Great news for Juneau mountain bikers! We have the initial approval to build the first official dedicated downhill mountain bike trail in Juneau at Eaglecrest. Last night, the Eaglecrest board of directors approved the Eaglecrest summer trails plan, which includes a mountain bike trail from the top of the Hooter lift down to the race shack. The attached Google Earth image shows the approximate initial trail route, which will be fine tuned. This trail will have a vertical drop of about 425 feet -- not a lot, but the good news is the climb to the top of the trail on the mountain road is also only 435 vertical feet (plus another 100 vert or so from the lodge to the end of the trail), so multiple laps to session the trail will be practical. At a 6-8 percent average grade, the trail will be just over a mile long -- short but sweet, and a good realistic start for mountain biking trails at Eaglecrest. The proposed trail design is a blue intermediate level flow-style trail with good sized berms on most of the corners and lots of rollers and terrain features. The design objective is to build a trail that will be rideable by a broad spectrum of mountain bikers including kids to help grow the sport and promote summer use of Eaglecrest. All main trail features will be rollable, with no mandatory jumps or drops, but more experienced riders at a faster pace will be able to catch moderate air frequently on terrain features. If youve been to Whistler, we wont be building A-line, more like B-line, with a bit of Crank it Up and Ninja Cougar in the mix. The design goal is for a good rider to be able to ride the trail with no pedaling and a minimum of braking (to prevent development of braking bumps), using rollers pump track style for more speed. Important notes: This trail proposal is in the early stages. The first step is to finalize the trail routing and conduct a wetlands delineation of the route for the Corp of Engineers wetlands construction permit. This will hopefully happen by the end of September, with permitting work over the winter. Another important note is that Eaglecrest does not have the money in its budget to build this trail, and with the citys current budget situation, it is unlikely that city funding will be available. So grants and other fundraising efforts will be needed to fund the trail construction. A considerable amount of volunteer help from Juneaus mountain bikers will also be needed, both with fundraising and trail construction. Also, the access to the top of this trail will be from an extension of the current service road from just above the base of the black bear lift to the top of the Hooter lift. That service road extension will need to be funded and built before we can build the bike trail. It is possible that construction of the road extension and bike trail could begin next summer, but it may end up being 2016 before the necessary funds can be generated. This post is getting kind of long, so I will continue it in a part 2 shortly.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 20:28:13 +0000
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