The Unrelentless Saga of R-TAG

This story is intentionally vague and anonymous and takes place in a (mostly) nondescript place. In it, I paraphrase many stories, email conversations, and hearsay from people who probably all care not to be identified. Names, times, and places may or may not be accurate. I don't even know who has first-hand information for much of this and had to dig considerably to get it.

Around here, the construction of singletrack is not taken lightly by any of the involved parties. Those parties are numerous, believe it or not, and often at odds with each other. Because of this it may not be all that surprising that the largest and longest rogue trail building project ever undertaken in this area, in terms of both time and physical distance, has spawned allegiances as well as divisive rivalries.

A perfect capture of the scene on Humpular

It's called Humpular and it's a truly amazing piece of singletrack trail. It's not done yet, but is quite rideable because it is being built in stages. And, really, is any trail ever complete? As soon as a new stage is ready, it is incorporated into the trail and the loop gets longer. Humpular has changed the physical landscape of a place where mountain bikes have been thrashing for over 30 years and the proverbial landscape of an ever-burgeoning regional sport.

Humpular exists in part because of a series of events that begin in 2009 with the creation of a different trail called 276. More precisely, Humpular is the triumph of a movement that began with 276. (I wrote about 276 here, and while the trail has changed since then it is even better now).

Construction of 276 began in the spring of 2009 by two friends - we'll call them Ralph and Randy -- who don't ride all that much anymore. It was an okay trail at first and the builders admit not knowing what they were doing. By early summer they got sick of building trail and rode their bikes instead of digging. 276 was a complete loop, but still needed work. What happened next might be considered the impetus of the anti-union that would eventually become what I like to call R-TAG. This is the Rogue Trail Advocacy Group, the DIY trail-building non-entity that answers to no one, organizes never, and nevertheless get the sickest job done fast.

In August 2009, a guy we're going to call Ox introduced himself to Ralph, and asked (rather politely and maturely, despite a rude and immature demeanor we all eventually would grow to love), "Would you mind if I worked on your trail, too? I have some ideas." Of course Ralph was happy to have somebody else work on the trail that he'd become largely uninterested in maintaining or improving. But, it inspired Ralph's last push to perfect it, and together, the two built one last stunt: the log ride, a series of slats running the 40-foot length of a 3-foot diameter log. Most of their work was done separately, leaving tools hidden in the woods to be used by whomever happened to have the time to work. Somehow, two more guys -- Putty and Snob -- got into the trail building endeavor, though I'm not sure how they knew either Ralph or Ox before that. Sometimes together, but more often working alone, Ox, Putty, and Snob put in (no exaggeration) several hundred hours into 276 over the next year. By 2011 it was on every local mountain biker's standard loop. Don't thank Ralph or Randy.

A rare impromptu group session on Humpular

Thank Ox, Putty, and Snob. They made it into the trail that it is. They were R-TAG.

Building 276 was illegal. However, it was pretty obvious that the managers of the local park were aware of the trail and they didn't do a thing about it. R-TAG worked quietly, and tried to avoid the times when park employees might be around, but it was in an area of the park where nobody (I mean nobody) ever went. Now they go there, they being bikers, hikers, and dog walkers, but only because there's a trail there.

As 276 gained popularity, a local organization called PTAG became interested in the trail, not because they liked it but because it was a "rogue" trail and PTAG is against rogue trails. PTAG is a bona fide organization and its members build trails legally by working with land managers and using responsible, sustainable practices. R-TAG, which is not an organization by any means and only has a name because I've typed it above for the first time ever, does not. They just build them. No bureaucracy, no red tape, no land managers, no business. Just rakes, hoes, handsaws, and a ton of sweat.

I was lucky to be privy to an email conversation between Ralph and Ox. Ralph said, "I believe that there was never a mtb access issue, certainly not in [the park where 276 lies]. PTAG just convinced everybody that there *might* be one in the future and then pretended to secure access for them. It's a total crock of shit." It may not be far from the truth from what I gather.

