Bird Eye View : MTB Trails in an Island with no mountains and I am proud of

Kent Ridge Season 3

If trail building is like any TV series, we are into Kent Ridge Trail season 3.

the end of August marked the start of new trail initiative, we targeted small touch up and reroutes on parts of the original lines that will not survive any riding season.

Today, I get two new faces into the trail building by doing a bike and hike adventure in the uncharted portion of Kent Ridge.

William and Ellery happened to need some 1hr workout from their books, and I guess is a good short workout for them to keep their brains healthy too.

I got them through the usual introduction to clinometers, trail design basics and show and tell of existing examples.

The new ‘My Precious’ leg is doing well, with nice contour and riding flow. We gave the main route 40metres of trails to descent 4metre towards to drain area. Is healthy riding and a perfect way to solve a crazy 45% grade slope that does the same 4 metres of elevation in 4metres.

We walked the trail, checking the Fern hill descent corner for flow, checking the condition of the ‘Snake’ and pointing out the new alternative route. and also the first valley after the rock garden.

the interesting part of the journey is to get started in marking control points for the ascent towards carpark A from the existing trail end (Evac D). There’s a wide variety of terrain, all sweet mountain biking area with potential of getting another 500-1km of trails into Kent Ridge.

I am taking this process slowly, mainly to be sure we get it right the first time. There’s much lesson learn from every new trail. So let’s plan and check a few times before we cut the perfect line.

Keep diggin’!

Kent Ridge Season 3 Read More »

A change

1 Comment / Uncategorized / HM / September 1, 2007

I get a question or two nowadays from this blog like

“So things haven’t been moving in Kent Ridge?”

I guess I better address this so to make sure every other trail user out there knows that Kent Ridge is still evolving, and so is this site.

Most of you would have noticed that the core group of Kent Ridge trail builders forms part of DirTraction, a privately-owned organisation which seeks to promote mountain biking to adventure junkies, as well as to provide professional World Class racing conditions to bike lovers in Singapore.

We do get serious request for help around the island, and since late 2006, we’ve oversee the build/maintainance process of three other MTB trails locally and some across the borders.

As our volume of work get spread out around the island of Singapore, I’ve to stop actively writing our trail work daily reports, build more trails, meet more people and make sure we get better races going locally.

I am probably guilty of not documenting the hard work of the trail builders, volunteers and friends alike.

A change is needed.

Here a whole new concept for this blog. Instead of solely writing about Kent Ridge MTB Trail, I will start documenting the trails we build weekly, the ideas we formulate daily and hopefully give mountain bikers around Singapore and hopefully abroad something to dream on and ride on.

Kent Ridge will still bear some great memories on how I got back into the mountain biking. I’ve done my time doing my long road rides and races. Trading high performance stuff for great outdoors again. Don’t get me wrong for dumping my road riding days, I still ride and train on the road. Trying to beat my statistics up (and recently down) Genting Highlands.

Moving on, kentridge.eaglet.org ?

I couldn’t think of a better name than having Kent Ridge giving the namesake for our trail building documentation process and we shall retail kentridge.eaglet.org as our special trail building section for DirTraction.

A change Read More »

saving My Precious

Kent Ridge MTB Trail, trail work / HM / August 31, 2007

The ever troubling ‘My Precious tree’ descent is definitely one of the eye sore and we are definitely not eaving this ‘mistake’ of ours marked with further user and water induced erosion.

Trail building is a measure three times build once affair.

We remap and reroute a new course down so to cut a crazy 30% grade slope to an easy 10% average grade, increasing trail length by 20metres in the process.

‘SECTION CLOSE’

Monero and one of his buddy started the top soil excavation today. In the process transplant some of the smaller plants off the route and to create new foilage so mark the boundary for the walking path.

With experience hand working for 2 hours, building rolling contour trails is made quick and we’ve now an unarmored path readily cut.

What we lack is some compaction and a small off camber fix.

So dudes out there, do really stay out of this place for now and allow some work to settle before riding this new detour.

5 effective manhours

saving My Precious Read More »

Patching Up

Kent Ridge MTB Trail, trail work / HM / July 25, 2007

Changes occurs, and we are happy to have our new Park managers from Nparks joining us for a few sessions learning what a mountain biking trails should looks like.

We explain our plans for Kent Ridge, corrections and todo and finally a good work session came about today.

Monero and 3 of his gang managed to move some nice recycled broken drains to cache around the exit near Vigilante drive. We are talking about 10 -15 wheelbarrow loads today.

4th bridge step up
We manage a patch up at the 4th bridge, which rutted out over the rainy season to form a good 1.5ft tall stepup. Not really rollable, some bike trial skills will be involve if we don’t fix it.

With improved trail building technique, after so much hands on over at the other sites. We managed to pitch the broken cements and get a good 10% gradient for the bridge exit.

Double Log
The double log low land mud pile never been fun to ride, we broke the first rule in trail building, never build trails on steep slopes and on flat ground. sounds trivial but that’s what we’ve done 1 year ago, and the mud patch never get fix.

We got to apply a permanent solution to this patch, this time with loads of rocks and broken drains.

We elevated the trail and settle to have both sides of the trails being muddy and wet. allowing a ‘2 ft wide causeway’ as our ride corridor.

Mother Bridge exit
Always rutted. and instead of small granite chips patching, we settle for large 200mm big cement wedge, easily broken down so to give a rough texture for a grippy descent.

Let’s hope the trail side wall doesn’t give way further. It seems to have settle down nicely.

The Hole