Mt Adams Post ride wrap up 2016 - Darlene Anderson

MtAdamsRide Blog - Full Story

June 1 2016
by Darlene Anderson

Once again, the Village managed a terrific Mt Adams Ride. There were so many things that went right, it hardly seems fair to bring up the things that weren’t so right, but I’m going to anyhow. Later.

First…results:

30 miler results 67 started, 60 finished for a 90% completion rate

55 miler results 47 started, 41 finished for an 87% completion rate

75 miler results 9 started, 7 finished for a 78% completion rate

100 miler results 30 (!!!) started, 19 (!!!) finished for a 63% completion rate

There were 11 riders who took on the introductory ride and all seemed to enjoy themselves.

So, going back to 2009. Stephanie Irving, the ride’s second ever RM asked me to take on the ride management with her guidance. It was what any RM would call a “healthy ride”. People tend to show up in droves to early in the year rides and Mt Adams has always been one of those rides people try to get to. The big deal with Mt Adams is that there is usually plenty of trail clean up to be done before the ride. Some years the snow isn’t even completely off the upper trails. It’s not an easy ride to put on, but in the end, it’s very satisfying because, well, “if you build it, they will come”.

It’s always been plenty of work to put on this ride, but they always come, and they leave mostly happy, and that’s more than any RM can hope for. My goal, however, was to make the ride even better. When Steph asked me to take on the ride, I thought to myself, here’s an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. I like to think a trail should be marked a certain way. I like to think that decent awards, sometimes something unique are a little of what people come for. I like to think a well thought out course brings people back. We played around with the trail configurations, we learned by trial and error what works and most certainly does not work in trail marking. We wanted to build a ride that people wanted to go to . A ride that people plan their season around...

Read more here:
https://mtadamsride.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/post-ride-wrap-up-2016/