Judgment day for Colorado MUni...

General
1

Hello all, tomorrow is a HUGE day in the history of Colorado mountain unicyclists everywhere… :slight_smile:

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have put that smiley up just yet, but basically, here is the scoop on ski resorts and their policies.

So far, after doing muni demonstrations, me and my friends Zac and Mike have gotten to ride the gondola at Steamboat Springs resort, as well as (just recently) Keystone resort (Keystone has a nice little trials course at the bottom of the hill, makes the day well worth it.)

However, we went up to Vail last week, and were completely rejected. They wouldn’t let any unicyclists up, not even ones with hand brakes. We don’t have handbrakes, but that has never stopped us before. It took some arguing, but Zac and I were finally able to meet in person with the CEO of Vail resorts, and we began hammering out the deal that might allow unicyclists to ride up the gondola there once and for all. Basically, he told us that for ANY progress to be made, we would have to come back before the resort opened to the public (8 a.m. tomorrow morning, wednesday the 21st.) We would have to do a full demonstration of A) our equipment, and B) our recommended safety gear. The bottom line is, we have to spend 3 or so hours determining in depth every aspect of safety and skill on the mountain that we can in order to convince Vail to allow unicyclists on their downhill trails. Obviously, we are both nervous as hell, although the actual muni shouldn’t be that tough. Furthermore, we have to go down the expert trails separately from the beginner trails, so, it will probably be a fairly long day of riding. Hopefully, we will open this resort to those that come after us, so here’s wishing the best, and wish us luck! We’ll post the results of the day tomorrow, but we hope this will be a big step in gaining acceptance at mountains across colorado. By the way, if you want to hear about Keystone mountain, and the trails there, keep reading. If not, then quit while you still can!!!

Keystone:

Keystone has some really awesome downhill trails for many skill types. Zac and I went down the only way we knew how, the double-diamond black trails all the way! It was awesome, and quite difficult with manmade objects along the way that resembled the bridges from northshore videos I’ve seen. There were many 2-3ft drops on the trail, and some parts that could NEVER be ridden over, although hopping seemed to do the trick. It was cool to get through tough spots that bikers were walking over :slight_smile: and overall it was a good size ride at about 5 or so miles. If anyone is looking for some real technical downhill, you should definitely check out keystone!

That’s all for now, more tomorrow, when I’ll be too sore to stand!

2

Good luck. And nice persistence… I can’t think of any good reason a resort open to MTBs should be closed to munis. Given the speeds that some of those bikers descend, muni is far less insurance risk. It’s closer to the speed of a rapid descent in hiking boots.

We need to keep pushing, politely, those types of conversations forward.

3

good luck and thank you. :smiley:

4

Ross;

Good luck, maybe you can get a consistent, and I hope favorable, policy out of these people. We tried Keystone last year and were rejected (we walked up and rode anyway - it was fun). As I told Zac, we were allowed to ride Beaver Creek last month. I am hoping to ride Vail this year too. I am out of town, or I’d offer to go with you and show them how an old guy rides:)

5

That is weird that they allow mountain bikes but not Munis, it seems that sometimes these decisions are made on the spur of the moment I’m sure they have nothing in the policy that says no unicycles. It’s often the guy running the lift that thinks those thing are dangerous, I cant ride one, and so I’m not letting you ride it either, and on another day a different person might just say, ok, sure, why not.

At Telluride Colorado anything goes on the gondola, mountain skateboards, paragliders, whatever you want to give it a go with. I think that their policy is based on if they say that mountain bikes are ok but then say that skateboards or unicycles aren’t then they are saying it’s safe to ride a mountain bike. They want you to know that it’s all dangerous and whatever you are doing it’s at your own risk.

This may be different than other operations because the gondola is operated by the local transit district and it’s free, if it were operated by the ski resort and they were charging for rides then they might have more liability, also the ski area is mostly on national forest property that is leased by the ski area.

In the winter the ski company doesn’t let us on the mountain which we have been trying to get them to allow, they let ski bikes on the mountain, on the gondola and all of the chair lifts, and they are way more dangerous, with no brakes and they can go as fast as a skier, so go figure.

