“We’re breathing a big sigh of relief,” said Jamie Howell, founder of the five-employee outfit putting together the groundbreaking movie focusing on resolving trail conflicts. Not that donors should quit giving, as the project still will have final-production costs to meet.

“People should feel free to keep on giving,” Howell noted.

There’s been enough buzz already about “Pedal Driven” to guarantee the movie will be a hit. Howell At The Moon stumbled across the idea while doing a commercial project in Leavenworth, where unauthorized trail building had left local mtbers and land managers at odds with one another.

“Pedal Driven’s focus is on the solutions aspect,” Howell said. “People are finding a lot of creative ways to approach new trail building, while building sustainability into the equation.”

Among locations already filmed, including Leavenworth, are the Seattle area’s Colonnade park under I-5 and the Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park near Issaquah. Both were put together by the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance working with Seattle and King County authorities.

Howell in particular had praise for Jon Kennedy, former Evergreen executive director, under whose tenure the Colonnade and Duthie projects came to fruition. Kennedy, now marketing manager for Diamondback Bicycles in Kent, “deserves a lot of credit” for raising mountain-bike awareness in the region, Howell said, adding that Evergreen is “a great example” of a mountain-bike group working creatively with management agencies to open new facilities.

While the film’s core audience is the mountain biking community, Howell believes it will find appeal with land-management agencies, trusts, other user groups and even the mainstream public interested in mountain biking as a family activity.

“It’s a mountain-biking movie, but our goal is to be fair and unbiased,” Howell said. Or to put it another way, “our bias is the goal of sustainability.”

Howell At The Moon comes at the project from a different perspective than most mtb films. Although small, they’ve done a variety of commercial projects. They do ride mountain bikes, but consider themselves professional filmmakers first.

“As professional filmmakers, we really want this piece to work from the land-management-agency standpoint,” Howell said.

The film’s budget is $170,000 — “about typical” for a documentary of this scope, Howell said. The bulk of the money is coming from sponsors, including Shimano and Specialized. The $15,000 comes at a strategic time — to finish filming and do final production work.

The film is “95 percent shot,” Howell said, with some Moab footage and an interview with an Arizona sustainable-trail scientist still to be added.

The goal is to premiere “Pedal Driven” at the Sea Otter Classic in April. From there the film will do the local-premiere circuit. Howell hopes it will eventually find mainstream distribution or commercial broadcast.

Profits will go to sustainable trail-building projects under the auspices of IMBA, the International Mountain Bike Association.

“Our No. 1 goal is to survive the making of the film,” Howell joked. After that it’s “to get it out there for people to see.”

Mount Rainier atop East Tiger Summit

The re-route will provide mountain bikers with additional mileage, 500′ more vertical, and a single-track connection from the actual summit of East Tiger to the west (upper) end of the Preston RR Grade Trail.

The trail opening represents a huge stride forward for mountain biking on Tiger, the Seattle area’s most popular classic cross-country riding area. Only three trails are officially open to mountain bikers — Preston, Iverson and Northwest Timber. Despite year-round trail maintenance, they suffer from over-riding due to lack of enough overall trail access to carry demand.

Courtesy Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance.

“If all goes well, there’s even more to come,” said Glenn Glover, Evergreen’s executive director.

The addition of the new trail sets up a challenging loop — riding the fire road up from the east summit parking lot off Highway 18, taking the connector down to near the trailhead onto Preston and then completing the Preston-Northwest Timber Trail loop back to the parking lot. Riders will reach 3000 feet elevation (an additional 500 feet) and add about a mile of singletrack to their ride.

Parts of the existing East Tiger Mountain Trail connector, a short but steep and technical descent, will be rerouted in sections to ameliorate erosion and improve rideability. The rest of the existing trail will remain closed to bikes.

The new stretch is a testament to Evergreen’s outreach efforts to trail organizations and land-management agencies, in this case the state Department of Natural Resources and Washington Trails Association (WTA). Opposition to mountain biking from one hiking group, the Issaquah Alps, has kept new trails from being added for years. But management agencies are increasingly considering mountain biking to be part of any trail-use equation.

There’s also growing political support to make Issaquah a mountain-biking destination akin to Whistler, B.C. and Oakridge, OR. The proximity of Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park and Grand Ridge have focused regional attention on Issaquah’s mountain-biking prowess.

