TAKING 'EXTREME' TO NEW HEIGHTS
by Missy Votel

Silverton Mountain adds extreme mountain biking to its repertoire

There’s mountain biking. And then there’s extreme mountain biking. Local riders who have mastered the area’s most harrowing, white-knuckled descents may think they know extreme mountain biking.

But Silverton Mountain, the extreme ski area about six miles north of Silverton, begs to differ. The newly completed “Hard Core” trail is about 2 miles and 2,000 vertical feet of bone-jarring, tire-skidding, rockstrewn, rough-hewn singletrack and road. And if the technicality of the trail isn’t enough of a challenge, the class V consequences – likely a prolonged, possibly painful fall – should be.

“It’s challenging riding,” said Aaron Brill, Silverton Mountain owner and chief
trailbuilder. “The consequences are high if you blowout.”

Brill said offering mountain biking terrain of a similar flavor to the area’s winter
terrain has always been part of the big picture.

"It’s been part of the deal since the beginning,” he said last week while tending
to his small store and scenic chairlift operation. He said since plans first surfaced for
the ski area, he has been inundated with emails from people clamoring for steep, liftserved “free riding,” or downhill.

“I was totally overwhelmed,” he said.

Brill said he had a head start on the trail building from the miners that crisscrossed
the land decades ago.

“There were all these networks of trails, and it was super easy to connect them,” he
said. “Just throw in a few switchbacks, and you got a trail.”

With a trail that drops nearly straight down to the valley floor, “a few switchbacks” is an understatement. And Brill, who says his work schedule allows him to be only an occasional rider at best, is the first to admit that the riding is not for everyone.

“There’s so many good cross country trails around Durango, why compete?” he
asked. “We decided to focus on the place where there’s a need.”

He said so far the response from the semi-pro and expert mountain biking community
has been positive. “All the NORBA racers who came up here were pretty excited,” he said.

Durango rider Shonny Vanlandingham, ranked fourth in the NORBA women’s cross
country standings, recently rode the trail on a cross country hardtail set-up and
admitted that a few of the switchbacks got the better of her.

“I’m a pro cross country rider, and I thought it was hard,” she said. “But it was fun – it was definitely extreme but I enjoyed it; it was definitely pushing my limits.”

Fellow Durango rider, retired professional downhiller Elke Brutsaert, said the trail was more up her alley but nevertheless posed a challenge. “Some of it was pretty exposed, and I was a little intimidated,” she said. “But it definitely is really fun from my perspective.”

Like Brill, Brutsaert said the trail is not geared for the timid. “I think this is a first for a ski area,” she said. “It’s very challenging. It certainly is something designed with free riding in mind.”

Despite the difficulty of the trail, Brutsaert said she thinks it will fill a growing
niche.

“It seems more people are buying downhill bikes just to ride and not to race,” she said. “Free riding is about challenging the capabilities of yourself and your bike, constantly upping it a notch. And that’s kind of the idea (Silverton Mountain) is getting at.”

Nevertheless, in typical free rider fashion, Brill said a few particularly agro pro riders have claimed the trail was too easy. As a result, Brill is in the process of adding
singletrack on the lower part of the mountain and 25-foot gap jumps that should
quell those concerns.

However, Brill said the bigger, more technical features will include “sneak routes” for the mere mortal riders.

“We’re trying to have both – a pretty challenging trail for the average rider but features for the free riders, so if you want to go big, you can.”

And although the trail has already claimed its first victim, a late ’80s-era
hardtail belonging to fellow trail builder John Shockley, Brill insists the trail really
isn’t that bad, saying, “It’s not like a death trail.”