Supporting Cycling In and Around Fredericton
Update: Ticket sales are now closed. Tune into our social media on Dec 20th for the draw and good luck!
Our friends at Back Trails have put together a big Yeti package to raffle off prior to Christmas in support of our winterbike grooming efforts. Tickets are on sale now ($15) and we plan to have a live-streamed draw on our social channels on Wednesday the 20th.
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We are rolling heavy towards another winter season and we are ready. Behind the scenes the club exec and our 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. Dan Breau and Tim Dine have both spent time replacing old worn parts. There’s time spent setting up our parking lot plows and clearing trails of late fall blow-downs. You may have also seen the slick new winterized RVC logo that Christina Tracy did for us! The exec has worked to flip our membership registration over to winter mode (join for 2023/24), and prepare a budget.
Early this spring we set a goal for ourselves – a new sled for our longest-serving volunteer snow-sculptor: Dan Breau. For those that don’t know Dan, he is our groomer who has been looking after MVP since winterbike first evolved beyond early experiments. We’ve come a long way since Wilson’s Loop was kept open by running a leaf blower through the first few snowfalls. The thing is that our fleet of sleds that pull the grooming gear are old, and the maintenance is high. So – we set out to find the money needed to buy RVC’s first brand new sled. With the help of long-time volunteer Kelly Murray we applied to the City of Fredericton’s Community Grant program and we just got word that we were successful! They’ve agreed to put forward $6,500, about half of our target, if we can find the other half. We think we’re just about there. We had some money left in the piggy bank from previous fund raising and we think we can sell some of our older assets to make up the rest. All without raising membership costs. We’re excited.
Riders – River Valley Cycling is really excited about winterbike for 2023. It’s been 10 years since the first fat bikes started rolling around town. We’ve just rolled out our winter memberships so go ahead and join RVC for the winter season!
To celebrate, we are sharing a winterized redesign of our logo from the talented volunteer Christina Tracy!
RVC’s second Strava Race Series segment saw 42 riders tackle a seemingly innocent, but ultimately challenging climb before their fun descent. Despite following for years what has been a popular route both the all-time K & QOMs were established in June 2023, congrats to James and Melissa for those efforts! It was great to see 17 riders from the Woolastook Shoreline challenge last month make their way to MVP to test their mettle again.
For the month of July, from 1st to 30th, will have the race series taking us to the Penniac trail network to tackle a relatively new trail, Spin Cycle. This is a multi-directional trail, which the race will descend, that will test a rider’s ability to keep momentum on flatter corners as it rides more in a cross-country style than downhill.
This is a multi-directional trail, so we encourage riders to be courteous and remember that climbers have the right of way if they happen to cross paths. The RVC Summer Trail Crew will be on the ground in Penniac in the next few weeks to help with maintenance on a great trail system.
While you’re there be sure to also spin the legs on local favourites: Uptimizer, Learning to Fly, Numbers and Dozer.
https://www.strava.com/segments/30719154?filter=overall
Remember, every segment for which you log an effort will get you into our year end prize draw.
Say hello to Ivan and Dexter – our 2023 RVC summer student trail crew!
Back in June we started our search for the right people and we’re very lucky to have signed up Ivan and Dexter. Both of these young riders showed a lot of motivation to tune up trails and make our singletrack the best it can be. We got to know Ivan and Dexter a little bit and found out they were both emerging racers with some previous building experience. Yesterday was their first day. We spent some time talking about our safety policy and going over the types of projects we want to accomplish in the next 8 weeks. These guys are going to learn a lot working under the supervision of Bev Bunker – who is volunteering his time and energy to making this crew a success!
We think you’ll notice these guys making an impact. They’ll be getting started at MVP this week with the brush saw knocking back vegetation, getting progress made on a big signage project, and working on some drainage improvements. After that we’re collecting project ideas for Penniac, Islandview, Odell Park, and they may also spend a little time in Woolastook. You might see them out on the trails if you ride during the day. If you see a ‘trail work ahead‘ sign on the trail please slow down and be sure to say hi. If you see a ‘trail temporarily closed‘ sign please head the other way.
Now we need to make a few big thank-you’s!
First of all we need to acknowledge the Canada Youth Employment Strategy that provided RVC with a grant that allowed us to make this happen! Programs like this that support students through grass-roots community organizations like ours are amazing.
We also want to send a huge shout out to Paul and the team at Explore Velo. Last year we had a great discussion and Paul indicated to us that he wanted to support trail maintenance around Fredericton. Explore Velo covered the cost of all of the trail crew’s tools and safety equipment (like first aid kits, eye protection, fire suppression packs, etc) that we needed. Thank you Explore Velo!
We will rely on volunteer trail builders and maintainers for as long as the club exists. Ivan and Dexter are going to really accelerate things over this summer but we’re still going to have trail days and we want members to come forward with projects they want to take on!
So, lets say welcome to Ivan and Dexter and wish them a safe and productive summer.
