BigBird wrote:OFG has never been to AOAA and hasn't been to RAC for about a year (back problems - now fixed YEA!) BUT would love to go now and has a permit which will be renewed for 2017.
AOAA is about 17 miles farther west than where I park for RAC (just off 901 east of I-81) and ~ 20 minutes longer to get to for me.
RAC is huge and has everything - but the area I like is mostly tight and GNARLY perfect for the Freeride. I have some saved tracks of much of it.
Sam,
I loved the stuff we found the year we had RAC permits. I just wish it was a little closer and I had the time to get up there enough to justify buying a permit again; one of these days...
Ok, so let me just preference my following humble opinion that it’s great to have any new places to ride and I am not blind to this fact. This place has huge potential but in its current form does not have much to offer the single-track junkie. The facilities are nice and the people were friendly but it’s definitely geared to the ATV crowd. Ironically, when looking around in the parking lot I would say probably 50% of the customers were on dirt bikes. Maybe this wasn’t the norm because it was the day before the opening of deer season and all the ATV boys were out getting drunk at the hunting lodge, dunno.
The trails come in two flavors, old coal-mining access roads and ATV 2-tracks. A lot of the trails just dead-end so it becomes an out and back and some of them can be rocky which adds at least a little something to grab your attention. There are also some pretty gnarly jeep trails with ball-buster rocks but for some reason, bikes are NOT allowed on these. It’s a shame really because the place is big and with a lot of work, could offer miles and miles of good ST. However, it would take posts at each trail head that were only bike width to keep the quad-tards off of them.
The guys I went with turned out to be very cool and it was fun being there for the first time. Some of the guys who had been there before had previously found some single track with the help of someone else who knew where to look, but with the leaves on the ground and not much for trail markings we couldn’t find shit. It’s probably a good place for me to take my Sherco buddy or my wife and my kids on their quads but I can’t give it too much more than that at this point….
You nailed exactly what I had expected.
I know a few folks that were involved with getting the project off the ground but no longer seem to have interest or promote the location.
4 wheels pay the bills best, so they have the most attention.
Boom Boom wrote:
4 wheels pay the bills best, so they have the most attention.
From a business stand point I absolutely understand this. Of course they are going to cater toward atv/utvs, they need to make money. Else they will go under and it wont be available for anyone to ride. Though I will totally admit I'm a "dirtbike snob", I have no issue with atv/utv guys (as long as they aren't fragging up our single track ect...). Quite a few time I've talked w/ them at the Cove or Taskers and many of the ones I've talked to have seemed to either be noobs and/or guys who are a bit more "casual" about their riding. They really don't like the rocks or nasty stuff (or just want a tiny bit), and really like more "dirt road" type trails. Looks like this AOAA is right up their alley.
But it would be cool if there were some dirtbike guys who lived nearby and had the time to work on some single track. Like Tigerball does at Mt Ridge. (I"m still blown away at how great a time I had there in Oct).