     This photo of 276's logride stunt
can be found on PTAG's website

PTAG's opposition to 276 was minimal, though it started sharply and they (at the very least) have legal backing and can write letters. First, they issued a statement on illegal trails and lambasted the trail as illegal with some aggressive discussions on local online forums, Then, PTAG notified the park of 276's existence, and got the head park manager sufficiently fired up that he was (purportedly) ready to destroy it. Then, just in the nick of time, the PTAG stewards of the park pointed out how well designed it was and that it followed all of the sustainable practices that PTAG champions. So, the organization gave in and "adopted" the trail as an official trail. Nobody I have talked to has any idea what that means, but it satisfied the park management. As a bonus and for dramatic effect it revealed the existence of turncoats in the R-TAG/PTAG rivalry. In fact, to the best of my knowledge every single R-TAG builder has worked with PTAG as a volunteer or, in some cases, in an administrative role. I would approximate the membership of R-TAG to be around a dozen guys. Separately, the legal side of PTAG is quite vocally opposed to its members "going rogue," but the practice continues. Or maybe the R-TAG members are infiltrating PTAG, but if they've done that then it may be the only group decision ever made. In any case, it's easy to see why it happens: PTAG members are mountain bikers and they want sweet singletrack.  R-TAG is building it better, faster. Even after PTAG claimed it an official trail, 276 construction continued without any kind of organizational plan.

There was plenty of other drama.

Happy rider photo op at one Humpular's biggest drops

In another near-miss, Ox decided to build a stunt on 276 with lumber. Up until that point, all materials were sourced on-site as if the trail builders were localvores. They're not; it is just much easier to drag a 20-foot log a few dozen feet than it is to secretly haul in several 12-foot four-by-fours from the trailhead. Ox's plan was to pull his pickup to the shoulder of the nearest road (which happens to be an Interstate highway), toss a bunch of lumber into the woods, speed off, and hike in later to bring it to the site where it was needed. It seemed like a good plan except for the traffic cameras that nobody thought of. So, minutes after Ox tossed the lumber from his truck and merged back into traffic, the highway was blocked by authorities. Right there in the middle of the highway with hundreds of stopped vehicles around him, Ox was approached by a state trooper and told that he was being cited for dumping. Ox insisted that he was actually dropping the lumber off for a mountain bike trail. "There's a bike trail back there?" asked the interested officer, but before the situation could go any further a more important call came over the cop's radio, the blockade was removed, traffic moved along, and Ox was left counting his blessings.

Rain, Snow. Sleet, or Hail

Before long, Ox and Snob fell in love. Not with each other, and if you knew Ox you'd find this particularly funny, but with building mountain bike trail. Both of them had flexible schedules, sufficient capital to afford some great trail building tools like the invaluable and aptly-named Rogue Hoe, and lots and lots of determination. Ox, also happens to be as strong as . . .well, an ox. Working alone became the R-TAG standard (easier to avoid notice and easier for one person to play stupid if questioned) and the two, along with Putty, worked in parallel with astonishing efficacy. Before long it became clear that 276 was complete and the two were looking around for trail to build. They moved operations across the road.

Riding across the crater

Across the road was a wasteland, an actual man-made mountain of discarded material and Ox and Snob spent about a year perfecting their craft with the Crater Trail, a carefully designed, switch-backed descent down that mountain. Now that R-TAG was building trail out of earshot of the park officials and any goody-two-shoes park users, they graduated to chainsaws, enormous prybars, and come-alongs to build more efficiently and to make bigger, better stunts. Crater's namesake, an inexplicable 25-foot diameter, 5-foot deep crater, has a skinny log bridge across it that nobody sane ever attempt because it is about 10 inches wide. Snob and Ox were outdoing themselves with the Crater and began to unintentionally recruit new R-TAG members. Recruitment was simple; prospective R-TAG members were riding along the trail and came across a guy swinging some kind of heavy tool.

Phil tries to disappear after
obstruction a section of Crater

Ox, Snob, Putty, and the rest of a disaggregated R-TAG were working hard on Crater. Apparently PTAG had given up on bringing them down because drama came from elsewhere. One obstacle was a guy named Phil whose issue, of all things, was parking. Phil lived at the edge of the woods where the trailwork was taking place and so the R-TAG guys were often parking in front of his house. Phil began tailing the guys into the woods, and saw what they were up to. So, he began to disassemble stunts, chop trees down onto the trail, and litter the trail with obstacles and, sometimes, sharp objects. Then, he notified the rightful landowner, which is a non-profit "economic development agency" that had acquired the land, about the trespassing that was taking place. Insular as our region happens to be, Snob received an email about it from a friend who works at the non-profit. Not only did the issue go away, but now R-TAG knew who their trail saboteur was. In a dramatic climax, Ox set up a trail camera and caught Phil in the act."He seems a bit old for an ass whopping," was Ox's reaction. One of the more diplomatic R-TAG members knocked on Phil's door, politely asked him to stop, and promised that nobody would park in front of his house. I secretly was holding out for the ass whooping end to that story.

