No Tuesday Night Ride 6/30/09 at Mont du Lac due to Rain!!!
Lincoln Park Mountain Bike Challenge and Festival
The inaugural Lincoln Park Mountain Bike Challenge & Festival on Saturday, July 18th is going to be packed with people and full of excitement for the entire family. The event takes place from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm in Lincoln Park at the Pavilion and is open to the public.
Lincoln Park Mountain Bike Challenge & Festival features:
- Children, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes
- 150-250 participants and 500-1,000 spectators are expected
- Cash prizes for top placement in each class
- First Advanced biker to reach trail-entry is the “King of the Hill” and wins $50
- Paved and off-road sections of race for all levels of competition
- Kids Bounce House
- Awards ceremony on grandstand stage
- “Party in the Park” with live-music performances
- Grand Raffle Prize Drawing
- Event Raffle Prize Drawings
- Food Vendors and Retail Vendors
- Beer Garden
The presenting sponsors this year are Midwest Communications (The Bridge & Classic Rock) and the Lincoln Park Business Group. Supporting sponsors include: Continental Ski, Lamar, Northland’s Newscenter, Sound Central, and Nordic Waste.
With great cash prizes to be won, we expect around 150 to 250 participants. There will be four classes: Children, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. The top placement in each category will all cash prizes. The top three placements in each class will receive trophies. There will also be a $50 “King of the Hill” prize for the first mountain biker to reach the trail-entry at the top.
The Advanced class race will begin at 1:00 p.m. with a mass start at the bottom of the hill near the Lincoln Park Pavilion. The Intermediate class will have a mass start at 11:00 a.m. in the same location. The Children and Beginner classes will be shuttled to the trail-entry at the top of the hill and will begin their race at 9:00 a.m.
The Elephant Rock Trials Competition will take place all day and features a course with both urban and nature sections. Spectators will get a close look at the the skill and coordination these athletes have while doing freestyle tricks over obstacles without touching the ground.
All participants will be automatically entered into the Event Raffle, but they must be present to win. The awards ceremony begins at approximately 3:30 p.m., or once the final participants have crossed the finish line.
The “Party in the Park” will follow and feature several live-music acts. Opening is Jamie Ness and Brad Nelson, the second performance will be the Uprising, and the headliner is Two Many Banjos. Peter Kavula, an interactive musical performer, will perform throughout the day and interact with the kids. Nick Felbum will perform his acoustic music in the morning.
Our Grand Raffle Prize is $1,000 cash with second place winning a brand new mountain bike valued at $650. Purchase raffle tickets for only $5 each!
Ten percent of the proceeds will be donated to the Cyclists of the Gitchee Gumee Shores (COGGS). They manage the trail in Piedmont and will help with the event by signing the trail for the different classes. They will also be responsible for tracking participants’ times in each class.
For more information or to register, please call Heath Hickok, LPBG’s executive director, at 218-727-6573. Also, register online at www.LPBG.org.
COGGS Membership Drive:
Brian, Kirsten, Nate and Conor Bich are the winners of the Specialized Globe, generously donated by the Ski Hut. These guys are COGGS members because the Piedmont trail is right in their back yard! Imagine being Nate and Conor, grade school aged boys with their father's genetics (National Caliber triathlon superstar!) and Piedmont right out your door. The Midwest moutain bike scene doesn't stand a chance in 10 years!
Thanks to everyone who joined COGGS this spring. Membership is up dramatically and growing every week. As our membership grows, we will grow in strength both in labor and financially, thus making us better equipped to meet all of our goals.
Trail Building Needs
COGGS could really use some lumber for our continued building of boardwalk. Right now we have a good amount of decking but we are lacking larger, longer boards for runners/stringers to put the decking on.
If you have access to either hardwood or green treated 2'X4's or larger boards, ideally 8+ feet long, please contact Adam Sundberg at adamsundbergdc@hotmail.com.
Also, if you have a good relationship with a contractor who has some scrap wood that can't be sold but can be used for boardwalk, connecting them with Adam would help the cause.
New Cyling Information Website for Duluth
The Ski Hut, along with the help of Chris Godsey, Bill Schwalbe and Andrea Grygo. has provided a great new resource for local cycling. Check it out and learn more about where to ride!
Trailwork on COGGS Trails
Each trail has a trail steward. If you're going to do trailwork on a trail, please approve what you're doing with that steward. Here is a list of who is responsible for each trail and their email address.
Mont du Lac - Jeff Fraboni (mafraboni@yahoo.com)
Spirit Mountain - Scott Kylander Johnson (skylander-johnson@marshallschool.org)
Piedmont - Adam Sundberg (adamsundbergdc@hotmail.com)
Pokegama - Gerry Olson (golson@swlp.com)
Hartley - Matt Evingson (mevingson@hotmail.com) working with Kurt Lange of the City of Duluth
These people are trained in doing trailwork and understand concepts of sustainability. They are also experienced trailriders so they understand technical aspects that are fun and technical things that are dangerous. Please don't remove technical features such as rocks and logs until clearing it with one of these people.
Another reason to contact these individuals is to log the hours you work on trails. We do this for 2 reasons. One, so that if you work 20 hours in a year, you earn the trailbuilder T-shirt. Secondly, because we are currently working on becoming a non-profit and estabishing a mission document that demonstrates what we've done and what we're doing. This is an important thing for a club to have so it can present itself to various government agencies in an impressive way. So if you log trailwork time, even if you don't want any individual credit, please let the trail steward know so that we can document it. It is important for the future of COGGS, and thus trailriding, to do so.
In the coming weeks a form will be created to fill out for trailwork completed. Please utilize it when it becomes available.
COGGS 2009 Events:
Club Rides:
The
Tuesday mountain bike ride starts at 6:00 P.M. from May through October (weather permitting) at Mont-Du-Lac Ski Area. Cost is $5.00 to non-members.
This trail is on PRIVATE PROPERTY and can ONLY be ridden with the club on Tuesday nights.
The trail has never been better as the last two seasons Jeff Fraboni has been adding distance. The loop now measures 5 miles of fast, fun singletrack with brutal climbs to get the legs in condition. Come join us for a ride! The new owners are also opening up the bar each Tuesday so stick around and socialize.
For ride information rides at coggs dot com .
Directions to Mont-Du-Lac
COGGS was recently featured in a WDIO News Up North segment. Kudos to Mick Dodds for organizing this and getting COGGS some increased exposure. Here is the link to the video.
