Show off your Mountain Bike!!!

I miss Austin, any good new trails? Not that there is a lack of them here in NW Arkansas, but the weather gets too dang cold.

 

There is the new Violet Crown trail from Barton Creek green belt to the specs in Sunset valley. They are working on phase 2 from there to dick Nichols. Phase 3 and 4 take it all the way to hays county water mgmt lands sometime in late 18 or early 19. Cool thing about this is that this will connect to many trails and essentially make them all one long ass network.

Brushy Creek in cedar park area has a ton of riders these days and lots of single track. I haven’t made it up there yet tho.

I’ve been riding south Austin trail network trails which are the ones that will all connect to the new Violet crown trail. So much goodness here but not much elevation.

Oh, circle c Metro Park has a lot of riders and has about 22 miles of single track from 1826 and slaughter all the way east to almost 35. So much goodness here. I’ve only ridden about 10 miles of it. There are north south connectors from this to dick Nichols, Violet Crown, and barton Creek.

Not sure if these are new but I’d be happy to ride the ones I know with any of y’all as soon as the weather dries up.

 

I've tried to do plus on my hardtail but I'm just not at the point where I can get behind it. My big issue is that I've cut 3 tires in about 200 miles of riding. (Yes I was running proper pressure, but at 210lbs and riding CO trails they just couldn't hold up to the sharp rocks and tech I tend to ride.) The only set I didn't cut one of was a WTB TCS Tough casing set and they were just so heavy it kinda felt like I was on a fat bike again. I went back to 29" and am much happier with performance. The problem with plus is that in order to keep the tires from feeling like fat bike tires, they need to keep the weight down, and when they do that on a tire that is just simply larger, it gets taken out of the casing which inevitably means they'll be easier to cut. Just my $.02

 

My comp6 fattie came with 3” tires. It’s definitely the fat bike feel but obviously not as bad as a 6” tire. I knew right away I wanted something a little narrower. I did a bunch of research and found a lot of people felt 2.6” was the happy medium between the standard sizes and mid fat.......they were right. I dig da 2.6

 

2017 Intense Tracer

 

Not the best but I give it hell!

 

@TenBeers @riz_atx @ChadsPride if yall ever want to hit up brushy the shop built a trail from the shop parking lot to the neighborhood next to champion park and it spits you on the regional trail. Riz/Chad, if yall message me your numbers we can plan something out. Im usually just working thursdays and fridays. But im down to ride walnut or show yall around brushy. I know both trails well

 

Or we can start from brushy creek sports park so we can spend more miles on the actual trail rather than commuting to the trail

 

I moved from Austin to Bend, used to love riding Brushy! Last time I was down there the riding kicked my ass though. There's no training you can do to prep for that Texas heat and non stop tech, I'm soft now and used to flow. Here's a snap from my last trip back to visit. I'm sure you guys will recognize that feature, broke my collarbone on it 3 months before leaving ATX. Went back 2 years later to ride it clean on a rented 5010 with no dropper.

 

Oooh! Chads on a cruise but I’m sure he would be down when he gets back. I’d love to try brushy and revisit Walnut Creek. I’ll pm you my number and we can make a plan

 

How did the 5010 handle the Austin jumps/chunk/tech? I have one myself in Houston, looking to make my way to Austin!

 

You may not like my answer too much because I’m a 29er guy. The 5010 didn’t carry as much momentum as I would’ve liked to get over some of that chunk with minimal effort. I found myself peddling more than I remembered. However, it was pretty snappy and handled the tight stuff well. If I still lived down there my bike of choice would be a semi slack 27.5+ hardtail. From what I hear they’re starting to build trail with real jumps and some good flow so that might make the 5010 perfect, I just haven’t ridden that stuff down there yet.

 

Fair enough! Thanks for your thoughts

 

Built up my own Surly Karate Monkey 29er. Kind of a do anything rig that is tough as nails.

 

No problem! Austin riding is fun and you’re used to the bike so I wouldn’t sweat it

 

My bike, Transition Smuggler. Love the mid travel 29ers.

 

Nice Smuggler. I just built up a 2018:

 

Sweet! How do you like the new SBG?

 

I'm running a standard offset fork, so I have no idea about SBG. That said, it rides awesome. It has all the numbers I was looking for, the SBG made no difference to me either way. I am curious though, and if I build a hard tail sometime, I may use this fork on that and buy a new reduced offset for for this frame and give it a try.

 

Right on, I’m curious too. Waiting for spring to come around so I can demo the Sentinel.