Running a Corn Maze with a Jackhammer

I have serious going-postal thoughts that Cincinnati gets a big rain storm and a whole twisted network of mountain bike trails washes down the hillside into the Ohio River with a resounding splash.  KA-SPLOOOSH!  Buh-bye Tower Park. 

Oh my god it felt so good to say that I should have a cigarette and I don’t even smoke.  Certainly I can’t be the only one to feel this way.  Normally, I’m a very positive person and blogger.  Putting things down is not a trait I respect in people.   But, somebody had to say the baby is ugly.  Father, I confess, every time I see someone post on Facebook or talk about “hitting the tower” I can’t help but think I how much I hate riding Tower Park in Ft Thomas Kentucky.  Off with its head.  Time for a mountain bike Mulligan.

Before you berate me in the comments, hear my defense.  I feel like I’m a respected mountain biker and trail advocate in Cincinnati.  I have scars on my shins from trail tools.  At the same time, I’m pretty colorful and exaggerated.  Certainly I can’t be for real for having impure trail thoughts.  I admit it is a bit selfish.  Afterall, others obviously LOVE LOVE LOVE riding at Tower Park.  However, as a mountain bike trail, to me the only redeeming qualities of Tower Park are that it’s the closest trail to downtown Cincinnati and you get an incredible feeling of accomplishment and elation when you can clean the trail without dabbing.  

No doubt, if you can successfully eek your bike around the awkward, ugh, rocky, oof, rooty, twisted, steepness you can call yourself an expert rider.  I’ve felt that.  It’s wonderful.  I’ve cleaned the “otter slide” climb.  When the gods are smiling, I can get my triple-trailer of a 29er around the tight switchbacks up and down.  Tower’s rocks and roots and awkwardness, countless times, has given me the skill and confidence to take on larger mountain bike challenges like trails in Whistler B.C. (pictured Whistler's Rainbow Sproat Trail), Pisgah, West Virginia and the Mohican MTB 100.  When I first moved to Cincinnati, it was the first trail I rode.  It was where I first met the teammates and cycling friends I have today.  However, I seriously never have fun riding there.   To me, it’s nothing more than the mountain bike equivalent of boot camp.

The trail has all the flow of an 85 year old man standing in front of a urinal.  Go fast.  Stop.  Track stand.  Turn.  Dig for a grunter.  Chatter down the other side.  Hit the brakes.  Turn right.  No left.  Then right.  You’d have more fun running blindfolded through a corn maze with a jackhammer.  Secondly, aside from the switchbacks down to the river, you never feel like you’re going anywhere.  There are no real destination points.  Being on the Ohio River, you’d think there’d be a cool vista, a unique tree, a pretty creek, an odd shaped rock or something that tells you that you’ve gone from point A to point B.  Truth is, if you take your eyes off the trail for a second, you’ll be part of the landscaping. 

There are great trail organization in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area called CORA (Cincinnati Off Road Alliance) and KYMBA (Kentucky Mountain Bike Association.)  I’m a CORA member and have put in plenty of sweat equity on a number of local trails including Tower.  I’ve spent hours and hours with goofy hand tools carving new trails in Covington’s Devou Park, Cincinnati’s Mitchell Memorial, East Fork State Park and Caesars Creek.  I sent $50 to IMBA this year.  Great organizations and I'm all about putting my time in, certainly I'm at least deserving of an opinion.

Like an NA on the report card, Tower Park needs attention, not just a quick fix to a section or two but some IMBA-type love, a redesign, cosmetic surgery.  Bring out the views.  Highlight the flora and landscape.  Take me from the Tower to the vista, across the ridgeline and through the valley.  I want to loosen my grip on the bars and have a second to discover the tree with the odd knob or the giant boulder with the crazy moss, before the next tough section.  The trails in Whistler are crazy sick twisted tough too, but they also reward with a view, a waterfall, a section to relax the knuckles for a moment to appreciate the ride.  I want to enjoy the challenge Tower Park offers.  

I’m not pointing fingers.  There’s no blame.  Tower Park is still just the backyard neighborhood trail it’s always been.  It can be better.  While I’m no trail designer or grassroots organizer, I am a voice.  Like an ugly baby, it’s still a blessing to have challenging mountain bike trails within 15 minutes of downtown Cincinnati.  Let this be my first step toward making Tower a fuller mountain biking experience.  