Evergreen, as part of the agreement, will maintain the new connector as well as step up its stewardship of Preston, one of the best downhill runs around but subject to severe erosion. The Alliance will hold a series of winter work parties starting Nov. 7. DNR is supplying an excavator and $7,000 worth of materials towards the effort, Glover said.

Further enhancements may be in the offing on Tiger, including trail connectors between Preston and Northwest Timber, alleviating the need to ride fire road sections. Such a connector — informally referred to as the Silent Swamp reroute — would create a monster singletrack ride from the East Summit all the way back to the parking lot via Preston and NWTT.

A project to install two bridges and connector trails in the Silent Swamp corridor — a lush but underused hiking trail over the years — has won rave reviews, Glover said: “If WWRP (Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program) funding gets approved, this will be a funded project. We’re tremendously excited about the possibilities.”

A Tiger Mountain ride review.

Evergreen’s guide to Tiger.

High in the Methow...

Cascade and Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance are teaming up on the event, the local version of the International Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day. There will be plenty of stuff to do, from riding and jumping to drawings for great gear. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. things will be popping!

As for high-country mountain biking, Winthrop will be the scene this weekend with its annual Methow Valley Bike (and now Film) Festival, highlighted by the premiere of “Pedal-Driven,” a film looking at Pacific Northwest trail use and conflicts and how they get resolved. The Winthrop Barn will be the focal point but lots of stuff going on, including rides, a bike giveaway, presentations and film showings. Be sure to stop and say hi to Joe Brown at Methow Cycle and Sport right on Highway 20 down from the Barn.

Spokespeople destination South Lake Union Park.

No matter where or what you ride, the weekend promises to offer lots of wheel time!

Women of Dirt rider Leana Gerrard smiles through the mud at Duthie Hill Park Grand Opening.

The 120-acre Duthie Hill Park has more than five miles of trails comprising everything from beginners’ “boot camp” routes and features to full-on jumps, catwalks, drops and stunts of mini–Whistler proportions. About 300 riders, officials and mtbers were on hand to hear speakers praise the partnership between the county and Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance that got the park to happen starting in 2004.

Engraved tiles helped raise funds for Duthie.

Despite its mud-splattered inauguration, Duthie Hill stayed in better than might be expected shape as riders of every size and skill toured the trails — a testament to trail construction, routing and drainage. A few days of warmer and drier weather will restore them back to primo tackiness.

King County Executive Dow Constantine cuts the ribbon.

There’s more to come, with a Phase 2 about to kick in, but for now Duthie Hill stands as a model of public-private cooperation in the ongoing efforts to increase mountain bike access to public lands.

*[We're hedging a bit here because Colonnade also is referred to as a mountain bike park, but is actually more of a stunt park.]

More letters needed to support a separated bikeway on San Francisco’s busy, congested but wonderful Market Street.

Cheap therapy: Get your life back in balance, ride a bicycle, lose 100 pounds, feel good about yourself!

On Saturday you can help spruce up one of the best freeride trail networks in the Bay Area, Soquel Demonstration State Forest, and get to hang with the great Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz gang.

I’m not sure there is a debate here, really. But SF Streetsblog examines the pros and cons of balance bikes and training wheels. We’re squarely in the former’s camp.

Follow Me – the Teaser from Anthill Films on Vimeo.

Now before the protest mail from the good people at Cascade Bicycle Club starts flowing in, we’re happy to acknowledge that Bike Expo includes mountain biking as well as road.

But everyone knows that road dominates Expo. Newly named interim director of Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, Glenn Glover, noted recently the blank stares he got from way too many Expo-goers at the EMBA booth — even from mountain bikers.

The reason? First was context. Surrounded by roadie booths, demos, personalities and lycra, even mountain bikers weren’t expecting to find an mtb advocacy group in the mix.

Second is emphasis. A glance at the list of exhibitors this year — a record number, btw — shows only a handful of mtb-focused vendors. Missing were some of the hottest names in mountain biking circles, Evil Bikes, Obtainium, Transition. Even IMBA, a mainstay at mountain biking fests, was not on the list.

