Here is one of the most beautiful, underused, and unknown pieces of greenspace bordering San Francisco.

And guess what:  it may come as somewhat of a shock, but mountain biking isn’t allowed.

This lovely hillside sits between San Francisco and San Bruno, and delivers spectacular views, spectacular trails, and terrain that could provide excellent multi-use trails for all.  As of current, one of the major problems facing the mountain is lack of use on the trails. The good news is the trails that do exist there were well planned, well built trails, and will be around for some time to come.

Let’s mount some pressure on local government to open this hill up to all uses, shall we? There’s an MTBR.com thread started on this note, which you can find by clicking on the mountain above, or by clicking here.

That all has changed at the Colonnade, thanks to the efforts of their local bike club, the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance.

While it was something that didn’t happen overnight, through their dedicated efforts and the aid of the community, they succeeded in creating a major success story. This dead urban space is now a draw for the local community, and also brings in mountain bikers from all over, bolstering the local economy. It now is a destination on the local bike path, and also features a dog park for local community residents.

There is much we can take from the example of Seattle. It clearly is possible to create an urban riding destination, and a safe place for children as well as riders and enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels. Let’s remember to shoot for the sky- there is no reason San Francisco shouldn’t be the next major city known for its urban riding opportunities. We have a great need for a place to ride for all user groups in the cycling family, and we can and will make it happen.

Here is a great documentary on the I-5 Colonnade Project:

For another great feature on the Seattle Skills Park, click here

The IMBA trail care crew have perhaps one of the most amazing jobs in existence. They work to improve trails the world over.

They travel together, in a new Subaru, stuffed full of living, building, and riding tools. For an entire year, they travel around the United States and beyond, instructing local land managers and trail advocates on how to build sustainable, long lasting, and ecologically sound trails. Trails that you, me, and generations to come will enjoy. They are trail designers, builders, trainers to the trainers.

This April, they’re coming to San Francisco to host a weekend of trail building, advocacy building, and of course, a little bit of mountain bike riding. Right here in urban San Francisco!

Saturday, April 4th from 9am until 5pm will be an in depth morning classroom component, followed by the afternoon field work session. The focus will be examining sustainable trail building techniques and practices. Registration is free. The trail work will be focused on the multi-use trail system on Mt. Sutro, and we’ll be holding class at the UCSF Parnassus campus.

Class size is limited to 50 people, so we encourage all interested parties to register here. Or, send us an email to loamgnome<at> yahoo <dot> com

For the entire weekend schedule and details, stay tuned. We will post updates on this website as the date and more details close in.

Thursday Evening: SF Urban Riders social, at a local watering hole. TBD

Saturday day: Trailbuilding school and practice

Sunday day: Big ol’ fun group ride, location TBD.

4/2/2009 – 4/5/2009 Save the dates. Come to class. You’ve never learned like this before.

Thanks to everyone who made it out to Mt. Sutro to lend a hand, a shovel, or a McCloud to improve the wonderful habitat and spectacular multi-use trails on that hillside.  There were more new faces than old, and the showing of the MTB contingent was strong and welcomed with 21 riders representing.
We all sat back and enjoyed pizza and refreshments afterwards, remarking on what a wonderful experience it is for newcomers. You start shoveling where you’re told, not knowing exactly what or why you’re doing it. Then after a couple hours you see a beautiful, ride-able switchback emerge from what was a previously steep and erosive hillside trail with 25% grades.

Meanwhile on the Habitat side volunteers are removing invasive plants like Himalayan Blackberry, Cape Ivy, and Nightshade which improves the views and reveals more of the Franciscan Chert rock out cropings which make Mount Sutro so special.

Thanks to the Mount Sutro Stewards for hosting, and it was a pleasure to work alongside other community groups like One Brick, Nature in the City, and the California Native Plant Society and everyone else.  In total there were 48 volunteeers – it looks like all of them were kicking off the New Year right!
Here are some great FLICKR Photo links from January 3rd:
Dustin’s photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustindsmith/sets/72157612126667582/

Peter and Kristin’s photos
http://www.flickr.com/gp/33952394@N06/a0ZN6J

And in other news, here’s some news about news:
Look who the examiner is writing about.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/36958144.html
Looks like our motions to get some respect, some terrain, and some trails and parks dedicated to the mountain biking populace in San Francisco is not going completely unnoticed.  Like many reporters, they don’t have all their facts straight (Trails on Mt. Sutro Illegal? I think not)
If anyone feels inspired, why don’t you leave a comment on the examiner’s page, asking for more coverage of this newstory that is near and dear to our hearts.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned, because it’s a new year, and we’ve got new developments in the works for this new year.  Maybe we won’t have a world class bike park this year, but we’re planning on having a new website, a new HQ, and a couple great events coming at you throughout the year.  Lube those chains, pump those tires, stretch those legs, and go kiss your local singletrack… we’ll be in touch.

What really matters are the trails to ride said sweet gear on.  Think about it.  If there were only two options available, and one was riding the off-road bike of your dreams along a flat fireroad, or an, old, used, 80’s bottom of the barrel mountain bike on swoopy, loamy, redwood-lined trails, which would you pick?

I know what I’d pick.  And you know what? I know where you can help construct and build some swoopy, loamy, eucalyptus lined singletrack, right here in this San Francisco City!!!

