High Drive/Bluff trails Tuscan Ridge development

I remember the"Tuscan Ridge" development thing popping up a couple years ago. The idea is to cram 100 condos on the High Drive trails below 57th and Hatch. See red triangle below:

Click for big.

This development would clobber the trails that connect the core High Drive trails to 57th and to the lower set of trails by the other developments. One of my bread-and-butter loops (Corvair section from middle trail) would be destroyed by this development. As well, it would screw up the routing for the Black Friday ride. But perhaps most offensively, is the fact that it's called "Tuscan Ridge." Any design that includes the label, "Tuscan," is bound to be awful: so in addition to blocking off critical trail connectivity, this project would do so with the painfully exurban mono-styling we expect to be assaulted with as we travel to the edge the city limits... but dropped in the middle of the HD trails?

Harsh.

That just destroys connectivity.

So apparently, there's an option for Conservation Futures to buy this land. The Friends of the Bluff group has prepared a slide deck (pdf here) that nominates this land as a potential target for Conservation Futures funds. The deck describes why this property is appropriate for a Conservation Futures purchase -- and is worth a read.

Apparently the Conservation Futures process includes scoring each nominated property. One element of scoring is public support -- so, the more public support a given property has, the better its score.

So: if you ride these trails, or you are just offended by "Tuscan" design in suburban sprawl, or both, or something else: then write a friggin letter of support!  (Actually, griping about the Tuscan design would probably not be a rhetorically effective bit of persuasion -- stick to the trail connectivity, natrual issues, and wildlife concerns...) Send letters of support to kent.moline@gmail.com by September 24. More info on FB page here.

The High Drive trails are an amazing urban trail resource and should not be messed with! I've carried on verily on this blog with HD trail posts. I even have a label. Dig it.

Snow

Yay. It finally snowed with some authority today. Looks to be sticking too. The last word I heard on weather was that it was now going to get very cold. Right now it's just over freezing, so we're getting a bit slushy. It should get down to about 25F tonight, so that will freeze everything up nicely for Monday morning. I'm happy that I ride a bike on days like tomorrow will be... but even happier that I work from home.


Here in the Speare/Mattana household we'll be running fixed gear bikes with studded tires this winter.

The picture above there is Liza getting her snow legs worked in. That miserable Fuji does well in the snow, even though it feels like it's just sucking away your energy at twice the rate of any other bike we own. What a dog.

I also hit the trails on the bluff after the snow had piled up for an hour or so. I was not the first cyclist to hit the trail with snow this year, as I followed some wide mountain bike tracks for a good portion of my ride.

We're running the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 studded tires on both the Quickbeam and the Fuji. The tread and stud pattern is optimized for city riding, with a row of carbide studs essentially down the middle of the tire. So, on trails, I wouldn't mind a few studs sticking out of the side of the tire to grip the side of the hill, but overall, these tires are great and I wouldn't want the extra studs on the road where I do the majority of my riding. Tires with carbide studs cost about twice as much as those with mild/normal steel studs. The carbide wears much longer. My neighbor, Dennis, is a year-round commuter, who has about a 20 mile round trip commute. Last year, he left his Nokian's on his bike for about 4 months, so these tires rode on a lot of non-snowy/icy pavement. Last time we chatted about these tires, he said he couldn't even tell the wear on them.

It's going to be a great winter.