November 2007

today’s work involved building up another double diamond rock garden.

This section, called the ‘Straggler’, leads the ride from the top leg shortcutting the big loop through two trees and intercepting the bottom leg just after the great ficus tree.

Max, Joey and me got the stuff working with our one Burmese worker. We placed big anchor rocks around the various sections, and line the bigger ones on the side so to form the riding boundary.

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We took a quick lesson on rock bars, and managed to move a 300kg rock some 10metres up slope bit by bit. This is practically our first mega rock experience. never before we imagine that we can move such stuff without any machinery.

After cleaning up the top leg, doing some 10ft of bench cut for a new line, we push on to do ride testing, with Max and Joey testing the new lines a few times.

certainly one sweet ride!

25 manhours.

Rock work never been so fun.

We’ve tried rock/stone pitching at Bukit Timah MTB trail earlier this year.

We’ve certainly build a bunch of rock armor in Kent Ridge.

We’ve the entire Tampines hills rock armored.

But today is one of the first time we are doing rock work in such massive scale for such a small section of the trail.

In our previous discussion with Joey, we’ve always wanted the overshot to be a technical rock drops and at the same time build up a filter for the corridor to the black diamond section of the trail.

We got the exact thing done up today.

With 2 excavators lifting some of the ‘mega tons’ boulder from the surrounding, rocks and boulders are shifted so to form big steps for a cool ride down the overshot. with Hua’s excavator doing up the double black diamond approach and another excavator harvesting rocks for the pitching work, things happen twice as quick.

We started the stone pitching for the black diamond approach with the usual anchoring rocks and side filters rocks. work upwards mid size rocks get interlocks towards the top and like a giant jigsaw puzzle. rocks are meticulously place to form a smooth rocky path to the singletracks.

Is a beauty! nice sea scene, offering 3 alternative paths of different difficulties, nice filter to only allow the skilled to play the technical stuff, what else could be nicer for this junction.

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what we got here?

IMBA trail guru Joey Klein is in town again for two weeks visit, and he is here to see to our final touch up for Ketam Mountain Bike Park, in particulars to the in completed double black diamond obstacles.

Max and me caught a ride with him in the afternoon, he brought his own bike this round, and got us all checking on his gravity seat post in the first instance.

The day couldn’t be more perfect. nice overcast post rain cooling weather, and we check out every single lines and enjoy the flow of this beautiful trail.

Is a day of riding and planning for the weeks ahead. What we gonna do, and what we are to improve further.

A quick audit got us to 6 double black diamond obviously in need of completion, one existing fix on the bad rock garden and a new ‘tidak apa-apa’ rock garden coming up, some filters, one bad turn and one bad climb.

It’s going to be interesting