Deer Valley rant

I went to Deer Valley today for the first time this year. Just in case anyone thought there WEREN'T enough multi-million dollar homes in the area, YOU'RE IN LUCK!! They've completely destroyed Team Big Bear in the quest to make room for a new lift to go to a swath of NEW HOUSES! There's no realistic way for a XC rider to go uphill without buying a lift pass. Team Big Bear is gone. Tour de Suds is a route-finding nightmare around tons of (hazard a guess?) construction sites. Every other way up will get you a armor-wearing downhiller on a 40+ pound bike in your grille. They should at least offer ONE trail that's feasible for riding uphill.

It's just so blantantly obvious that the only thing that drives Deer Valley is money. More money from new houses. More money from lift passes. Screw being a good neighborhood citizen. I guess it's too much to expect, even though other resorts seem to be able to not be such profit whores.

Too bad I can't get the hours I wasted there back. Screw Deer Valley.

It sucks. Most people are pretty pissed about it that ride in the area. The city planning commision required that the trails stay open during construction. Apparently they didn't put enough details in the agreement about still being able to ride them and follow them around. If you ask the developers they'll tell you there isn't a problem since they aren't stopping anyone from still using them. Fuckers. To be fair though, that whole development has most of town pissed since they have failed to uphold pretty much any of what they said they would do prior to development, this just being another example.

Now, if you are an xc rider, you shouldn't be in d.v. only anyhow, PCMR is your friend too. Spiro, Sweeney's, Daly Canyon are all great ways out of town to the middle mountain trails.

If you want to go up DV, you can take that ontario canyon trail that's right under the lift - that one is two-way traffic and you won't run in to DH'ers there because it's boring (unless it was me yesterday after getting stung by a bee, but I was going slow and stopped talking to a patroller working on the trail for a while), up to the access road and ride up, but access roads aren't any fun. I totally agree with you that it sucks that they're tearing up awesome trails for construction, but the rest of the lift-accessed trails at DV are one of the only places you can actually train and practice doing fast DH safely because there isn't two way traffic and you won't run into hikers on the DH trails... And there are so many better trails for climbing/XC in the PC area... I totally agree though that it sucks that they've torn up Tour de Suds and such - if they hadn't torn stuff up it would be much easier for them to have uphill access.

Sorry to hear about your ride. :(