Rock Creek, yo

canadmos · Oct 23, 2022

Subfuckinscribed

Carraig042 · Oct 23, 2022

I really wanted to be there, but bronchitis and a cracked frame gave me a double dose of no. I believe they are having DH test race November 11-13th too.

kidwoo · Oct 23, 2022

Sweet pics!

jstuhlman · Oct 23, 2022

SuspectDevice said:
So- the Kanuga crew finally got to show off their new NC/SC border shuttle park to 230ish folks this weekend for a pedal and push 3 stage shred sesh!
In the (less than two months from now)future:
Short buses tugging 24 bikes on Leader-built Windrock style trailers and the only purpose built shuttle road i’ve ever seen will add up to 4.5 minute shuttle times, every 10 minutes, 3 days a week.
Come December the Southeast will have two full-time year around purpose built dh parks.

What a time to be alive!

been watching this...will be there this winter to check it out for sure. gotta be better to pay $30 to be shuttled up vs. fuckin kanuga, where you pay that for decent trails you still have to ride up to....would rather just ride bennett/pilot/farlow/all of wilsons/other secret stuff for free than kanuga again. stoked to see what they've done for sure. if it's anything like windrock or kanuga's natural trails, i'm 100% down.

Carraig042 · Oct 23, 2022

They don't have very many up yet on their Instagram account yet.

canadmos · Dec 9, 2022

SuspectDevice said:
Opening Day!

Home

Conquer the Mountain. The Southeast’s NEWEST Shuttle access Bike Park BUY A PASS RENT A BIKE Who is Ride Rock Creek? crafting an Adventure that’s right for you Ride Rock Creek Mountain Bike Park is brought to you by the creators of Ride Kanuga. But this time, there will be shuttles. Get ready...

riderockcreek.com

Stoked for shuttles inside the bus on this moist day.

They gotta fix their website, its blocked at work

jonKranked · Dec 9, 2022

@SuspectDevice you couldn't find a bro without these?

sethimus · Dec 9, 2022

co2 free shuttling?

William42 · Jan 8, 2023

Just made it out there yesterday.

Few logistical hurdles to clear in managing expected daily rider volume so they know how many shuttles they need to run in advance, lift lines were pretty clogged yesterday, but that seems like teething issue.

Trails were great. Clearly a lot of care put into them - frequently blue trails feel like a IMBA bulldozed wide open trail snoozefest with giant holes in all the corners from braking bumps that have built up, with a sizeable difficulty gap as you jump up from those to tech black trails. The blue trails at rock creek were super fun. They were fast steep singletrack with tons of room for speed and getting rowdy if you want to go fast, and still managed to be beginner friendly - great if you're riding with less experienced riders or kids. More importantly, they had a really nice mix of options built into each trail, with multiple line choices available that all felt really rewarding to link together and have click. It felt like there was a great deal of attention put into every corner, every straight, every chute of every trail.

Didn't ride Stampede yesterday because from the sounds of it, it's a pretty demanding trail and I'd rather ride that with people than do it solo and nobody in the group wanted to ride it, but cool to hear that there's some WC level Dh trails with high skill and consequence features available to the general public at a bike park. I look forward to riding that trail for sure.

The other black trail called Dark Hollow had a really nice mix of steeps and challenging corners to hit fast. Some ruts developing that lead you directly into trees that snagged me a few times, so its definitely one to do at least one lap of before you go 100%. I really enjoyed this trail quite a bit and thought it was the best trail I rode.

There's a jump line at the bottom of the blue trails that gets mixed reviews from 7/10 people who are me. They're big tables and step ups that require a fair amount of speed to clear - which is great. And there's a huge berm to grab you and let you go mach 10000 confidently into the first one, which is also great because if you clear that one the rest flow pretty well. But right before this berm, the trail flattens out and merges two trails, which means that you either have to blast through the merge and hope nobody is coming and that you don't accidentally cause an accident from going full send into a somewhat blind trail merge OR you have to sprint as hard as you possibly can and pedal through the corner and pull up hard to clear the first jump and just barrreely squeeze over it. I managed to nose hard into the wrong side of the landing quite a few times from just trying to start with a few hard pedal strokes. Seems like there's room for improvement on the entrance there - high speed jumps are great but setting them up so that your options to clear them are gated by the decision to either ride dangerously through trail merges or be a cat1/2 level rider with strong/fit legs was rough when considering they're the main exit for all the blue trails. I can't imagine many people who fit in on that trail difficulty level having a good time learning to jump on these jumps because of this entrance/junction. That junction could use some work for sure.

However, if you either blast through or pedal hard enough to clear the first one, the jumps are great and ride really well.

Cool to see a place embrace putting significant features in, especially when they are well built and ride well/smooth. I had high expectations, and they were met and exceeded.

Definitely buying a monthly pass until the spring summer pass becomes available and then buying one of those.

jstuhlman · Jan 8, 2023

William42 said:
Just made it out there yesterday.

Few logistical hurdles to clear in managing expected daily rider volume so they know how many shuttles they need to run in advance, lift lines were pretty clogged yesterday, but that seems like teething issue.

