Last weekend (5/13) was a good training day, but as I looked at John's pics of the poorly constructed ramp I rode two things occurred to me.
1 - I may not be the best role model in the world. Kids, don't try this at home - it's stupid to ride features and/or stunts that haven't been constructed well. As soon as I got over the hump of the log and I put my weight fully on the back side, the entire ramp gave way and I had to bail.
2 - West Mag has great potential for developing some features in the future. If you look at that pic, the feature is made of completely natural, unobtrusive materials. Hopefully we can develop a good relationship with the FS that allows us to build in a few features to the trails over time. If we can help maintain the safety of such features, wrecks like the one pictured here will be less frequent. People like me are going to keep riding stuff like that whether it's safe or not - we might as well manage it and improve the quality and safety of those features.
1 comment:
Sorry, Jason, I didn't mean to cause any moral consternation. ;) To me, it was all in good fun, esp since as you said it was a poorly constructed ramp and fairly unobtrusive. And best of all resulted in a non-injury fall. :)
I was thinking about it as I stablized a more obtrusive, man-made ladder-ramp stunt on a nearby trail the other day. I don't normally ride them but this little stunt needed to be either torn down or worked on, as it obviously hasn't been maintained lately by any sort of local presence. Which maybe fits in with the perception post- we're here to help the trail and its users...
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