TIDDLYWINKS IS CLOSED AGAIN!
Tiddlywinks will be closed between the junction with Kiwa to the Steve Larsen intersection through November 15, for trail maintenance (7 days / week closure). Shoutout to Paul Lissette of Dirt Mechanics for improving this beloved trail!!
The Dirt Mechanics crew will be tuning up the power line jump sections and the COTA crew will be working on the upper section for optimal Fall riding conditions.
Please respect this closure! We will get the trail open as soon as possible. Trail cameras will be in use.
The Dirt Mechanics crew will be tuning up the power line jump sections and the COTA crew will be working on the upper section for optimal Fall riding conditions.
Please respect this closure! We will get the trail open as soon as possible. Trail cameras will be in use.
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Tiddlywinks, being such a popular trail, has stirred up a lot of social media attention so I wanted to take a moment to address some questions and comments that have come up regarding the ongoing work
The heavy lifting for this project has been contracted out to Dirt Mechanics, aka Paul Lissette, aka Kiwi Paul. If you are an avid mountain biker you surely have ridden and loved a trail he has built with his crew in Bend, Mt. Bachelor, Spence Mountain, or even New Zealand to name a few. COTA volunteers have also taken on a share of the load on the upper section of the new work as well and will be tasked with maintaining the new work. The timing of the work going into a dry summer was driven by a variety of circumstances. The recent work began as the snow melted and we even had some snowfall at the start of the project. For this section, we had a narrow window to get machine work completed between the snow melt and typical summer IFPL restrictions.
This first phase of the project is just the start. Dirt Mechanics will be working on the next section of jumps this fall, following an NRF/owl closure that ends on October 1st which is currently restricting us from getting machines in.. In the meantime, volunteers will continue working up there. It’s going to take time for the trail to get properly compacted, just like it has in the past when any major adjustments have been made. Proper compaction of the trail will likely have to wait until spring, unless we have another warm, wet winter like last year. Until we can get the moisture we need to compact the trail, our goal is to maintain the main features and manage the sandy transitions between them, just as we do every summer. Although some rainy days would have been welcome during the project, we faced record high temperatures instead….
Volunteers continue working to get water on the features and fine-tune the upper section of the trail. If you’re as passionate about the trail as some social media comments suggest, we invite you to join one of our Wednesday evening work parties. You can find these events on Meetup or reach out to me directly, and I’ll get you connected. These sessions are ongoing and led by volunteers Steve Thomsen and Bill Tiernan, who have also been leading the maintenance of Lower Whoops. (Though I hope they take a little time off this summer!)
We've had riders of all abilities testing the features and recognize that some features will need adjustments. While Tiddlywinks is still a blue trail, we will continue to build more advanced lines on what has been done and what will be done in the fall. Before we started the work, we observed many riders on different sections of the trail, and less than 10% got any air, let alone cleared jumps. This observation, combined with the need to stay true to the character of Tiddlywinks, has been taken into consideration with the design of the rebuild.
In addition to this current project, volunteer Crew Leaders (led by Steve Thomsen & Bill Tiernan) have long term plans for continuous adjustments along the entire trail. Anyone interested in shaping the trail has the opportunity to work with these guys on Wednesday evenings.
I want to highlight the tremendous effort our volunteers have put in—over 1,500 hours since April 1st. This is in addition to the work of paid contractors and staff, and also includes maintenance on the section between the jumps and Wanoga. The dedication and passion of our volunteers are what make projects like this possible.
Thank you all for your support and comments. We’d love to see you out at a trail work event soon!
- Josh
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