If you or anybody else makes it to Telluride contact me first and we will do some great downhill. We have some great riding here, on the ski mountain there are some great downhill trails. The local downhillers have built some great trail through the woods, very steep with banked hairpins and bridges and huge drops. (to big for me)

Anyway good luck with the Vail corporation, I hope you get to muni on their mountain. :slight_smile: Dan

6

Liability is always an issue. They don’t know what a unicycle is, so they are going to be conservative. I think the changes we are seeing now are based on the fact that we’re not going away. We used to show up at Northstar or elsewhere, and they’d say sure, why not? How many unicycles can there be?

But now they’re realizing it’s a growing activity, and it’s time to start having policies to deal with mountain unicycles. We are legit!

For the most part, I think that once resorts see what a unicycle can, and more importantly cannot do, they’ll have no problem letting us ride down with the bikes and other coasting vehicles.

Thanks to Cybeross and friends for helping make us more recognized!

7

UPDATE:

After what can only be called an excellent day of riding Vail Resorts delivered the news we were hoping not to hear. But this is far from over, Vail Ski Patrol Director Julie Rust seemed to be open to the idea of MUni after more resorts openly allow unicycles, which can ultimately be expected of a large resort such as Vail. I’ll see what I can do about getting a statement from her so you can hear it straight from the source, but needless to say Vail knows that we’re here and here to stay.

If you want to hear about the ride keep reading…

After making the nearly 2 hour trip after leaving at 6 a.m. Ross and I were ready to get into some good riding. Since the lift wasn’t open yet they took us up in trucks and then observed as we rode down the “Main Trail.” After a few minutes of talking to some of the staff that came down with us on the service road (both avid dowhillers) it was apparant that this trail was painfully easy for us (and a large majority of riders I’m sure). We then took the trucks to the summit where we proceeded down the most difficult DH trails Vail could throw at us. The descent can be described as very inconsistent with very technical and challenging stretches followed by stretches of the service road which would then meet up with another section of the challenging DH part. Overall the ride went very well, which made the bad news even more dissapointing. At least we still have Steamboat and Keystone for now, but more will surely follow.
Hope all your riding is going well,
Zac

8

thanks man. hope you win

9

Re: Judgment day for Colorado MUni…

I checked out Winter Park resort today and have what may be
interesting news (or at least gossip) about riding at ski resorts.
First offm the lift operator told me that unicycles were actually on a
list of prohibited items! I couldn’t ride up today, but I was ready
to be an advocate, rather than rider, so I persisted.

To make a long story short, Winter Park believes that their special
use permit with the Forest Service requires them to prohibit
unicycles, even though the Forest Service doesn’t seem to have
anything agaist MUni. The good news is, the folks at Winter Park
promised to request an extension to their permit this week, suggesting
all it would take is a simple letter or even verbal OK for the USFS.

I may need a volunteer or two if they request a MUni demo.

I’ll post updates here.

Ken

10

This is kind of an interesting thread for me since I just got back from Whistler and they did not allow me to ride up the gondola/chairlifts with my MUni. This was a surprise since I thought someone or other here went to Whistler before and they allowed it.

I assured the guy I talked to that it is safe, etc, and he agreed with me 100%, but said that their insurance will only cover a “bike”, which has a specific legal definition that doesn’t include unicycles.

It wasn’t a loss though, since he sympathized and gave me the local inside info on the best non-chairlift trails in the area, which were very technical and fun (and free). To be honest, I think I had a better time on the regular trails than I would have on the downhill.

Anyways, if any of you ever go to Whistler, try out these runs: “A River Runs Though It” (lots of logs, obstacles, skinnies, etc), Trainwreck (There is actually a wrecked train along the trail that you can ride on!).

If you are up for an epic challenge start the day early and try the well-named “Comfortably Numb” also known as “Secret Trail”, but be prepared for a long technical ride.

I started Comfortably Numb looking at a map thinking that it is about 10km long with 600 feet of vertical. Yeah Right! The trail twists and turns and goes up and down all over the place, and the whole thing is a non-stop barrage of roots and rocks and logs, and where there aren’t natural obstacles there are man-made ones. Its kind of tough since I kept coming out of drops in good pedal position only to find myself immediately faced with rooted sections in bad pedal position.

I later talked to some mountain bikers on another trail and they said that in reality Comfortably Numb is 24 km and does 5000 total feet of vertical! (but you never actually go 600 feet higher than the start) That sounds about right.