Tag Archives: Marty Larson

Advocacy, Land managers

CROCT Board members meet with Rice County Commissioner Jeff Docken

L to R: Rice County District 5 Commissioner Jeff Docken, Marty Larson, Jeremy Bokman

CROCT Board members Marty Larson, Jeremy Bokman and I had lunch yesterday at Tandem Bagels with Rice County District 5 Commissioner Jeff Docken.

It was a follow-up to the meeting that Marty, Jeremy and I had last August with Jake Rysavy, Rice County Parks & Facilities Director in which he expressed support for exploring the possibility of mountain bike trails at Caron Park and McCullough Park/Campground.

McCullough Park is in Jeff Docken’s district and he seemed intrigued about the possibility of having mountain bike trails on the large tract of park property across from the newly remodeled campground on Shields Lake.

Here are a few photos from Aug. 21 when Marty, Jeremy and I did a walk-through of McCullough. As you can see, the property has both a large sloping prairie and many ravines, making it ideal for mtb trails of all ability levels. And being adjacent to a trail head on a lake with a campground, picnic shelter, rest rooms, showers, boat access, etc, one could imagine McCullough becoming a destination mountain bike park someday.

We’ve expressed our preference for creating beginner-to-advanced mtb trails at Caron Park first. It’s situated half way between Faribault and Northfield, a more convenient (15-minute drive) for CROCT trail workers from both cities who would be investing hundreds of volunteer hours in constructing trails there. And after gaining a season’s worth of experience with trail-building at Caron, we would be in a better position to assess what we could accomplish at McCullough, a more demanding venue.

The next step will likely be for this to be an agenda item on an upcoming meeting of the Rice County Board’s Parks and Facilities committee before it goes to the full Board. The wheels of government don’t always move quickly but it’s possible that we could be authorized to dig at Caron Park this year.

Media

CROCT and fat bikes featured in Northfield News/Faribault Daily News

Article on CROCT & fat bikes in the Northfield News, Faribault Daily News

Brad Phenow (@bradphenow), City of Faribault and Rice County Government Reporter for the Faribault Daily News & Northfield News, interviewed CROCT President Marty Larson last week. His article appeared online and in both print editions of the papers on Saturday, supplemented with photos submitted by Marty:

Fat bikes, CROCT keep the wheels turning in Northfield, Rice County.

A couple of excerpts:

It may be a new trend, but fat bikes and places to ride them are beginning to gain traction in Rice County. With a new trail in Northfield’s Sechler Park and trails at Faribault’s River Bend Nature Center, a common sight is starting to emerge: year-round biking.

…

Marty Larson, who runs Tandem Bagels in Northfield, is no stranger to the bike industry. In fact, for 25 years he has been around bikes, whether it’s in the shops or working on the distributor side of the business. Larson said the options for riding have been minimal the last decade, despite the number of shops in the area.  For Larson, what started as an idea (the new trail) soon became a reality, with support from volunteers and the city of Northfield.

 

 

Trail work

Chain saw crew adds two advanced-level skinnies to the Sechler Pk trail

I spotted this log along the Sechler Park river bottoms MTB trail last fall, thinking it would make a great skinny. After some discussion with CROCT president and trail steward Marty Larson, we decided it would be best to make it an intermediate-level skinny by shaving it flat like the log on the right that was recently created at MORC’s Elm Creek Trail:

Sechler log - fall Sechler log - fall Elm Creek skinny

So we organized a small trail work crew today, including two guys with the best electric chainsaw 2017 has to offer: Bill Nelson and Dave Nygren. Unfortunately, after they sliced the end off the log, we discovered that it was starting to rot. So it didn’t make sense to put all the work into slicing it flat for an intermediate-level skinny. So instead, they scored the top of it to make it an advanced level skinny. Likewise, a narrow log skinny next to it:

rotting Sechler Park log Dave Nygren Bill Nelson
Dave Nygren, Dave Berglund, Marty Larson, Bill Nelson Bill Nelson, Marty Larson, Dave Nygren Dave Nygren, Bill Nelson, Marty Larson
We still have to construct a ramp of sorts to make it easier to get up onto the bigger skinny.  We have the log pieces ready but the ice and frozen dirt prevented us from making it stable.
In the meantime, we’ll be looking for another log that would be a good candidate for a beginner/intermediate-level skinny.
Advocacy, Photo album

CROCT’s presentation to BikeNorthfield’s 2nd Annual Soup & Cycles

Marty Larson, CROCT presentation at Soup & Cycles 2015 Griff Wigley at Soup & Cycles 2015, photo by Michael Lehmkuhl Marty Larson, CROCT presentation at Soup & Cycles 2015

Last week, Marty Larson and I made a short presentation to BikeNorthfield‘s 2nd Annual Soup & Cycles community meeting. We reviewed our progress in 2014 and previewed our activities for 2015.  Many CROCT members attended, as did CROCT board members Galen Murray, Curtis Ness, & Scott Koehler.

See my album of 80+ photos from the entire night here:

Soup and Cycles photo album cover

Our photo-infested slide presentation:

Regional

IMBA Upper Midwest’s new Regional Director Michelle Barker pays a visit to CROCT

Michelle Barker is the new IMBA Upper Midwest Regional Director, replacing Hansi Johnson who resigned last summer to take a position as Director of Recreational Lands for the Minnesota Land Trust.

She met with me and Marty Larson yesterday at Tandem Bagels in downtown Northfield, on her way back home to Iowa after attending the Cuyuna Lakes annual meeting on Thursday night.

Michelle Barker and her IMBA car Michelle Barker, Marty Larson, Griff Wigley

We gave her an update on all things CROCT-related and she promised to devote 90% of her waking hours toward helping us. Maybe not quite that much.

Michelle was featured twice in Josie Smith’s Life on Two Wheels blog last year, part of the Women Involved series here and part of the Women on Bikes series here.

Organization meetings, Photo album

Photos: December CROCT board meeting at Milltown Cycles in Faribault

We held our December CROCT Board meeting at Milltown Cycles in Faribault last week. A stand-up meeting, mostly!

L to R: Kris Brazil, Jerry Walsh, Brent Johnson, Dave Meehl, Phil Thorson, Joe VanBogard Sarah Jansen, Galen Murray, Marty Larson, Curtis Ness, John Ebling, Dave Klemmer Joe Thorman, Rob Newman, Jeremy Bokman

Left photo, L to R: Kris Brazil, Jerry Walsh, Brent Johnson, Dave Meehl, Phil Thorson, Joe VanBogard.

Center: Sarah Jansen, Galen Murray, Marty Larson, Curtis Ness, John Ebling, Dave Klemmer

Right: Joe Thorman, Rob Newman, Jeremy Bokman

Not pictured: Mike Rost