Below Schweitzer lies yet another trail network, largely built and maintained by the Pend Oreille Pedalers, a mountain bike advocacy organization based in Sandpoint, Idaho. Led by Emily Strizich, POP builds trails, trains groms and more. They’ll be the subject of a future post.
The trails we rode today featured less broken shale, so the dirt was both stickier and smoother, generally. What rock we did encounter tended to be on the order of boulder-size, or bigger. By and large, these were very flowy, machine-cut trails, trails that don’t turn unless there’s a berm. The lower we got on the mountain, the more dust we encountered, but it wasn’t so bad that riders needed one-minute gaps to be able to see and breathe.
Emily led our ride, assisted by a local phenom known as Skippy (National Champion in the enduro for 15-16-year-old boys). Riding behind them by alternate turns was like watching a dance; their movements displayed an economy of gesture, less English than you’d think could launch a body that high. That they could ride in such a fluid manner reflected just how well-shaped their trails are, and I’d put them against the best work I’ve encountered by Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance in Washington.
These trails had jump lines like rock bands have long hair and the shaping spoke to hours and hours of blister-inducing, shovel-slapping sessions. Every single one of them had a ride-around, and many offered multiple (okay, two) launch points, or a progressive lip. Some of the lead-ins to switchbacks suffered blown-out braking bumps, but being the end of the season, few places don’t have such an issue.
We encountered a number of wood features; we rode over numerous bridges, but there were also a few skills-oriented features, including a peaked bridge as wide as a milk crate.
More to come.