By Mike Rutter, BMA Trails Program Director
Whoa! It’s been a while. Apologies for the radio silence. We’ve been busy back at Picture Rock and also at Maryland Mountain in Black Hawk. We picked up volunteer events again this month at Picture Rock, working every Tuesday from 9 a.m.-noon. We have ONE more left (Tuesday, April 25) before we go back to evenings. If you like the idea of working mornings let me know and I’ll see if there’s enough interest to keep the morning shift.
Speaking of which, Picture Rock improvements are SO CLOSE to getting wrapped up!! We just finished up the first turn at the top and are making our way to the intersection of Wild Turkey where we’ll head south towards Wapiti for the rest of the summer. Before and after photos are below for you to check out! Cheers to volunteers Andrew Kelsey, Erik Dasbach, Tom Schutter, Tobias Brehler, Reid Maniscalco, Justin Barnitz, and John Hicks for stepping up the past couple weeks.
Before: Lower entrance of turn one before we got started. This turn pinched in tight and there was also a tree that kicked everyone off their line on the inside as well. After: We pushed the wall out and banked/armored the exit to hold up better.
Andrew Kelsey and Erik Dasbach putting that plush Heil loam back on the berm.
Turn one upper entrance complete! Wider entrance with an open exit at the bottom.
I was also down in Black Hawk working with the venerable Adam Wood of COMBA on optimizing some of the turns and features on Hard Money. Adam has made Hard Money his mission and is putting in mega hours on this trail—all as a volunteer!! His goal is to open up the entrances to the copious number of turns and try to keep the “skidiots” (I think that’s slang from his native England? 🙂) from braking too hard and eroding the turn. He also saw a line for a drop in feature that takes out a slow slalom turn sequence and adds a little spice to the trail just above this trail.
Dustin London, volunteer coordinator for COMBA, and I will be leading volunteer days down at Maryland Mountain on Thursdays as soon as all the snow clears out…which will be soon. We will get that schedule up and running soon, so keep an eye out!
Hard Money turn on Maryland Mountain. We eliminated the low entrance where people were locking up and ripping out the dirt and opened it up with a wider, armored entrance.
Bottom of the feature we started to link the upper line with the lower while bypassing two tight switchbacks. And the feature looking down from the top. Great addition to Hard Money to keep it flowing downhill.
Your BMA membership and donations support all the trail work (and more!) that Rutter does. Thank you!