Sacramento Area
Mountain Bike
Association

Hot Spot Week

SAMBA, the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), and other local off-road cycling clubs hosted 10 days of mountain bike activities Nov. 7-16, 2003.  IMBA-designated Hot Spot Weeks offer opportunities for potential mountain bikers to find out more about the sport.  Local leaders and land managers can acquaint themselves with off-road cycling issues and the people behind them.   For people already into the sport, Hot Spot week events make it easy to meet other cyclists, learn about building sustainable trails, and get involved. 

All of the open houses featured a slide show presented by Mark Schmidt and Lora Woolner of the Subaru/IMBA trail care crew.  The slide show,  "Around the World with IMBA," featured travels, trail work and off-road cycling adventures in Italy and Wales, and many places in the U.S.A. that you might not associate with great biking, like Oklahoma, Arkansas or South Dakota.

Schedule of events

Friday, Nov. 7:  Open house: Citizen's Pizza, Nevada City. 

Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 8 and 9:  Campout, trail work and epic ride along the fabulous South Fork of the Yuba River, near Nevada City were planned.  What was not planned was all the rain and cold. We would up scouting and doing minor work on a much needed bypass of the North Bloomfield road portion of the South Yuba Trail.  This trail section will hopefully be built next spring; keep checking with the Bicyclists of Nevada County for more information on when that work will occur.

Monday, Nov. 10: Open House:  American River Bicycles, Florin Road at Riverside Avenue.  

Tuesday, Nov. 11:  Open House: Hinde Auditorium, California State University, Sacramento.  Special thanks to  Peak Adventures and Clif Bar for the swag!

Wednesday, Nov. 12:  Open House: City Bike Works, 25th and K streets in midtown Sacramento.  Special thanks to Lynn of Max Media and Taco Loco on J Street for the excellent eats, muy sabroso!

Thursday, Nov. 13:  Basic Trail Building School.  Folsom Aquatic Center, 1202 Riley St., Folsom.   RSVP in advance, please.  We filled this small room!  Mark and Lora gave another killer slide show, making the basics of trail building seem fun.

Friday, Nov. 14: Trail Assessment.  Location in the City of Folsom, 9 a.m. to noon.  This is the field portion of the basic trail school.  Folks got hands on experience on the siting of a new trail along a powerline corridor in the city of Folsom, near the corner of Willow Creek Road and Oak Avenue Parkway.

Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 15 and 16: Advanced trail building school. We packed the Park Headquarters in Auburn for the classroom section of the school Saturday morning, and witnessed another great slide show by Mark and Lora of the Subaru/IMBA trail care crew.  It rained most of the day, so in the afternoon we built a teeter-totter.  We currently do not have permission to place the teeter-totter on a trail anywhere, but we put it on the lawn and tried it out after the rain stopped.   On Sunday we had fair weather and were able to rock armor a steep and rutted section of the culvert trail in Auburn.  We moved thousands of pounds of rock and dirt that day.  Reports on the new section of trail are positive!