White Mountains NEMBA Chapter News

SingleTracks, February 2008

It's a new year with some exciting new projects and events on the horizon. Between powder days we've been scheming plans for 2008.

Gorham's Moose Brook State Park has offered limited mountain biking for years, but a small group of locals north of Pinkham Notch, led by Jason and Kara Hunter, have injected a lot of new energy in the area. The group started by reclaiming a couple of old and abandoned trails and ended up with about 3 miles of excellent "new" singletrack. Another mile or so of new trail added a new descent with climbing turns and fun berms, and they have another 1/2 mile of singletrack roughed in that needs only final raking and trimming. Their initial plan for the spring is to lay out and build a good beginner/warm-up loop near the parking area. Jason estimates there's now about 2.5 to 3 hours of riding within Moose Brook State Park and the adjacent state forest. The park has a great campground that has a remote and private feel yet is only a 10 minute bike ride to town on a packed dirt non-motorized trail, which also accesses more fun double track that skirts the back side of town and can get you as far as Dolly Copp Road. We are looking forward to helping this crew get some more trail on the ground… and riding it, of course. This is a vast area with potential for epic long rides - kudos to Jason, Kara, Aaron and friends for getting things going.

The 20th Annual Maine Bike Rally will take place just over the border in Fryeburg, Maine on July 11-13th, 2008. Also chosen as the venue for the League of American Bicyclists' National Bike Rally, the three day event will feature more than 30 road and mountain bike rides for all levels of cyclists, plus a full weekend of entertainment. An estimated 500 people are slated to attend.

White Mountain Chapter members Peter Minnich and Jean Lee are co-chairing the Mountain Bike portion of this event. They are tentatively planning three rides for Friday evening, eight rides for Saturday including a sunrise ride, an all day epic ride, family rides and half day rides. For Sunday three shorter rides are in the works. Approximately half of these rides will take place in New Hampshire. More information is available at: http://www.bikemaine.org/mainebikerally/index.html .

In the White Mountain National Forest, the Forest Service's Saco District is looking to inject some new life into their Adopt-A-Trail program. Initially, we are looking for volunteers to maintain sections of the very popular Nanamocomuck Trail. Maintenance responsibilities on the Nan will be broken up into manageable sections for local riders to adopt. Everyone who puts in 24 hours of volunteer maintenance receives a parking pass. We'll be discussing this in more detail soon.

Enjoy the snow while it lasts! --Rob Adair

SingleTracks, December 2007

The White Mountain chapter had a busy and productive 2007. After a decade of improving existing trails and building some of the best new trails in the Saco River valley, our chapter membership has significantly increased and seems to be building momentum for the future.

Group rides may have accounted for some of the chapter growth. The Monday Mellow rides and Friday night rides were very well attended (initially perhaps a little too well attended) and Nancy Cavalieri deserves major thanks for taking on what was sometimes an overwhelming task akin to herding cats.

The White Mountain portion of New Hampshire's Jamis Bicycles Trail Care Series consisted of four "formal" trail maintenance days attended by 45 different individuals who put in a total of 270 hours of labor. Many hours of informal trail work was also completed, pruning and trimming trails and removing deadfall. Thank you to all who helped keep our trails in fine condition!

The ladies of the White Mountain Chapter, sponsored by the Mt. Washington Valley Velo Club, put in a strong performance at the 24 hours of Great Glen, taking 3rd place in the women's sport category, but taking first place in having the most fun. Longtime member Pete Ostroski cleaned up on the local race circuit this year, winning the men's solo categories at Great Glen and the 12 hours of Bradbury Mountain, as well as winning the Porky Gulch Classic stage race. Only 18 years old, Pete has been building trails with us since he was 11.

Our 7th annual White Mountain Weekend was held August 25th & 26th. An amazing amount of trail work was accomplished in just a few hours. We enjoyed excellent rides both Saturday and Sunday, a free beer and barbeque bash held in conjunction with the Mt. Washington Valley Velo Club, swimming in Echo Lake and the Saco River, and an incredible lightning show Saturday night.

We contributed to community events more this year than ever before. Besides co-sponsoring and helping out at the Red Jersey Cyclery Summer Race Series, we introduced a mountain bike segment at the Jen's Friends Climb Against Cancer fundraiser at Mt. Cranmore, replaced over 250' of bog bridges on National Public Lands Day, and helped put on the North Conway Library's annual Bike for Books fundraising mountain bike tour.

Road trips were also in the works on many weekends. Besides attending the Bear Brook Boogie and Wicked Ride of the East, we sampled the goods in Plymouth and Franklin, New Hampshire and at Millstone Hill, Catamount Outdoor Family Center, Kingdom Trails and Millstone Hill in Vermont. High on the list for 2008 is to score local tours of Franconia and Littleton, New Hampshire.

Have any ideas for 2008? If so, please let us know! —Rob Adair