First of all, thanks to everyone for being patient – we wish you would register, but understand a lot of you want to see the course first.
Here is the lowdown. We’ve mapped the entirety of available trail without any trail crossings or use of the same trail twice. We have approximately 90 miles of total trail, don’t get alarmed yet…. and are going to be narrowing that down to between 75 – 80 miles as we’ve discussed all along. The vert seems to be about what we’ve thought, which is going to fall around 12,000′. Take a look at our google map page (link from the bottom of the course page on our site) and you’ll be able to see the course as it stands now. Our mapping guru is going to be banging on the files the next few days, so keep on eye on it.
Couple of things worth mentioning. We will be eliminating the Devo Downhill and Tour de Homes portion of the course from the Snow Park are a Deer Valley (this is good)! Additionally, we will not climb the maintenance road of Deer Valley to get to the top of Bald Mountain. I’m not going to say the climb is easier, because it is not, it is just must more pleasant to climb single track than a service road.
I will have a ton on the trail quality of the race in my next BLOG post, but I will say this, to have a race (point to point non-the-less) in which well over 90% of the course is on single track and you never lap/loop or use the same trail twice is pretty damn amazing. This is going to be a killer event!
It is not a question of difficulty. A good anology would be instead of the 24 hours of Moab, they have the 21 1/2 hrs of Moab. Thank you for the response, and Yes you will see my name on the start list 😉
Glad to hear you will be racing. Let me know what you think after the race, we’ll be excited to hear everyone’s input. See you Sept. 5th.
The race idea is great, but the mileage makes no sense. If you want to attrack the best riders and have the race an annual success it should be 100 miles. If you don’t won’t people riding in the dark have a cut off point at the last check point. Plus I think they make lights for mt bikes now:) It doesn’t seem to be an issue in the 24hrs of Moab, why should it be an issue here. Please do the 100 miles and make it a real endurance race.
Thanks for the comments, we appreciate you checking the course out. Honestly, we’re not really concerned with the event not being hard enough. Open class finish times will more than likely be greater than most of the “classic” 100 mile endurance races in the region. Hopefully we’ll see your name on the start list.