To lean more about trail advocacy projects, visit these links and give generously:

Cincinnati Off Road Alliance (CORA), part of Ohio Mountain Bike Association (OMBA)

Kentucky Mountain Bike Association (KYMBA)

International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA)

MTB in Ohio? Take The Survey

Click HERE for link and Happy New Year!

Screamy Holler Complete – Update Covington’s Devou Park Trail Build

While I was swinging the Rhino, I wondered what this section of trail at Devou would be called.  Running adjacent to Sleepy Hollow Road, Screamy Holler seemed to fit the dirt.  Quads scream on the way up.  You holler on the way down.  Woo hoo Devou!

On the previous trail day I attended, the flowers under the railroad trestle had yet to bloom.  Saturday the yellow flowers were almost surreal.

With the help of well over one hundred Give Back Cincinnati volunteers, CORA tackled the deepest bench cut sections to date at Covington’s Devou Park Mountain Bike Trail.  Some sections ended up being two feet deep on the steep ravine-side roughly two-thirds of the way up to the first vista point.  Section #5 was the toughest.  At the end of the day, it was all hands on dirt, to bench the last of it.

So far, the completed trail section is officially long enough to question whether you really want to hike all-the-way up or take your bike instead.  It’s an hour round trip on foot; at the tipping point to where riding a bike (and all the prep that goes along with it) might be the more logical choice. 

No doubt, Cincinnati’s longest sustained mountain bike climb, or downhill, depending on which way you see it, is complete.  

To learn more and take part in the next trail building day, visit the CORA website here.

A previous post about the first big trail day at Devou is here.

Wou Hou Devou - Devou Park Mountain Bike Trail Building

His chat turned to complaint.  Finally, the poor kid who wore sneakers to the Cincinnati Off Road Alliance (CORA) trail building day Saturday at Devou Park said he had to rest.  In a pair of big hikers I plodded on, initially to deliver empty buckets to the U-Give Cincinnati volunteers picking up garbage.  I soon realized I had passed the last trail group around section nine.  “Well, might as well see where this trail tops out,” I thought.  I put my bucket down to pick up on the way back and kept up a stiff pace.  A half hour and sections 10 through 19 passed quickly. 

From the trail head at the ball fields at the bottom of Sleepy Hollow Road, It was an hour round trip to the vista.  My hike of what will become the first mountain bike trails in Covington, KY’s Devou Park made me think more of Bent Creek in Asheville, NC or Brown County in Nashville, IN than local trails like Tower Park, Harbin Park or Mitchell Memorial. The trail is located on the west side of Sleepy Hollow Road.  While the amount of available land in Devou won’t match that of Bent Creek or Brown County, the topography certainly does.  I lost count of the switchbacks that crisscross the beginning of the climb.  Unlike most area trails, the switchbacks at Devou don’t end at the top.  That made me smile.  About 2/3’s up the first hill, the trail wraps around the south side and into a pretty valley with flowering

 trees.  Eventually there will be some Bent Creek-esque deep bench cuts in this steep valley.  After crossing a bridge-worthy creek which dropped nearly 6-7 feet from the trail markers above, a handful of switchbacks take you to the first real vista of the west side Cincinnati skyline.  Looking at my watch, then at the green trail flags wrapping around the bend, I shook my head in disbelief.  Just like the kid in sneakers, I had to turn back. 

This is going to be big.  Cincinnati is about to have its first trail system with a sustained mountain bike climb that will top out at what?  Nearly a mile and a half I guess.  I’m a strong hiker.  It took me a half hour to reach the top on foot.  On a bike, I’d hedge a guess that expert riders will be looking at a 12-15 minute climb and novices may be knocking on that half hour door.  There’s nothing within 20 miles of Cincinnati with a climb of more than a few minutes.  This is just to get to the top.  The trail keeps going around the 2^nd hill and on and on.  This is just the warm-up.  There’s enough land here for 15-18 miles of trail.  There are plenty of trail days ahead, plenty of time to learn that a Pulaski is a tool and Pulaski is a historic Chicago figure.  We’ll see you at the next Devou Park trail day. 

 POST SCRIPT-TRAILSIDE TREASURES:

While picking up trash, debris and relics along the path of the new trail at Devou Park, I came across this unusual apparatus.  At first I thought it might be a spur of sorts for horseback riding, but upon further inspection it appears to be some sort of tool that would hang from a chain or maybe some sort of candle sconce.  Any ideas?  Leave a comment below.