It’s true, as Glenn pointed out, that Evergreen can do much more to promote its image in the mtb community. But that could be Argument No. 1 for hosting a local mountain bike show.

Bike Expo aside, has not the time come for something along the lines of a Sea Otter North (Sea Wetter?), or Fruita West, Crankworx South (Dankworx?) or even Bike & Brew (Leavenworth) on the wet side of the state? Seattle deserves a signature mountain bike event to call its own.

Visiting in northern California we recently had the good fortune to attend the first Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival, a two-day event highlighted by an in-town jump jam and the California premiere of “Women of Dirt” (which premiered worldwide in Seattle earlier in February). Although unseasonably wet and cold weather forced cancellation of a big group ride, the event packed Santa Cruz’s Rio Theater and, despite inevitable glitches with a first-time venture, was a roaring success.

Mark Davidson, President of sponsoring Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz, said the festival galvanized the cycling community in Santa Cruz — a significant accomplishment given the seaside city’s bigger reputation for surfing — and has led to a number of unsolicited “we want to be part of this next year” queries from major bike names. His group will have an Interbike representative this fall to solicit sponsors and raise awareness in the festival, and at least one internationally known mountain bike manufacturer is knocking on its door.

Davidson does not minimize the huge challenges associated with staging a festival. Months of organizing, mounds of communication and hour upon hour of meetings and phone calls and emails are required to pull the thing off right.

But the rewards are not only commensurate, Mark noted, they go beyond the organization and event itself to permeate the community at large.

Ironically, cycling in Santa Cruz is still kind of ‘underground’ as a mainstream activity, despite the huge number of enthusiasts and a vibrant bike industry. People who are cyclists know that Santa Cruz is a mecca, but non-cyclists are not aware (i.e., Chamber of Commerce, tourism/visitors center, local paper).

The Amgen “Tour of California” is helping to raise awareness. So did the mountain bike fest.

The current (March 2010) issue of BIKE magazine, in a page-long feature, “7 Reasons Why You Should Host Your Own Event,” notes “it’s an effective economic stimulus” and cultural catalyst:

Greg Williams, one of the Downieville Downhill race’s founders, says that the weekend of that race is ‘the biggest for restaurants and grocery stores in the area by far for the whole year.’

There’s potential payoff for bike vendors as well. It’s starting to dawn on the industry that if it’s going to keep selling its wares, it had better get behind building new places to ride. The style of riding preferred particularly by younger riders — bike park, jump jam, pump track and other more structured, less open-country — needs bikes designed for specific purposes. That’s a huge market potential — but only if the places to ride exist.

The new generation of dirt boyz n grrrlz deserves an event to call their own. At the Santa Cruz fest I noticed how across-the-board the age group was. And in fact it was a great family event, with freeride groms and their parents alike eating it all up.

The explosion of freeriding in Seattle environs deserves a special gathering to coalesce its energy and enthusiasm. A local mtb festival would be just the ticket.

If anyone is well-suited to follow in the tire tracks of Jon Kennedy, it’s Glenn Glover. The newly named interim executive director of the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance has great credentials qualifying him as the perfect leader for Evergreen to gain greater visibility and influence in the Northwest.
 
It would be hard to find a negative word about Glover among Evergreen regulars. Web master Maarten van Dantzich said he has “a lot of respect for Glenn,” with whom he served on Evergreen’s board for several years. Glenn “continued Anthony Cree’s work to bring more order and process to budgeting and finances,” and brings “more continuity than anyone else could have” to the top position.
 
Kennedy himself said he was “thrilled” when Glenn stepped forward as a candidate to succeed him and “could think of no one better to fit the role. Glenn brings an extensive amount of knowledge to the table and has been intimately involved in many facets of the organization. He’s someone who on both a professional and personal level, I have a lot of respect for.”
 
The feeling is mutual.
 
“Fortunately Jon is a good resource when I need help,” Glover said, joking that he’s in big trouble if Kennedy starts letting his cries for assistance “go directly to voice mail” or into the spam bucket.
 
A former small-business owner who recently closed his company, Redpoint Communications, specializing in design and manufacture of electronic components, Glenn has the calm air of an experienced decision-maker about him. Serving on Evergreen’s board, he gained a reputation as a careful listener and deliberative thinker. 
 
