. The internship is pretty much done now, and I have been offered a job by the trail building company who is doing all the machine work at Rocky Knob. The job is about a 2 month long project working at Brown Mountain OHV over near Morganton. We are going to repair/rebuild 5 of the trails, and all mountain bikers' favorite one, trail #9, is one of those. Its gonna be great to work with one of the best trail building companies in the country and learn a lot more about building trails with machines.

ProDH track videos

I did a run down the Pro track at Hawksnest a couple days ago with a chest cam. It was angled a little low, but I've got that sorted out now so I should have a better shot soon.

Dirty Bird ProDH Track Preview from Michael Thomas on Vimeo.

This past Sunday Alex Boyd came out to the Bird to shoot some video as well. Here's a nice teaser of the new Pro track...

Dirty Bird DH Pro Track Preview from Alex Boyd on Vimeo.

R.I.P.

There is one trail that pops up in my mind as the trail that really got me into riding gnarly terrain well. It is also the trail that scared me every time I dropped in. It broke my first bone(s). It also was a playground for learning how to build downhill trails. Some ideas worked, some didn't last more than a couple weeks. One things for sure though, it went through some of the best terrain I have ever seen on a bike. Everywhere I go, I compare trails that I ride to this one. It is still at the top of my list as pretty much the best DH trail I have ever ridden. After riding it for a few days in a row, I would have the most confidence, and ride faster than ever.

In 2008, when the National Collegiate Championships were held at Sugar Mtn, I never practiced the race course during the weekend. It was raining harder than ever all day every day until Sunday when we raced. I had been practicing the track for a while before the race, getting ready. So I knew all the lines on the track. But the only thing that mattered, was that I was going to go ride Canyons the morning of the race, before I went to Sugar to do my race run on Sunday. It had been raining at Canyons too, so I figured that it would be in similar conditions. But the only difference is when Canyons is wet, it is straight up terrifying. I balled it up in one of the steep turns and ate shit, putting a huge gouge in my helmet from my pedal when the bike flipped over me. Rang my bell pretty good too. Thank god I did it there and not at Sugar, because I would have lost the race. The trail is so long that you can have a massive crash, keep riding and by the time you get to the end, everything is back to normal and you are feeling good again.

The trail is "closed" right now because the private land owner at the very top was unhappy of the obvious increase in usage over the past year or so. Seems like everyone else has gotten the word that it's a good trail too. When we went in to get it going again 5 years ago, you could barely even see the trail because the forest was trying to reclaim it. Maybe that will happen again and someone else can go in there in a few years and bring it back again. R.I.P. Canyons

New DH trail

Well another DH trail has popped up in the High Country, this one is probably the closest one to where I'm living now, and on private land. The guy who lives there used to be one of my neighbors, and rides. Luckily he has a nice mountain in his backyard so the obvious thing to do was start building trails. Went out today for a little session and to shoot some photos. Here's a couple winners...

Snowshoe #2

Well hello there rocks! I haven't ridden proper east coast rock gardens since November 2009. No joke. Good thing the race track at this past weekend's Snowshoe race was full of them. I had a blast getting back used to actually riding rock gardens. This may sound weird, but I never really rode any sort of rocks while I was out west. Yes, Whistler had rocks, but those were all massive slabs, and nothing like east coast rocks. I'm proud to say that I missed them! Saturday's practice started out pretty harsh, having crashed 3 times in my first 3 runs. The first crash was a high speed washout in the left-hand turn after the "wild zone"... ouch. Second crash was on the next run, just a few turns down the track. Lost my front end on a straight-away between turns and flipped OTB. Third was a really awesome OTB in a sharp right turn before I even got to the rock sections. Glad I got that over with, because I started to feel slightly better every run after that and actually quit crashing.

My race run went decently well, save for one solid mistake. I hit the whole top of the track really well and was feeling smooth. Definitely not on pace with the "Birdman" Ethan this weekend, but it seemed nobody else was either. He totally checked out on the entire field at this race. I really wanted to have a clean, crash-free run, and I did. However, in the very last rock section, where I could almost smell the finish line, I made a dumb mistake and got off line, coming to a dead stop in the beginning of said rock section. Having to poke my way through the rest of it with no speed or momentum was a pain in the ass. Like I said though, I definitely was no where near on pace with Ethan anyways, so no big deal there. This season I'm gonna try and claw my way back into the race shape I was in last year. Oregon was way too much fun and all of the freeriding I did didn't seem to help. Maybe if we race on downhill moto tracks with FMX style kickers I could do better. haha. It's all good though, I have one of the best race tracks just minutes from my front door now, and a dedicated shuttle driver to help get my mojo back. See y'all at Beech! Oh, I heard whispers of a new track there too, stoked!

Rocky Knob Mountain Bike Park

Been out hiking all around Rocky Knob Park here in Boone over the past few days. It's pretty amazing just how much rock is on that mountain. The trails that will be built are gonna be so awesome because they will just be rock. Machines are getting dropped off on Monday morning and trail construction begins that day with Woody and the Trail Dynamics crew. I'll be out there mapping out key features on the mountain creating a "bread crumb" map showing all of those features for future trail route ideas. The first trail is the easy loop, or Green route. It is a stacked-loop trail system, where the harder trails are further back in the park to access. There will also be a Blue trail, Black Diamond trails, and even a Red Diamond trail, aka a "super gnar" trail. This place is about to blow up, and I'm so stoked be a part of this right now. Many more updates about this to come...

New internship

Well I just decided to change up my internship idea a little bit so it would benefit me in the future with MTB LLC. I am now interning at Rocky Knob Park here in Boone. Flagging trails, making trails, mapping trails. I'm going to be working closely with Kristian Jackson (the trail boss) and the guys with Trail Dynamics over the next couple of months. Things are rolling really fast at the park, and I can confidently say it is going to become a major destination very soon. The terrain is soooo rocky and they have a lot of land to work with. Starting tomorrow. Then.....Snowshoe this weekend.