We left Copper Harbor on Thursday to head to Marquette. Along the way, we stopped at Michigan Tech (Ryan’s Alma Mater) to check out the trails. For those of you that aren’t “in the know” about Michigan Tech (fear not- I’m not sure if I’d even heard of it until I met Ryan), its specialty is engineering.

So, what do you get when you mix engineering and trail building?

Ramp-to-drop (I rode it! Ryan got video, but I still have to figure out how to get it on here)

The long log ride (also rode that one a couple of times)

Then there were some that we just kind of looked at in awe…

The Sine Wave:

And, my personal favorite- The Dorkscrew:

After the section of trail with all of the cool stuff, there was another loop called the Hairy Toad loop. While it didn’t feature anything man-made, it was my absolute most favorite type of trail- rocky, rooty, and twisty. I call it ADD trail. I rode all of it except for a sizable rock garden that was wet and slimy. It looked like a swellbow waiting to happen.

On the way out, we found the pump track, which rode as if it had also been engineered over a few pints of beer. The berms on the downhill turns were the most perfectly angled piles of dirt you could possibly imagine. Scary fast, and really awesome.

I need to build some baby stuff in my back yard to keep practicing my skinny-stuff riding skills. As it stands, I’m too much of a chicken.