Road cycling in Steamboat Springs
Our Canadian connection, Grant Fenton, is really enthusiastic about Steamboat’s new push to upscale cycling in the Steamboat community. Grant joined other local community forces this past October 21st for the first ever, Bike Town USA Summit Meeting. If you ask Grant if he thinks the Bike Summit was a success? He says,”By any measure, it was a fantastic success. Attendance was great, and the audience was highly engaged.”
Grant represents the mountain biking community and trail development in British Columbia. He is also familiar with Steamboat as he lived here with his wife in the ’90s. He promoted the local mountain bike race series during that time too.
He did point out that there appears to be a disconnect between groups. People or groups working on individual projects are not communicating with others working on related projects.
Highlights from the summit meeting included revelations that Steamboat has twice as many miles of single-track mountain biking compared with any other destination community in North America today. Apparently, Steamboat’s road riding is fantastic and exceeds any road riding of any other mountain town. A map of the ski area with an incredible display of pending trails to be developed was also viewed. If the ski area can accomplish even a portion of these improvements this will make Steamboat a world-class destination for mountain biking.
Last week, we received yet another dose of encouraging news when Steamboat Springs was chosen to be one of 11 host cities for the 2011 Quiznos Pro Challenge. This event will be a great catalyst to get many projects done in the coming year.
Steamboat will be part of two stages of the Quiznos Pro Challenge, this is unlike any other participating city. The fifth stage will start in Avon and end in Steamboat. The sixth stage will start in Steamboat and end in Breckenridge.
The recent wave of cycling enthusiasm has even inspired local artist Megan Morgan to create a bicyle-inspred coffee bag.
