Through the inky dark, the pale light of morning crept between spidery tree-trunks on the hillside. I blinked slowly and checked the time. 6:01. Against every animal instinct, I rolled out of bed, slipping on wool socks swiftly to keep my toes off the cold floor. The woodstove was a bleary-eyed shuffle away, and the coals from the previous night needed attention. I glanced at the silent kerosene heater by the front window. Our tank had run dry, and I had yet to muster up the courage to call the energy company. It was well below freezing out in the holler, but the fire from the previous night had kept the cottage conveniently above freezing. Time to go build bike trails.
Several months prior, during my final semester of college, I had met a father and son at Rocky Knob Bike Park, my local trail center. The conversation wandered to building trail, and before I knew it, we were shaking hands and making plans to put in flagline on his property. He wanted a machine-built trail, and while I had some experience with hand work behind an excavator, I knew I needed to collaborate with someone. I hit up Cedar, a local operator and business-owner, and we got to work designing a progressive flow trail for this guy’s front yard. Groundbreaking occurred at the beginning of the final month of the year. January weather in Boone is predictably unpredictable, so we got down to business.
A steaming cup of coffee tingled in my palm as I felt my work boots crunch into the fine layer of powder on the frozen ground. Steam from the mug mixed with clouds of breath in the crisp air. We are lucky to experience the more mild-mannered side of December most years in Northwest North Carolina. The nightly freeze is oftentimes not very deep, and sunshine or wind during the day gets the soil moisture content surprisingly prime. Soon, the faint blue light would warm into a long-shadowed December day. Today was testing day, which meant pulling myself from bed had a little bit more vigor to it. I started the car, set my coffee down, and fetched my daily driver from the storage space. It’s a last-gen Marin Alpine Trail Carbon, with the only stock parts left being the frame and brake calipers. It became mine years prior while I worked as a mechanic and salesman at my local bike shop. The paint is faded, chipped, and raw alloy shows on the cranks. This is the bike I have ridden the most, the hardest, and the steed on which I truly fell in love with the depth of bicycles. In the half-dark, I smiled. It looked so badass, and it was about to get ripped around some turns.
The road on approach to the job site is clearly built by crews with an intimate knowledge of tracing hill contours. For myself, cruising a winding mountain backroad does wonders for engaging the trail-building mindset: at the end of the day, if you can read the highs, lows, and in-betweens of a hill, a trail is a few steps ahead. For a young man, I have a decent background in maintaining and improving upon mountain bike infrastructure: it is composed of a series of situational processes directly based upon a personal relationship with the trail, as well as an understanding of how the tread integrates into the natural hydrology of the slope. It is ever-changing, and the processes are subtly different each day. Diving into the world of fresh-cut trail has provided me with a delightful new professional challenge in the post-school months. True mastery is decades away, and that feels exciting. Cedar has built hundreds of miles of low-impact, sustainable trails in sensitive areas across the state and is an incredible tutor. We shake hands as I unload my bike from the car and examine our progress. The line is tucked into a shallow north-facing grassy basin, and the fresh brown soil and shining edges of the corners can be seen poking above the ground. We are roughly halfway through the project, meaning it’s time to get some tire tracks onto the fresh dirt. When building with a machine from the top of the hill down, riding at this point in the process allows us to collect feedback on the work we have done so far, making any changes needed before the machine moves further down. Undoubtedly the best part of the job.
The weeks following brought the persistent cold of an icy Appalachian winter. Smoke pours from the neighbor's chimney, and the bear dog, Cosmo, rests on the ice. Through his thick coat, the winter chill feels cozy, but the subzero temperatures are decidedly egregious for anything related to bikes. It was wildly difficult for me to accept, but it seemed it was time to put my well-worn feet by the fire, sip a warm beverage, and dream of turns to come. Just as a rest day after a big ride makes a cyclist stronger, it seems as though dark and frigid seasons are often a time of rest and reset, leading to germination and ideation. As the brilliant green buds begin to peak from under the deep grey of the winter forest, the excitement builds to continue exploring the natural cycles and processes that dictate our lives and devotion to the art of shred.
