After an incredible weekend of perfect Spring weather for the BrewRidge Music Festival (rain didn't fall till we were cleaning up after the final act for the afternoon on Saturday), we were greeted with a light dusting of snow and ice this morning. The 40 degree swing in temps is quite a shock. Things kicked off right on Friday night with the Locust Mountain Boys from Craig County...
Joe Wilson of 'The Crooked Road' and his beautiful wife Katherine showed up to tap their feet for the music. Joe and Katherine were instrumental in helping us put this event together. 
Robin & Linda Williams and Their Fine Group really fired up the crowd with their foot stomping folk music and terrific sense of humor.
The crowd enjoyed the warm sunshine and the cold beer, mead and cider flowing out from under the tents. 
The Jugbusters from Blacksburg picked up where Robin and Linda left off as they nearly burned down the barn with some dance music you probably won't hear in the local club. Judging by these pictures it had the desired effect!
The brewfest was a blast by all accounts, the dance floor is now perfectly polished and the beer kegs are just tapped out. We're looking forward to it going even bigger and better next year - mark your calendars for the first weekend of May 2009.
New Trail Maps Now Available!
Our new GPS enhanced, full color, shaded, 1:24,000 scale USGS Topo maps are now ready for sale at the Conservancy. They'll also soon become available at East Coasters in Blacksburg. We had these professionally printed on a really nice weatherproof map paper that should withstand lots of abuse floating around in your pack.
New Trail - Toejammer
Toejammer is taking form, Both ends of the trail have been cut in and are ridable. The middle section of the trail has been flagged and is easy to follow with some short hike-a-bikes to duck brush. This past Sunday we rode it for the first time with Eggman, Sully, and Abner of the Moonstompers and Eric and Chuck of the Virginia Tech Freeriding Club. We hope to form a new trail club with them to help us improve our trail system and take mountain biking at Mountain Lake to the next level.
Dirty Dawg Cycling Weekend - Progress!
With BrewRidge now out of the way, we've pinned our ears back and are setting our teeth into the plan for the big riding weekend and mountain bike race. The new race course is all set and will really show off the broad variety of trail types our system offers. A race course description will be forthcoming soon. Till then, if you are trying to prepare for the race - do lots of climbing and throw yourself into some rock gardens. You might want to go ahead and give Stan's a try too.
We're excited that the Trek/Gary Fisher demo will be here on Saturday the 14th, and can't wait to get our paws on the new Trek 9.5 EX to hammer our healthy rock gardens. I plan to warm up my legs on the new Madone 6.9 with a descent and climb of the famous Rt.613 'Backside Climb', my favorite part of our local stage of the old Tour DuPont (now the final climb of the Mountains of Misery).
We've got a lot of neat events planned and hope to have a good crowd.
APO Lake Cleanup
A few weeks ago we were visited by the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. They spent the better part of a day picking up all kinds of material out of the lake. They got muddy and wet and did a terrific job and found some really neat stuff. Check out the pix below.
