Sunday, November 14, 2010

Page Hill

Drum roll please...

Thanks to a partnership with the Lakes Region Conservation Trust CNH NEMBA will be hard at work next season (and a bit already this season) laying the ground work for a new system of trails in central NH.  I don't think an official name has been decided on yet but the most prominent topographical feature on the site is Page Hill topping out at close to 1700ft.

We have spent the past two weekends walking the land making sure it was workable and plotting property boundaries based on surveys and tax maps provided by LRCT and the town of Hill, NH.

entrance and what will probably be the future parking lot


There are even some cabins on the property.  Their fate remains to be seen.  Rumors are LRCT is amenable to NEMBA having access but we will have to work out the details and see if it makes sense maintenance and liability wise.

not too shabby. Bunk house in one, Bike shop in the other?

The terrain is excellent.  Lots of great natural features and VERT!  Lots of ups and downs scattered throughout.  As well as the big summit up to Page Hill.  The site itself is fairly massive, quite a bit larger than Franklin Falls, probably almost twice as big?  Rough estimates put it at 500 acres or so.  

There is already a decent network of doubletrack and old cart paths that we can use to get things tied together early without much effort.  Initial plan is to work in some sort of 'boundary trail' to encompass the entire site that we can then build off shoots from.  That boundary trail is looking like it will probably be close to 7 miles long which is almost the entirety of FFD.  If we work this right and we go for a similar trail density to that of FFD we could be looking at 20+ miles of singletrack.

Our most recent recon mission: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/56725893

We were a bit off on the actual property lines in a few spots due to a wrong turn or us running out of time for the day, the actual plot looks a bit more like this:



*UPDATE* I ditched my crappy approximation and am now sharing Jesse's much better approximation (it still looks kinda like Texas though)  Borders in blue and some existing double track in Orange.  Take a second and analyze that topo information.  Barely a flat spot on the whole site.  Makes for a whole lot of fun and or pain.  Not sure about you but that's the way I like it...

So if it is not apparent already this has been part teaser and part a call to arms.  The more help we get the faster we get 20 new miles of trails to ride.  Seems like a no brainer to me.  We'll see you in the Spring?