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Look out for some great racing on some of the best backcountry Missouri trails with 200+ of your racing friends. The race is on Saturday so you can party down through the night, stumbling back to your campsite at the ever-so-friendly Bass River Resort.

With last year’s trail vandalism at the Chubb and now with the painful extraction of some monkeyheads at Greensfelder we at GORC felt it was high time to post the St. Louis County Parks Trail Hotline – 314-615-8911. Now we can all help police our favorite trails.

Another busy Spring. Our trail mileage was down due to the number of workdays that had to be devoted to maintenance. Next time you’re out in marginal conditions trying to decide whether or not to ride, please remember that these maintenance days take away from building new trail. Here’s a brief summary which lists the trail name, what type of work was done, the number of workdays, and the mileage of the sections worked on:

Last year we received a $500 grant from Clif Bar to purchase a Stihl Yard Boss. I’d seen Glenn using it at workdays at Lost Valley, Creve Coeur and Greensfelder, but those were all on relatively small sections. Here, we took it out to the Dogwood trail, and used it to remove a large berm that was causing water to be channeled straight down the trail.

Last year, after one of our members came down with erlichiosis from an encounter with some ticks on the Ozark Trail, I decided to find out some more information about ticks and the consequences of their bites. Luckily for us, we have a tick expert right here in Missouri, who also happens to be a mountain biker- Dr. Greg Cummins, who is a member

Ok, so it’s not a Figure 9, and it’s not exactly an epic– yet. Give us some more time on that part. Nevertheless, you can now get in a ride right in your own backyard that until recently, would have had you driving a fairly long way. There’s less than a week until the Greensfelder Challenge Race on May 8th, when we’ll finally get to showcase the hard work that’s gone into reroutes, maintenance, and brand new trail on the Dogwood, DeClue, and Eagle Valley trails.

We spent this past Saturday finishing off the addition of a brand new 3/4 mile section of the DeClue trail (thanks Americorps!), armoring some muddy problem spots, and deberming a long stretch of trail. Most of this was done in preparation for the Greensfelder Challenge Race on May 8th. All of the proceeds from this race will go to GORC.

What: Help build new trail and do maintenance at Greensfelder Park in preparation for the May 8th Federation of Dirt Greensfelder Challenge. We will be adding 0.7 of a mile of singletrack to the Declue Trail and armoring several drainages.

I don’t know what’s nerdier, using a hand saw to cut out deadfall, or writing an article about it. Anyway, most people probably never give much thought to how those trees laying across the trail magically disappear. There are several ways: trail users remove smaller ones that can be moved by one or more people, or cut with a pack saw;

Lisa and I rode the Middle Fork Saturday in an effort to purge some early season non-riding weaknesses such as … non-riding. Being that Ouachita is two weeks away or something it seemed wise to at least see if we could competently ride half of it by running the ‘Middle Fork-xc loop’ implemented by the Team Seagal troops.