UtahMountainBiking.com

We rode this new freeride trail that starts by Gorgoza Park. It is an awesome new addition to the trails up near Park City. There is a 15-20 minute climb (not too brutal) to access the top. From there you can just do laps down it with a 10ish minute climb back to the top. Good fun. Phillymike has promised to head up there later this week with his camera for some photographic evidence.

http://vimeo.com/24860793 (this is not my video, I poached it...)

There are some techincal features that are above my skill level, but there are go-around options for wusses like me.

I will definitely be up there sooner rather than later after watching that vid. Thanks for posting it!

It's much prettier up there right now than in the vid. I kept my eye on the scenery as the trail didn't really keep my attention.

between that trail and trailside park i will be rockin some air time this summer. good thing my brother left his super D bike with me.

Went to Trailside yesterday, there sure are a lot more dudes there than there used to be during the day! We use to have the place to ourselves at lunch time.

Back from checking out Road to Arcylon-this is one kick ass downhill trail. Too bad I'm not a downhill rider, but I still enjoyed checking it out and rolling past most of the stunts and tip-toeing over the double-jumps (or are they gap jumps?) along the route. It is a very well designed trail with the experienced downhiller in mind, the highlight for me being the sweet, banked turns that you can really rip through. Some pics of the trail:


You access the trail via the Gorgoza Park trail just above the pond by the snow tubing hill.


It was ~20minute, middle ring climb on my Specialized SJ to the trail. A bit longer I'm sure on a DH rig.


After climbing the Gorgoza Park trail and following signs for Arcylon, you come to this sign. Go left like the lower part of the sign says. Right takes you to the bottom of the trail. Not sure why anyone would go that way....


Sign at the start of the trail.


First feature at the start of the trail. No biggie.


After some doubles and a couple banked turns you hit the first drop.


Nice gap jump.


Step-up. One of the bigger features it seemed to me. In the video above this and the other stunts seem a lot easier than in person. Which is the way it goes, right?

Crossed paths with a few other riders including 'R.R.' who let me snap a few frames of him hitting this feature on the top half of the trail.

From the top, figure about ~20minute loops on each lap. The length of the trail and the grin on your face will make the climbing in between worth it

Sorry i missed this one, Mike. Hope you ride it again soon!

Be sure and thank WAFTA for trails like this in the Wasatch now. A lot of hard work with shovels, and with building relationships with Bob Radke led to the development and construction of this trail. If you really want to thank WAFTA and help build more trails like this in the Wasatch, go to www.waftautah.com and make a donation.

Mike

So stoked to have a trail like Arcylon in the Wasatch. It might not be long, but I think it's a decent length and the return trail feels really nice, even pedaling my bigger bike up it. The essence of the trail is awesome. I've had a couple days on it now, so I wanted to comment on it and see what others think.

Unfortunately, I have a bit of a gripe in that I think it's not super easy/safe to ride at a more moderate speed. It seems to either require a pretty slow riding pace, or for actually hitting everything smooth, you need to be haulin butt. I'm the kind of guy that spends 7 days at Whistler and is totally cool with not clearing everything on A-line for a few days as I feel it out. Arcylon is hard to do that with cause you land hard to flat or up hill if you don't make transitions. I'm bottoming out hard even on a DH bike that I think is setup decent. Also, the silly whoops and rollers everywhere totally throw off concentration and flow for a guy like me. At present I don't see myself ever getting this trail dialed to have good flow. The berms are money...That one set they worked on recently are some of the best I've ever felt, but why oh why are there rollers in the way as I'm pedaling at jumps or recovering from bouncing after a hard case? Maybe the whoops are for the BMX crowd, but when you case them you are hitting an uphill and that is never good. Just fill them in I say. I feel like the extra dirt from the rollers could be used to fill in whoops so us lesser mortals could find more flow safely.

Just so you know, I don't really know anyone who thinks the whoops section at the bottom of crank-it-up are all that great, but at least it's the only area and the rest of the trail is just nice tables and berms. Few if any jumps are step downs because if you case you are casing from a long ways up...just sayin.