Humpular's grandest banked switchback, "The Wall"

Within a year, R-TAG's non-leadership of Ox and Snob and to some extent Putty and their new recruits had perfected Crater and were looking for the next project. Just about then, Ralph made a well-calculated reappearance to scout an adjacent hillside with Snob. It held substantial promise in that there was well over a mile of contiguous woods (maybe much more). However, it was steep. Really steep. Contouring the hillside along its length would be the only way to squeeze out the desired trail mileage, and it just didn't seem possible at first. But as the two men continued, they became more interested in at least giving it a shot. The result, now more than two years in the making, is an ever-expanding loop that links in to the Crater Trail, and has become one of the reigning bits of singletrack for any local mountain biker looking to scare themselves into bliss.

These baby doll heads were not
originally stuck in this rusting boxspring

It's called Humpular, and it has a strong following. Two more craters have been exposed, Crater Jr. and Crater Grande. It drops, it jumps, and it sweeps its way along a steep hillside carved by the river below, sometimes so steep that handlebars come uncomfortably close to soil (imagine that) and riders constantly risk flopping all the way down to the railroad tracks at the bottom. And, to add character, a century of discarded material litters the trail. Rusted pickups, mopeds, and SAABs give way to bottles, concrete forms, obsolete construction material, and the heads of countless baby dolls and much it has been incorporated into unique parts of the trail. Feng shui comes to mind.

As with every formidable group of grown men, a rift began to expose itself shortly after R-TAG began to dig the hillside that would become Humpular. Unfortunately, the group's muscle, Ox, had become disenfranchised with the mission of the group. Such a mission is in truth an organic and unplanned thing, but Ox wasn't into it. As the trail inched its way along the steep terrain, Ox wanted to build stunts just as he had on 276 and on the Crater Trail. Big piles of logs, an enormous teetering log to ride across, skinny bridges like the one across the original crater, and rock gardens had been his signature. Because Humpular was so difficult to build into the hillside and because riding it without tumbling off was challenging enough, Ox's favorite types of stunts just weren't being built. He tried a few times, and the next R-TAG builder would either make it easier or clear it out completely. He described his trail philosophy to me once, "I think a trail should be nearly impossible to clean without a dab." (A "dab" is the act of putting one's foot down to the ground for stability, which mountain bikers try to not do). He went on, "If I can do a trail pretty much every time without dabbing, then it's too easy." Judging by one of his recent side projects, the Qaddafi Rim Trail, he continues to put this philosophy into practice.

Ox would leave the group without a fight. Of course, R-TAG exists only in my mind and isn't actually something to leave. Ox just stopped putting in work on Humpular and instead has built stand-alone stunts elsewhere. It make sense if you know him, and if you know the trails. Humpular flows. 276 does not.

"Stop Digging," warns the sign.

The network now referred to as Humuplar includes but is not limited to the original Crater and Humpular as well as many other sections and stunts including Vertigo, Jumpular, Slabalanche, Lawsuit, V-Tree, and probably many others whose names I haven't discovered. Its construction by R-TAG continues unabaided despite seemingly larger issues. Early in the summer of 2014, another trail saboteur (probably not Phil) tagged the steep cliffs along the trail with spray paint, warning the builders of one or more "slide zones" and to "stop digging." This got the attention of R-TAG for at least 24 hours, while each mulled over what to do about it. Eventually they came to an agreement with their actions: keep digging.

An enormous patch of poison ivy doesn't
stop R-TAG's anonymous members

It's not over. Unrelentless, the trail's newest section, is under construction, and is not a minor addition. It introduces the trail's first traverse underneath precariously overhanging rock and even required the donning of hazmat suits in the sweltering summer heat for poison ivy eradication. Despite further drama including the mysterious disappearance of R-TAG's hidden cache of tools, more sabotage, and evidence along the trail suggesting that the crew is being monitored, progress has solid momentum and improvement can be noticed weekly. The trail itself has drawn serious attention in the wider mountain biking scene and riders are driving hours just to come to our city and enjoy it.

The hidden camera trick perhaps turned on R-TAG?

Unfortunately this story is destined to have a twist at the end. Developers have zoned in on the area at the top of the hillside that Humpular traverses, jeopardizing the trail in its entirety or, at the very least, access to it. But, R-TAG's momentum won't quit because they are, as Snob points out, "not a bunch of HS scofflaws." He is right. R-TAG is comprised of respected local professionals and parents and at various times has represented the industries of engineering, higher education, medicine, IT and systems administration, entertainment, law, organized labor, and, as expected, bicycle retail. Of course there are further questions awaiting answers. If and when the city finds out about it, will action be taken? Will the trail building stop, or will it be recognized for its potential and be encouraged? It will be interesting to see how the Humpular saga, and that of R-TAG as a anti-cohesive group, plays out. In the meantime, we get to ride what is among the best urban singletrack in the country.