River Valley Cycling

Supporting Cycling In and Around Fredericton

Winterbike plans 2022 – Woolastook

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Riders!

We’re busy planning for the Winterbike season as you know. Your Winterbike membership supports trail grooming at several locations in the Fredericton area. We’re going to be releasing our grooming plans over the month of December starting with Woolastook today.

This year RVC groomers will keep a little more than 14 km of trail open at Woolastook. The layout here will let riders plan out routes using stacked loops so lots of distance options will be available if your the type of person who’s fingers are freezing before you put in a full 14 km (get pogies though.. for real). You’ll want to build up to a full distance ride though because the winter lookout is worth it. We won’t tell anyone if we see you pushing your bike up the last bit of that steep hill up to the lookoff – we promise.

Woolastook mountain biking trails

This grooming plan is what you can expect RVC will keep open for the duration but from time to time we’ll probably be able to enjoy a few other pieces of singletrack opened up by volunteer snowshoers. If you want to update your Trailforks app the winter mode map is now up to date.

Remember, you can join RVC Winterbike right now for 2022 and you can also support our GoFundMe campaign to upgrade our grooming fleet!

Winterbike 2022 Launch

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RVC Winterbike 2022 is on!


Our registration for Winterbike is now open and we want you to sign up. Your membership goes towards grooming at 3 great trail systems: MVP, Woolastook, and Deer Park. Stay connected to us on Facebook and Instagram to get regular updates on snow conditions throughout the season. We’ll be posting our grooming plans for each area in the next few days.

This year RVC is also launching a GoFundMe campaign with the goal of raising $5,000 by January 15th to get our groomers some more reliable equipment. We’ll be posting updates regularly throughout the campaign. We’re asking for your support – whether you fatbike every day or just enjoy getting out on your snowshoes in the areas that we groom. You’ll notice this year that we’re redirecting all of our donations to this campaign – so there’s not going to be a ‘gold’ or ‘platinum’ level membership option. If you want to give us some extra love – please head towards the GoFundMe.

We are really excited about this upcoming season. RVC will be supporting a beginner level group fatbike ride starting in January and we’ve heard some rumours about new winterbike trailheads being added in Fredericton later this year. Very interesting! We’ll also be posting advice and tips throughout the season about how to get the most out of your ride and how to practice good winter riding etiquette.

So please support us and join RVC Winterbike!

Flight Deck – Closed for the Season

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Riders,

Early in the spring RVC volunteers invested hundreds of hour repairing and upgrading the progressive trails in the Flight Deck area of MVP. Their hard work allowed riders to enjoy thousands of laps on local favorites like Monkey Business, V-Fib, Blazing, and Pinball. We need to respect their contributions.

Unfortunately we’ve seen the conditions on these trails degrade rapidly this week as riders continue to use these trails in wet and soft conditions. As a result of the ongoing impact, RVC trail builders have made the decision to close the Flight Deck area trails until they can be repaired next spring.

The club wants to thank everyone who has approached riding in the shoulder season with good judgement. Have a “Plan B” and be prepared to walk away at this time of year if your ride results in ruts being left on our trails. Freeze and thaw cycles can be especially hard on machine-built flow trails. It’s a great time to re-discover some of our classic old-school singletrack at locations like the Tower Trails, Claudie, and Islandview where long-established root systems help the trails to stay resilient.

Not good.

Thanks for your cooperation riders. Winterbike is right around the corner.

Moving the Odell park plan closer to action

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A little more than a year ago the city wrapped up the master plan for Odell Park. We let you know what we thought of it at the time. Now we’ve got an update.

Progress was slow during the pandemic but this summer the city and RVC have reengaged to talk about moving towards implementation. We’ve walked trails in the park with city staff, talking about both issues and opportunities. We met with them again in the park in July, and we now understand a little more about the future of the trails. RVC has been asked to propose an implementation plan that sticks true to the objectives of the master plan, reflects our discussions on the ground.

Here’s what we know:

  • Many of the existing trails will stay although there are issues to address through signage, improvements, or small re-routes.
  • There are opportunities for new connections – particularly where new builds would avoid sensitive areas and better link existing trails.
  • We can expect the city to close ‘Evil Streambed’. This one is of particular concern for Phyllis creek. That trail seems destined to be decommissioned and revegetated in the future.
  • RVC will be a partner in implementation, but work will need to be supervised by city staff.

Once we’ve put in RVC’s implementation proposal it will need to be approved by city staff (and possibly council).

This is a good outcome for the Odell park planning process that began way back in 2017 and had a few rocky stretches along the way. Riders could be in a very different position right now. We believe the city should demonstrate progress in 2021 by giving us the ok to put the existing trails back on Trailforks and allowing us to do some leaf-blowing this fall. We’ll include that in our proposal.

We’ll need help from RVC members. Rogue trail work won’t be helpful at this point. If you’ve got good ideas that you’d like to see in our trail proposal, or if you’d like to get involved when/if work starts happening – please get in touch with us! The balance in Odell is fragile. Remember to share the trails and use good rider etiquette.

Please let us know what you think… and join RVC!

New Pumptrack in Mactaquac Park

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At our AGM earlier this year we laid out our priorities for 2020 and mentioned that a new partnership with Mactaquac Provincial Park was something in the works. The staff at the park have been doing a lot to develop it as a riding area over the last 2 years – starting with a great winterbike grooming effort and fatbike rentals on-site. The goal now is year-round riding, so when they approached RVC about collaborating on a new pumptrack the answer was yes!

Over the last month RVC volunteer and exec. member Chris F designed and lead the construction of what is now the first proper pumptrack in the Fredericton region. Check this out!

Master builder and volunteer Chris F. with his latest creation in the background!

Set up with a compacted base and flowing curves, this thing should be a blast for riders of all ages and skill levels.

While the site still has some finishing touches yet to come, it is open for riding now (try closing a new pumptrack next to a playground and campground full of kids).

Construction in progress

Never ridden a pumptrack before? Check this out:

Where is it? Here:

Trailforks.com

Where is this collaboration with Mactaquac Provincial Park going in the future – good places! We’ve got some more trails on the go in the area that we’ll talk about soon. With plenty of camping, good food, and good trails in the area between Mactaquac and Woolastook, the headpond is ripe to become a great riding destination.

Proud Members of: Velo New Brunswick

Canadian Cycling Association

International Mountain Biking Association