As we roll into April, and the coming end of the Fatbiking season, we want to thank all of our supporters.  This past winter had some of the best conditions ever,  our purchase of the Snow Dog and Scott Grahams efforts with his wonderfully restored 72′ Elan provided excellent terrain to play on. Our efforts to keep postholers and people from using the trails when it was too warm were fairly successful. We are done grooming now, you may still get some days when it is firm enough to ride but we wont be posting conditions until it is suitable for regular mountain biking.

Mark your calendar for May 19th when the Tour De Borderlands swings through Littleton. More details to come soon…

Let’s have a little chat about proper trail etiquette in the winter shall we. This topic has created heated discussions many times recently and will probably continue until spring. Why do we need to practice trail etiquette? Well, if we don’t we wont have near as much fun on the trails in the winter. On the PRKR Trail system many volunteer hours are spent grooming the trails so they can be used by Fatbikers, Snowshoers, and XC Skiers. But there are a certain few out there that think the groomed trails are perfect for walking or running on without snowshoes.

Yup, that picture about sums it up, one walker or runner can wreck many hours work. So what is proper etiquette?

If your riding a Fatbike your tires should be 3.8″ or larger and your tire pressure should be less than 10# (usually we ride around 5#) and when you ride you should not be leaving a rut deeper than 1″. If you are leaving a rut, let air out, if that doesn’t help, you should get off the trails. IF you can’t make it up a steep hill, walk off to the side of the trail.

If your skiing you should not be leaving a track deeper than an inch or so.

If you snowshoeing and the trails haven’t been groomed yet from a fresh snowstorm? THANK YOU! You are helping us. If they have been groomed so long as the temps are around 32′ or below you will be fine and thank you for wearing them.

If you a walking with bare shoes and are leaving any kind of rut, please don’t go on the groomed trails. go walk the Pinehill trails or Elm St or maybe visit the Dells park which isn’t groomed.

If you see a barrier up like the red tape in the above photo, please respect the decision of the volunteers and stay off the trails until the temperatures drop enough for the snow to set up again.

There we go, Happy Trails Everyone!

Have you tried FatBiking yet? If you have, you know how much fun it is. If you haven’t you should, because its mountain biking on groomed trails and its really fun. For one thing the trails are way less technical,  the snow covers most rocks, roots and other technical features. Which allows you to ride faster than when they are bare. This past Sunday 2/10/19 my wife Melanie, myself and our friend Mike climbed to Linda’s lookout thanks to the grooming efforts of Scott Graham extending our terrain up to that point.

Well, after that pretty long climb, we got our reward, a super fun ride down On Belay, to 1600 then the rest of the way down Gardners trail. We were screaming like the Geico pig all the way down!

This coming Sunday is our third annual Poker Ride  come out and have a great time and enjoy the trails!

Dave

Just a quick post to wish all our friends who enjoy the PRKR trail system a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We started off our fatbiking season early this year and had a very white Thanksgiving,  now as of today we are headed towards a fairly green Christmas.  But have no fear mother nature will whiten things up soon enough and we will be back in business.

Many of you have enjoyed our annual winter event the PRKR Poker Ride and have been asking if we will do it again. Yes, we have it scheduled for February 17,2019. It will be on Bike Reg very soon.

PRKR accomplished many things in 2018, foremost was the significant trail work Blake Roberts and his crew from Real Life Adventures did making our lower trails less technical. Orange Trail went from challenging to beginner friendly. Homegrown, Rock n Roll, Charmel and Winds n Pines also got deboned quite a bit and are much more flowy and fun to ride for beginner and intermediate riders. That was over $17,000 worth of work!

This winter we are grooming more trails than ever. We have plans to open the doubletracks of Elm St. , T95, T93 and Main St up for cross country skiing! We also have additional groomers to help with the Fatbike Singletracks! We should have 8 miles of singletracks groomed all winter. Keep and eye on our Facebook Page for current conditions.

Climb all the way to the top of the PRKR trails and you will come to a beautiful spot called Linda’s Lookout. There you will enjoy a beautiful vista looking east towards Whitefield. This spot is named after the matriarch of the Caswell family, Linda Caswell. Linda used to enjoy a nice hike from their home on top of Manns Hill to the lookout quite often. Linda passed away a little more than a year ago, her presence is still floating in the cool breeze.

This certainly has been a winter of ups and downs, but all in all the fatbiking has been pretty decent. Last night Mother Nature blessed is with a few inches of powder and with more on the way Sunday, I figured it would be nice to groom it this morning and fill in any divots from shoes, deer, dogs, etc. I got the rokon out around 8 am and by 10 had about 5 miles all groomed and ready for the weekend. There are some icy spots so I do suggest studded fatbike tires. If you’ve never tried fatbiking, you should, the snow fills in the Trails and they are easier and faster to ride! Don’t forget about our Fatbike Poker Run on Sunday February 18th. If you’d like to rent a fatbike, go to Littleton Bike & Fitness they have a full stable of them, all studded up and ready to ride

Mother Nature threw us a curve ball this week as she usually does sometime in January. Where just a week ago we had 10″ of fluffy dry snow and were trying to figure out how to groom it, the other day she fixed that and dumped 2″ of rain on us and then froze it all into a giant snow cone! My wife and I took a the dogs out this morning to check the trail conditions, it was a chilly 5’f but sunny, we were greeted with wonderful solid conditions on all trails that had some previous grooming. So grab your fatbike and get some riding in, you never know when it will swing the other way.