This Saturday, come out and meet your fellow SF Urban Riders at the Mt. Sutro Trail Workday!
WHERE: Mount Sutro Trail System above UCSF (Follow Medical Center way up, off of Parnassus, and meet at the parking lot, or just ride the trails up.

DATE: SATURDAY JANUARY 3rd
TIME: 9am – 1pm

MORE INFO AND DIRECTIONS:
http://www.natureinthecity.org/mtsutro.php

SFUR will be working with the Mount Sutro Stewards, Nature in the City, and One Brick on Trail and Habitat improvements on Mount Sutro.

We will continue to work on the Lower Connector Trail and its awesome switchbacks. This trail is the basis for future trail links like the Stanyan Street Trail and eventually over to Belgrave and Clarendon all on dirt.

Pizza and home brewed refreshments will be served at 12:45

SFUR needs your involvement to continue making the City a better place to recreate on your bike!

Here’s our latest clip-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugWh5CRIRCA

And if you missed it, don’t worry, we’ll be back and better than ever at the pilarcitos cyclocross race in Golden Gate park on 11/30/08.

As they spin around and through, the children’s faces lit up with enthusiasm and glee, grew focused and intense as they focused on riding the line, or just focused on riding.  It was a non-stop whirlwind of children playing through our home-made skills park, loving every minute of it.  Some fell down, all got back up.  Some rode fast, and others slow.  None needed encouragement.  They saw the teeter totters, the new bunny hop obstacle, and the 2×4 skills boxes, and just rode.  Over, and over, and over again.

Once again, SF Urban Riders brought a mountain bike skills course to the most important cycling demographic in existence today.  They perhaps are not the biggest group in terms of dollars spent or policies made, but certainly in terms of our future: The children.

With more space than we previously had available, a baseball diamond track was used as our backdrop, and inbetween the bases, we set up the skills course.  Many mothers fathers, and children were returnees from our first foray at the Excelsior festival, many were just passing by, and overall, we had more than 100 sign-ins, mostly youth that enjoyed our set up.

Truly this is the type of entertainment and physical activity that our children don’t get enough of.  This was more than evident as many children stayed on, pedaling non stop around the course for 1-2 hours.  It amazes me how children just know how to have fun on these courses.  Very few needed, or wanted, any coaching, and if they weren’t riding, would just watch the other children ride before they followed to imitate.

In a land that is filling up with strip malls, paved highways, and housing developments,  don’t you think it is time we created some fine opportunities for ourselves and our children in our parks?  Thanks for reading, and stay tuned to this website to find out how you can help, as SF Urban Riders moves forward through 2008, and into 2009, working hard to bring the children, both young and old, off road cycling recreation, within our fine City.

Check out the video!

SF urban rider staff were on hand to show kids and adults the ropes, explain our mission and why McLaren park would be a fantastic site for a bike park with skills based features, singletrack, and much much more.

It was truly amazing to see the enthusiasm with which children jumped towards these challenging balance beams and obstacles.  Smiles were on everyone’s faces, young and old alike as they romped through our temporary playground.  Over 75 children participated in the event, and every child had at least one parent with them, often two.  That’s nearly 200 people we’re pretty sure will vote for a bike park when the time comes.

Yappity yappity yappity.  I’ll now let the pictures speak for themselves.  And if you’re reading this, and are wishing you were out there, seeing what we’re all about, meeting the handsome devils (and she-devils) that organize and run this organization, than wish no more, and come out to Crocker Amazon’s Pilarcitos Cross race 10/19/08.  Details HERE 

SF Urban Riders is looking to put our presence out there, where it will be seen beyond these little emails.  We’re looking for an image, and though we’ve nailed down a logo, we need presentation for our outreach.

We’re looking for artists.

We’re looking to create Posters for all local bike shops, and would like to make them worthy of hanging on a wall.  So if anyone likes to play with cameras, computers, or images in general, we’d love to have your imput.  Even if your SF singletrack photos are not finished products, if you’d be willing to share them to  promote our vision, we’d love to build a database of images to use now and in the future. So contribute!

Soon, there will be more and more singletrack in San Francisco.

Any contributions will be welcomed, and between this webmaster’s unwieldy photoshop sword and all y’all out there, we’ll even have entries up on the site for voting.  Stay tuned, and visit our new calendar page on the website to find out about upcoming events, and if anyone here hasn’t, do join our google groups.  There we can start to collectively upload photos and artwork for the cause.

It’s true, we could use some intelligent people doing some riding research.  What kind of features would you like to see in a bike park?  What do you think will best benefit the residents around an area, what do you think will be an easy 1st phase to implement before we really get going on the big dreams? (a network of trails all throughout SF).

We could really use help from anyone who has accomplished these goals,  like people from the BBTC (Creators of Seattle’s  Collonade) or groups that have put them into places like Folsom, CA, or NY, NY…

And that leads us to those of you that might not be able to do the kind of research conducted while attempting two wheel drifts around a turn.  Does anyone know about liability laws?  We’re learning, slowly and surely, but we certainly need some plans in place when we bring our master plan before rec and park.   There are many questions that need to be answered about how to keep this ($#*%&(#$*%&!! litigious society at bay, and let them allow us the construction of a bike park.

So help out if you can, riding, researching, talking and thinking, and bring thoughts and talk to our next meeting!

Just a reminder:

Monday, August 25th, 6:30 @

Sports Basement Portero Hill (Bryant St)

Can’t wait to see y’all there!