August 10, 2013 - Jedi and BX Succes

We made it! Jedi Mind Trick is fully open (for this year). For those of you that had a sneak peak last weekend you will be happy to know Stage 1 of this new Top to Bottom trail is complete. Reports are in and it is a hit! I think once people start riding this trail and it gets up to full riding speed, packed in, we may be forced to push Stages 2 [HTML_REMOVED] 3 in as soon as possible. Jedi is a blue trail but is not for the faint at heart. The jumps will feel big, the berms will press you through the corners and the overall feeling is exhilarating. All the jumps are rollable and nice and wide, giving a safer feeling. We pushed the features a little further apart than a lot of the other trails at Silver Star. This gives you more time to set up in between each jump. The only question now is what trail to link up to find Jedi on Paved Path (Cross Mtn.) Enjoy and watch for the next stage summer 2014.

The new BX Creek XC trail turned out pretty good too. I have to admit this one still needs a little more refinement but some people do say I am my own worst critic. The line is great, the flow is prefect, we just need to do a little more side hill work and bang out a few of the bumps. But for a 4 km first year trail I have to say I am quite happy. And even more excited with how our New XC product is coming along. We are in the middle of Flagging out 3 more new trails for next summer and working with Sovereign Lakes to bring in even a larger network for next year.

I have to give a huge shout out to Bas Van Steenbergen for making our Bike Park look so darn fun! After watching his and Harrison's latest edit it gave me goose bumps, knowing that we are a part of something so amazing. I am happy to call Bas and his brother Tom locals and even more stoked to know their skills were refined in our Bike Park. Thanks Boys! If you have not seen the Vid click on the link below and tell me you don't you don't want to go ride your bike after watching this.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Bas-van-Steenbergen-at-Silver-Star-V2-2013.html

Just got back from a Friday evening session. Jedi Mind Trick is an extremely fun trail, kudos to the trail crew. I heard lots of hoots and hollers ridig that trail so I think you have a hit. Looking forward to the next stages of it. It made me feel like a better rider than I am !

When Trail Crew builds a new section of trail, or re-vamps sections of trail every once in a while we don’t get it right. Now for the most part the SSBP Trail Crew is pretty dialed and hits the sweet spot, but be assured when we miss, the crew knows about it. That is the nice thing about having a trail crew that love to ride their bikes! We can ride a trail like say Jedi Mind Trick and now we nailed it, or the new section on Shazam we re-vamped and killed it and also the all new Shazam trail off the top and know it just did not work. Just know when we miss it we, we will try to fix it. That upper section of Shazam had changes last week and it is “flowing” much better. We took out a couple of the overly tight berms and speed up the line, we finished out a couple berms so can hold the line, next we will smooth out the trail to keep you moving.

With the lack of rain maintenance is always a challenge, but we will continue to do what we can. Super Star had a couple of the really bumpy berms re-built with our mini and 250 gallons of water, Walk the Line had the last of the plywood removed and smoothed out, Lower World cup had a bucky jump refaced. We thank you for your patience and rest assured we are going to continue to improve all aspects of the Bike Park.

Even with all the maintenance we are building an all NEW Slope Style course. It is going to have a very industrial look and stadium feel. There won’t be a bad vantage point in the house as it is in a giant “hole”. We will have the riders dropping in from the top corner and working back and forth with “boner” logs, huge step ups, drops, wood “dirt” jumps, big air ¼ pipes and a whale tail finish. It is an FMBA tour stop this year so will be well organized with proper judges and formatting. But more than anything it is going to be a fun course to ride and a great event to watch. We will also have the Shazam Chainless race on the Sunday. So no matter what you want to ride in one of the events or watch the show it is going to be a great festival weekend on Silver Star Aug 31st – 1st. See you up here.

We made it up to SS again and had a blast, Shannon wrote up a post about our trip…check out her thoughts here:
http://www.themountainbikelife.com/2013/08/summer-holidays-week-2-less-driving.html

What a weekend! The new venue for the slope style went off this weekend. We had a great group of riders come out for the event and even a bigger group of spectators taking it all in. Watch our Face Book and web site for the upcoming recap video if you missed it. And after watching I am sure we will see you next year.

It was all made possible with the help of our sponsors, Fox Head, Rock Star, X-Fusion, Oakley, Dakine, Toyota, Norco and Brandt Tracker hooked us up with a sweet brand new John Deere 50G excavator to shape all the landing. That thing had the trail crew vibrating when it showed up on build day. Speaking of trail crew if you see any of those boys give them a huge pat on the back. They busted the butts to get that course up to the standard that I am sure surprised most. Thanks Derek, Mike, Chris and Jay for all your hard work, I could not do this job without you! Along with them the Silver Star operations staff (Tim, Bill and crew), we appreciated your time and machines. Thanks.

Okay enough about what happened last week, what about this week you ask . Well keeping with the Silver Star motto of great maintenance we are not sitting back at the end of season waiting for the final two bonus weekends. We have been busy doing some heavy work on the trail. If you rode Super Star or Rock Star this past weekend you probably noticed a bunch of rework to the middle of those trail. That is continuing this week. Section of trail getting fully re-built. Berms pulled up, jumps being re-shaped and straight-a-ways being smoothed out. Don’t feel left out if you can’t make the bonus weekends, we are doing the section of trail that we can’t touch in the spring. This way they will be ready and waiting for us all next year. But really you should try because nothing is like riding freshly built trail!