Trails were great. Clearly a lot of care put into them - frequently blue trails feel like a IMBA bulldozed wide open trail snoozefest with giant holes in all the corners from braking bumps that have built up, with a sizeable difficulty gap as you jump up from those to tech black trails. The blue trails at rock creek were super fun. They were fast steep singletrack with tons of room for speed and getting rowdy if you want to go fast, and still managed to be beginner friendly - great if you're riding with less experienced riders or kids. More importantly, they had a really nice mix of options built into each trail, with multiple line choices available that all felt really rewarding to link together and have click. It felt like there was a great deal of attention put into every corner, every straight, every chute of every trail.

Didn't ride Stampede yesterday because from the sounds of it, it's a pretty demanding trail and I'd rather ride that with people than do it solo and nobody in the group wanted to ride it, but cool to hear that there's some WC level Dh trails with high skill and consequence features available to the general public at a bike park. I look forward to riding that trail for sure.

The other black trail called Dark Hollow had a really nice mix of steeps and challenging corners to hit fast. Some ruts developing that lead you directly into trees that snagged me a few times, so its definitely one to do at least one lap of before you go 100%. I really enjoyed this trail quite a bit and thought it was the best trail I rode.

There's a jump line at the bottom of the blue trails that gets mixed reviews from 7/10 people who are me. They're big tables and step ups that require a fair amount of speed to clear - which is great. And there's a huge berm to grab you and let you go mach 10000 confidently into the first one, which is also great because if you clear that one the rest flow pretty well. But right before this berm, the trail flattens out and merges two trails, which means that you either have to blast through the merge and hope nobody is coming and that you don't accidentally cause an accident from going full send into a somewhat blind trail merge OR you have to sprint as hard as you possibly can and pedal through the corner and pull up hard to clear the first jump and just barrreely squeeze over it. I managed to nose hard into the wrong side of the landing quite a few times from just trying to start with a few hard pedal strokes. Seems like there's room for improvement on the entrance there - high speed jumps are great but setting them up so that your options to clear them are gated by the decision to either ride dangerously through trail merges or be a cat1/2 level rider with strong/fit legs was rough when considering they're the main exit for all the blue trails. I can't imagine many people who fit in on that trail difficulty level having a good time learning to jump on these jumps because of this entrance/junction. That junction could use some work for sure.

However, if you either blast through or pedal hard enough to clear the first one, the jumps are great and ride really well.

Cool to see a place embrace putting significant features in, especially when they are well built and ride well/smooth. I had high expectations, and they were met and exceeded.

Definitely buying a monthly pass until the spring summer pass becomes available and then buying one of those.

thanks for the review. psyched to check it out when my shoulder heals up in a few weeks. have heard good things from others too. definitely nice to have something to fill the gap from when the place in mars hill closed.

William42 · Jan 9, 2023

jstuhlman said:
thanks for the review. psyched to check it out when my shoulder heals up in a few weeks. have heard good things from others too. definitely nice to have something to fill the gap from when the place in mars hill closed.

Sure thing - I'm honestly pretty thrilled with the place. Frankly, it's thrilling news.

It was a real close decision on whether or not to keep our DH bikes when we moved back to the area after living in the pacNW for the past few years, and ultimately we decided to keep them on account of having a lot of fun with them and figuring we'd go to windrock a few times a year. This changes things up pretty considerably, and I forsee 3-4 days a month riding there and being happy to do it on my DH bike. Given the choice between DH bike and "other" I end up choosing my DH bike roughly 100% of the time, so I'm pretty excited to have trails available that make that decision viable. Saw a ton of people on enduro bikes and trail bikes, and its definitely rideable on those, but the trails were steep enough with enough chunder and some bigger gaps/drops here and there that it felt worthwhile to have the DH bike.

The fact that the place is a month old and the only complaints I have are a single trail merge and unpredictable and sometimes long lift lines, I think they're doing pretty okay. Trails are fantastic.

William42 · Mar 15, 2023

SuspectDevice said:
Stoked to FINALLY let people know Rock Creek is hosting dh/enduro/slalom nationals the next two years.

Can’t wait to kick some old man slalolm ass!

I heard mutterings of that last time I was on the shuttle. Any idea if they're opening up the parking lot for camping or is everybody getting shoved into the site with 14 spaces nearby?

Jeremy R · Mar 15, 2023

SuspectDevice said:
Stoked to FINALLY let people know Rock Creek is hosting dh/enduro/slalom nationals the next two years.

Can’t wait to kick some old man slalolm ass!

Let me know when that slalom course is ready. I can dust my old ass off for that.

William42 · Mar 15, 2023

SuspectDevice said:
There is a campground down the street that is probably already sold out.
There are rumors of camping on site for Cranksgiving this fall, but i dunno if that can get approved in time for nationals.
If you want full hookups try to KOA inTraveler’s Rest SC. That’s about 30ish minutes away.

That's what I figured as far as the campground nearby

Rock Creek, yo

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