FWIW - I wish I could spend more time building trail these days, but the truth is with family and work I can only commit to that type of work maybe 2 days per year. I only get to ride ~2 days per week on a good week as it is, and that's usually a 2 hr ride max. I do gladly give funds to those org's that do this work, so hopefully that helps

I'll just end this by saying thanks to those that put in the work to get us to here, it's a big step forward. Also, remember, A-line was completely destroyed and rebuilt several times before they found the right formula for safe big fun.

I agree with the issue with the whoops. They are even worse @ the Trailside park. Guessing here, but I'm assuming they help with trail maintenance. Seems if they weren't there, people would be hitting the brakes pretty hard and the trail would get chewed up before the berms.

Personally, my problem is I suck @ lippy jumps. One day I'll learn I guess. Kinda hard to know how much to compress your suspension, etc.

Great stuff though.

And since I didn't help build Acrylon, I won't imply it should be torn down and rebuilt 3x to get it right.

The trail flows better if you manual the whoops, or simply pump them.

Arcylon also really wasn't designed for big bikes. The more you tend towards a shorter travel slopestyle-type rig, the easier it is to grok the design decisions and compromises. And actually, the puzzling out of technique(s) to flow the trail is, to me, more compelling than simply being able to pin it and hang on.

There IS one table that is shockingly short. You need to scrub a lot of speed lest you flat land well past the transition. Other than that I think most of the rest is tuned pretty well, if not quite to Whistler standards. Given the fact that it's a first-of-its-kind trail in the area, built almost entirely with donated time and labor, it's an amazing piece of work.

Much the same can be said about the new Trailside. There, though, a DJ bike is the clear choice. At least for the current Phase 1 trails.

Thank goodness for Basin Rec (and WAFTA). Without the foreword thinking that began in Bob's Basin we would largely still be trading punches with the Forest Service over scraps of more aggressive trails.

Amen to that.

I hear ya, but with how close I'm coming to really hurting myself on my bigger bike I'm a bit scared to try it on my Reign X. The whole make or break nature of many of the hits is my issue. I'm not saying anything needs to be made smaller, just safer. Not all of us are ok with a few crashes. Those times are over for me. Hell, the idea of riding a true hardtail dirt jumper anywhere but a skate park doesn't thrill me and would make me hobble for weeks. I'm sure you are a better rider then I (probably a whole other league) and probably much better at judging your speed, pop, timing to get you the distance, but for me, if that's how a trail is built, I'll probably ride other stuff cause it's not worth injuries to me. Also, I don't think the trail serves as well to get others into this form of riding. My wife loves riding DH but I kinda doubt she'll love this trail, just sayin.

There are similar issues with the Bob's basin area and it seems like once they get built, that's it. Refinement is why I-street has fun doable lines for a guy like me. Pumping the whoops is what I'm doing for the most part, but all that's doing is making it even harder to clear the hits cause they feel too tight for me to gain speed with them.

If this was a secret/private trail I'd feel totally different. It will be sad if this trail is only fun on a true short travel slopestyle rig, cause not many people own those types of bikes, and they aren't meant for climbing with such short seat tubes. Hopefully it can be more universal than that since it's a public trail.

I'm gonna try and get up there this weekend with my Reign X and test it out, maybe I'll eat my words, but I doubt it since my Glory jumps just fine for me at I-street. BTW - Nothing against Basin rec (Bob is killing it overall) or WAFTA, but right now I'm kinda missing the scraps we were fighting with the forest service for, those trails actually suit me better. Slower tech, with short sections of hard pedaling to clear hits.

thanks ya'll for building this trail and all the hard work to getting the greenlight.