We’ve done trail work with Glenn on Tiger Mountain and found him to be thoughtful and considerate, with a sly sense of humor. He comes to problem-solving not with preconceived agendas but with an ability to synthesize and reconcile a host of viewpoints as a means to doing the right thing.
 
All of which is to say, he’s not going to shake things up.
 
“I don’t anticipate any rollout of brand new strategies,” he said. “It’s more about refining our focus on the strategic direction we have.”
 
Top of the agenda: “Growing and communicating our relevance to the community,” Glenn says. At last weekend’s Seattle Bike Expo 2010, he was sobered by the quizzical looks that passersby gave the Evergreen booth.
 
“There were too many blank expressions, even from mountain bikers,” he said. Half of those stopping by had never even heard of the group.
 
Part of that is because Expo is, at heart, a road bike show. But it also says that mountain bikers who otherwise would be appreciative of EMBA’s work have not gotten the memo.
 
“Trail access is not granted to us somehow magically,” Glenn notes. The question Evergreen needs to pose to the mountain biking community is, “Are you getting involved in supporting your sport?”
 
“Among those new to the sport, there’s almost a complacency over having a lot of places to ride. What they may not be seeing is that many of those places have gray trails that are going to get developed.” The current mecca of Black Diamond stands to lose at least 15 miles of trail to development from just one development. Griffin Creek and Victor Falls are gone. Only old-timers recall the great riding on Cougar Mt. Other areas are just a parcel sale or two from oblivion.
 
To get the point across, Glover foresees a number of initiatives this year:
 
Topping the list is boosting membership. The club has rebounded from a loss of nearly 200 members as of a year to 18 months ago — from a combination of economic factors and disaffection among the ranks — and is back around the 800 figure. Glover thinks 1,000 by the end of 2010 is realistic, especially given the club’s outreach to signature projects around Puget Sound.
 
Signing trail heads and corridors where work is being done with large lettering carrying the organization’s name will help as well — something “even riders averting their eyes as they ride by” will see, Glenn said. Anyone who has done trail work knows that passing riders are typically generous with their appreciation; I’ve often wished I had a sticker I could slap on their jersey as a reminder to give something back.
 
Paradise Valley, Duthie Hill and Colonnade are well-signed already. Glenn sees Black Diamond and Tiger Mountain getting similar attention.
 
Publicity and excitement building around the grand opening of Duthie Hill mountain bike park on May 22 will give the club a real shot in the arm. County executive Dow Constantine, a bike rider and supporter, will be on hand for ribbon-cutting. There will be a jump jam, big raffle, schwag, beer garden and (fingers crossed) barbecue. Duthie Hill is bringing a lot of new local freeride blood into the Evergreen circle.
 
On the cross-country side, Evergreen’s work on Hansen Ridge (aka South Fork Snoqualmie) continues apace, and the organization will have prominent visibility in the St. Helens and Kettle Fest gatherings this summer. Evergreen also plays a vital advisory and mentoring role for other mtb organizations, from Portland’s Northwest Trail Alliance (formerly PUMP) to WHIMPS, the Galbrath Mt. miracle workers.
 
Education — in this case, teaching newbies to ride dirt — is another prime vector for attracting new membership, Glover notes. Endless Biking out of Vancouver’s North Shore will be training the trainers, and Evergreen will be highlighting bootcamps and another learning venues. One series we hope to see return is girls’ bootcamp, taking advantage of the boom in women coming to freeride as documented in the film, “Women of Dirt.” And partnerships with Kat Sweet freeride and Speedy Beavers DH clinics will continue.
 
There’s still some fence-mending to do; not all the org’s disaffected are back in the fold, and the club still has not regained the espirt de corps it had in the ’90s and early 2000s.
 
But there’s a new era of multi-faceted mountain biking upon us that requires more flexibility and breadth not just from Evergreen but from its membership. From a community involvement standpoint, Evergreen is well-positioned to expand mtb opportunities throughout the region.
 
Glenn, who lives in Renton with his mountain biking wife Toni and trail-trained dogs Denali (golden) and Dakota (shepherd), says he’s not interested in becoming permanent E.D. but anticipates serving through the end of the year. With his plate piled high, he’ll probably welcome the breather by the time his interimship concludes.