Supporting Cycling In and Around Fredericton
Our 2025 Annual Meeting is coming on the evening of April 2nd. Once again, we will be hosted by the folks at Grimross who have offered up their taproom for the club meeting. This is your chance to meet the club executive, learn about the accomplishments over the past year, and what’s coming up for 2025. This event is open to all riders – so even if you aren’t an RVC member (yet) it’s your chance to learn what the club is about. See you there!
RVC Exec
We’ve shared lots of progress updates over the past 2 years and it looks like we are ready to share the the big picture. This is the result of RVC’s effort to build a brag-worthy trail network that will anchor Woolstook on the map for another whole generation of local mountain bikers. While a trail network like this is never really done the major construction we imagined with our master trails plan is now mostly complete.
Here’s the new trailhead map that’s getting installed soon:
Grassroots club organizing. Nearby towns signing letters of support. Local volunteers putting in sweat. A phenomenal local bike shop partner. A hometown hero running the network design. Two Maritime professional trail building companies. Lumber from a local sawmill a stone-throw away. Signage from a local print shop. Local businesses stepping forward to help. Secure access to public land. Government funding a project to benefit the local community. This feels good.
Aside from the map our main trailhead sign is going to include plates to give credit to all of the volunteers who played a big role in making this place the gem that it is now. Work isn’t going to stop – and despite the best build quality these trails are going to need maintenance – but we’re ready to call our project successfully finished. We hope you like the result.
On to more big things.
It snowed! More is on the way. Get your fatbike ready!!! While you are doing that the club exec and some big volunteers have been working away to get prepared for a great season of grooming. What have we been up to?
Our volunteer groomers put in a lot of time even before the first snow flies. A lot of time is spent planning the grooming routes, and making sure that our fleet of hard-working sleds are well maintained. The team have been sourcing parts and making sure everything’s tuned up and ready to go with our grooming fleet. There’s time spent setting up our parking lot plows and clearing trails of late fall blow-downs. The exec has worked to flip our membership registration over to winter mode (join for 2025), and prepare a budget. There’s been some work planning out loops that will be groomed this winter especially at Wooly where the network has changed quite a bit this year!
MVP remains at the core of mountain biking in Fredericton. We have a chance to get it put back into amazing shape for some great fall riding. We need volunteer help – your help!
We were contacted by the landowner of the Flight Deck area yesterday and told that we are now welcome to enjoy the trails again. This is fantastic news from a landowner who has been very generous to the club. We know that the temporary closure really hurt this summer but it’s now finally over.
This weekend club execs will head in and start removing the trail barriers and the closed signs. We’ll be doing a safety inspection on all Flight Deck trails since it’s been some time since we’ve had eyes on them and there could be downed trees or other hazards. Not all trails will open immediately. If there are still barriers in place please continue to respect them. In particular, we are not sure about V-Fib. The harvesting took place very close to that trail and it may have been impacted directly. We’ll wait and see how it looks during inspection and we’ll make a plan from there.
What you can do to help us open everything quickly is pitch in. We expect everything in the Flight Deck area will need to be trimmed back with loppers and line trimmers to re-establish lines of sight. We also expect that everything needs a good raking for loose rock that’s accumulated on the trail surface. These are really easy jobs that don’t take any special trail building knowledge. Any rider can help and you can do it on whatever time works for you. Just let us know what you plan to take on so that we can try and send volunteers to the areas they are needed most. While we are on topic – the MVP beginner zone needs the same kind of love so we are looking for Bunkerama, Wright of Way, Velocity, and La Woodstock to also get some attention.
For whatever reason – the beavers seem to have left Bunkerama and the pond is now gone. We think this means we have a great opportunity to get this trail cleaned up and back into shape for fall riding. A good raking and clearing debris should be all that’s needed – but we need people to step forward.
Get in touch with us via email or messenger and let us know you are willing to help. We can supply loppers / rakes / and trimmers and we’d be happy to point you in the right direction. Let’s get MVP into great shape for fall riding! You can also help the club by getting your membership if you haven’t already for 2024! It’s not too late. Membership funds pay for tools, gas, insurance, and other costs we have to keep trails open.
Riders – we are opening another flow trail. This time, it’s in Woolastook’s front-country and you won’t have to crank out twenty-one switchbacks to get your lap down.
A few weeks ago Kodiak Trial Works returned to Wooly and started digging with an aim to carve out a descent that will run from the “summit deck” to the trailhead. Today we are ready to tear down the caution tape and open up the first section of the trail. While things may still be settling, we think it’s ready to ride down to the intersection with Summit trail. Have a look at these progress pics and go catch a session in the week of sultry weather we have coming up!
For now, the trail will keep it’s temporary “T-8” designation from our Woolastook Master Plan. We’ll wait and see how the rest of it feels before giving it a name. It will be a moderate (blue) grade that it will keep through the rest of the build and it will also be a downhill-only direction. Sorry, because of the expected speeds and the jumps this one isn’t suitable for hiking or trail-running.
T-8 on Trailforks.comWhile we are at it… there’s a few other updates we’ve recently made to clean up the map for Woolastook park. All of these updates are live on Trailforks now so update your app if you use it:
We hope you love riding the new T-8 and the completed Split Rail! These projects wouldn’t have been possible without the generous funding from the Canada Community Building Fund AND from the heroic quantity of volunteer effort that has poured into this park since our project began. If you love Woolastook, as well as the other trail systems we support, it’s not too late to contribute. RVC’s 2024 memberships are still available! Plan for a riding as the leaves change colour and the air turns crisp.