I think this trail is very user friendly as you can bypass any jumps you are not comfortable hitting. The speed to hit the jumps is spot on...except for that one table where you have to scrub speed...(build it up just a little). This trail is very safe with all the obstacles clearly marked. Ive taken friends on this trail who have never hit a jump in their life and they had a blast. Fact is this trail is well made, wish there was more like it. If you dont like it thats cool to each their own so go ride somewhere else... plenty of XC in PC and SLC. Heard there are some more trails in the works, some advanced lines, canyons, trailside, ive even heard deer valley is putting in a jump line, looks like a step in the right direction....so much potential.

I do not consider this a DH trail, more like a flow trail. Although I ride my 8inch travel DH bike on it and its awesome!! I think you can ride whatever you are comfortable with on this trail and it rocks.

the road to NOLYCRA!!!!

So I rode the trail on my Reign X today. I will say that it for sure rides better with this bike which is better suited for popping and jumping then my Glory(even with it's crazy light build using a Totem, Gravity Dropper, & Hammerschmidt for climbing). Some of it is just that I'm learning the trail and so getting better at hitting stuff, but I actually had fun finally so I felt it only fair to post again.

Hasn't made my bike buying decision easier as I was planning to sell the RX and get a lighter bike for the 50% of my riding that's just XC. Oh well, decisions, decisions

I still think the jumps are very harsh if you short them more then a little just because of the amount of stepdown. Especially the road gap with it's sniper landing. Also, the wood lips are getting beat fast from people rolling the jumps so perhaps the rolldown ramps need to be looked at cause they must not be keeping people high enough. Since there is continued work being done on this trail we might as well make it better for more people to enjoy. I just see this as an opportunity to learn and really refine the local trail building technique. I still think this is not going to be a favorite of many who might find true love for this type of riding if we just do a little refinement now. I still haven't heard a good reason for whoops from anyone but the top riders who can manual then with ease

Shhhhhh! That's supposed to be under the radar.

any jump is going to be harsh if you short it more than a little...next time go faster:D

I think a good reason for whoops is so people can learn how to ride them with ease like the top riders...just because something is difficult doesn't mean you should remove it

Glad to hear you are finally having fun

I've never met anyone that wanted to learn to ride whoops while riding their mountain bike. Whoops are for BMX. If I want to ride those I'll go to RAD canyon with a cruiser. Maybe if they were much larger to work better with suspension bikes I'd feel differently. These are more like a pump track stuck in the middle of a high speed trail. Seems silly to me, and a flow killer.

STAEDTLER has got it all figured out and is clearly the best rider on the internet.

I'm probably the third or fourth best....just sayin....whoops are not a flow killer if you know how to ride them, maybe you should practice more...I have met mtn bikers who like them

If you dont know how to pump on a full suspension bike this is the perfect place to practice...You are coming across like you want the trail built to suit your riding level verses learning how to ride it

personally I love riding this trail on my DH bike, I can flow it just fine

Anyways I agree that no trail is perfect and things need to be tweaked here and there, ... looking forward to more trails being built and I hope that this is a sign of things to come

CLASSIC.

I just want the trail built for the silent majority that are ready to hit features this size but need a certain safety factor built into the trail to allow them to do so. Legal trails of this nature are new to Utah, I don't want to cater to those already riding at this level but rather develop a larger group of people to grow this type of riding as fast as possible. More riders will mean more trails of this nature

I simply believe in tweaking something as soon as possible because anything temporary has a real likelihood of becoming permanent.

There are plenty of trails already available that are easier than this one, if you dont feel safe on this trail maybe you should practice on some smaller stuff and come back, not trying to be a jerk but this trail is about as user friendly as it gets.

Ive ridden a lot of trails and all the landings on Arcylon are very forgiving ...You say you hit jumps at I-street, how is it you dont feel safe here?

I see your point, but personally I don't know of any legal trails in Utah with manmade features remotely similar to Arcylon (other than Trailside, I guess.) Please share?

I know it's not fair to compare UT with BC or even the Pac NW US because they've been building these types of trails forever and the soil they work with is completely different. But I'd agree with Freeheeler that the features found on A-Line (along with many other trails) are both bigger and safer than those found on Arcylon. Don't ya think?