It’s January in the redwoods, the trail is more mud than dirt and what would be a grippy surface has a slick layer of water and mud. The backend of your bike is sliding out at every berm and your brakes feel useless. Your front end washes out on every descent which would otherwise be trivial. It has been like this since November.
Every winter the Humboldt trails become barren, no one dares to ride on them, the reason for this is quite clear to students. “Most of the trails we have here are made out of clay… so after a rain your tires become full of clay, which makes the trail nearly unrideable due to having zero grip,” sophomore Diego Stengl said. Clay soil is dense and takes a long time to absorb the water and drain, meaning a moderate amount of rain soils the trails for days.
The general consensus between students is that this issue is amplified by the brutal Humboldt winters. “Because the trails are clay, it takes a while to absorb the water from rains. For mountain
biking to actually be good (fully dry and grippy trails), it has to not rain for a solid two, three weeks, which just doesn’t happen during the winter season” Stengl said.
While having your sport be near impossible 3 months of the year is quite irritating, this spell of no riding seems to make the actual riding season all the more rewarding. “It is nice to go riding on the trails for the first time with good conditions… especially after months of [terrible] conditions,” senior Owen Kaufman said.
Some students are hopeful that more than just conditions will be good for biking this summer. “The McKay trails have been under development for a while and there should be some more trails and features this summer. I think there are going to be 2 more blue jump trails and some black tech trails,” said Stengl. Blue trails are intermediate level and usually feature long table jumps and flow, while black tech trails are rough and descending with big drops. With more trails and better conditions, it will hopefully be a solid season.