Rock Star had a couple jumps and a berm changed just above paved / Cross mtn. This is the “newer” section trail crew calls the Loop, that is a hate it or love it section. The step up had the some material put into the middle, giving it a little more friendly “case”. If you were cleaning it before you should not even notice. Leading up to it we took out the roller and moved the first jump forward. Should give the intermediate rider a little more set up time. The sniper berm has tripled in size. If you could nail the old berms and let your bike run the follow jumps were never an issue, now with a giant berm there should be no problems. You can follow your little sister through there and make the jumps. A word of warning, we waited until the end of the season to do these changes because of the soil type in there. Thinking we wanted to do it in drier condition, the forecast is for some heavy rain this week. If it is wet on the weekend this section could get very muddy. Consider yourself warned. On a the other hand the rest of the park is going to be MONEY with a little rain! J

We are also starting the FULL re-build of the oh so popular Blast Off trail this week. This trail has seen minimal maintenance this year. The idea was to let it go a little longer than normal because we wanted to give it the once over this fall. Again it is a trail that we cannot touch with machines until late in the season due to the ground water. The line is going to stay the same for the most part, but every berm and jump on that trail is getting pulled up and re tooled. I for one cannot wait for this one! This is

just a heads up if you are one of the first few riders down there on Saturday morning. It will feel slow. That trail is so tight we will not be able to do a proper pack on the berms, so it will need tire traffic to speed back up.

We are also working on the XC product over the next few weeks. Unfortunately nothing we will get to ride this year, adding an all new climb trail to the top of the mountain for the spring. This is only one of many projects happening this fall for the all mtn. / XC product on Silver Star.

Have a great bonus weekend. I will be away for this one, so enjoy the freshly built section of trail, wish I was here!
Later Cam

This is gonna be EPIC!!!!!!!!

October 17, 2013 - That's a wrap

Well that’s a wrap! Trail crew is done for the season. With the help of Brandt and Jason Rictor we were able to connect the dots with an extra machine. The new Deere 17d made quick work of the new climb to the top trail we have been working on this fall.

This was a first for the Bike Park Trail Crew working well into the fall through snow storms and dark mornings. I have to say the new trail is going to be the most fun you have had climbing to the top. But in all truth when you ride the trail you are Not There Yet (NTY tentative name for the new trail). This newest addition will spit you out at the bottom of the Home Run T bar (winter below the Vault). That means you still will have a bit of a pedal up Paradise to get you to the top. The best part is that top section of Paradise, from the Putnam chair up remains undisturbed and in pristine condition (one of my favorite section of the up track). The reason for this we will start building the “epic” out towards Alder Point and beyond from this point next spring.

This is all part of the big expansion I alluded to in my last update. We should have the Alder Point trail done by late summer and the full loop completed the year following. To give you an idea of the size and length of this endeavor we punched in Jedi Mind Trick in a couple months. Jedi is 20’ wide with berms and large jumps. This new trail is going to take 2 years and is only a foot and a half wide. Get the idea?

Because of the grandeur of this project we are also putting an additional Trail Crew team tasked with solely building XC trails around the Knoll. As a result the XC / Enduro crowd will have a new section of trail every week or so without having to wait 2 years. All in all it is a very large commitment from Silver Star and shows our commitment to growing mountain biking at our resort! J

With all this extra building going on we are going to need extra hard working trail builders to join the team. We do not want to dilute the DH Crew; in fact we are adding one extra member to that team as well. So if you have the skills, love working hard (and I mean hard) and would like to join the Silver Star Trail Crew next summer drop me your resume’. [email protected] To be honest I will be taking a bit of a break from the Bike Park for a few months so send them in after Christmas. I will be gearing back up in March when we get ready for the 2nd Annual Frost Bike extravaganza March 1st and 2nd so mark those dates on your calendar. Until then enjoy the winter powder I know I will!

LaterCam

Very cool!

I rode the XC trails a couple times this summer on down days from the DH park and enjoyed them for the most part. Looking forward to NTY, I imagine there is some excellent terrain out that way for a great AM ride.

Number 2 bike park nice work boys !!!

http://photos.nsmb.com/showimage.php?i=28081

https://ccnbikes.com/2014-frostbike/

Number 2 bike park nice work boys !!!

http://photos.nsmb.com/showimage.php?i=28081

1 in my books….

Reminder: big kids skills camp

Just registered for my second year at frostbike, so stoked!

Cant wait to try out the new xc 8)

Summer Season Pass Sale has begun.

Ride 50+km Downhill, 600+ Berms, 300+ Jumps…with express lift access. Adults only $309 for the season. Get an XC Trail add-on for only $20 and ride an additional 30+km of XC trails as we expand again this summer.
http://summer.skisilverstar.com/s/my-tickets-and-rentals/season-passes/summer-season-passes

Cant wait to try out the new xc 8)

Summer Season Pass Sale has begun.

Ride 50+km Downhill, 600+ Berms, 300+ Jumps…with express lift access. Adults only $309 for the season. Get an XC Trail add-on for only $20 and ride an additional 30+km of XC trails as we expand again this summer.
http://summer.skisilverstar.com/s/my-tickets-and-rentals/season-passes/summer-season-passes

Hell Yeah!!! Can't wait… BTW when are the XC trails slated to be open?