This past weekend one of the biggest events in the Midwest transpired. Marquette Trails Festival is a celebration of the amazing trails around Marquette. This weekend saw over 15 events occur in the realm of three days!! There almost isn’t a moment after 3pm Friday that there isn’t at least two events happening simultaneously. It’s an absolute feet of scheduling and volunteering to see this event occur.
Here at Downhill Midwest, we’re going to focus on the gravity style bike events! But know a lot more occurred over the weekend.
Day 1 - Dual Slalom
The weekend kicks off with Dual Slalom action on Friday afternoon. A youth category started the weekend with a bang! Some amazing racing from the youngsters. High speeds and tight times made this event a blast to watch. Payton McKeown was able to walk away victorious, but the battles with the likes of Bryce Rautio, Rowan Garfoot and Mason Timperley had everyone watching!
Youth racers battling it out on course!
Next up was the adult Dual Slalom! With a stacked field of men’s and women’s riders, it was sure to be a treat! Speaking of treats, the Blackrocks van was back handing out beverages, plus Transition Bikes and Quick Stop Bike Shop brought food to be enjoyed by all! They handed out over 300 hot dogs on the day!
Cheese? I thought you meant Hot Dogs?!
Racers tackled the freshly worked course that was running oh so good! NTN volunteers had cleaned up the berms, and even extended the course this year and racers were loving it!
15 women and 31 men participated in the event on a variety of rigs. Dirt jumpers, cross country bikes, enduro bikes, we saw almost every style of bike tackle this awesome course!
In the end, after all the hype, crashes, exciting battles, hot dogs and good times, Ryan Zinzow took the win in the Men’s win and Sam Paternoster took the Women’s win!
Ryan locked in
Day 2 - Enduro
The enduro had a bit of a late start to the day. A thunderstorm had rolled though in the morning. This caused organizer to push start times back by only half an hour. Which after a long night of Dual Slalom, racers weren’t angry about!
That rain did make the morning stages a little slippy in spots though! The morning three stages saw a mix of trails and riders could choose what order they wanted to do them in. On Marquette Mountain riders rode a combo of trails, Starting with fast flow, into slow and tight singletrack, back to a bit of line choice at the bottom! Then over on Benson you could choose the tech of Flow, or the berms of Down Dogger.
Smiling is optional, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves!
After a shortened lunch (due to the rain delay), riders got to tackle the second three stages of the day. In the heat and humidity of the day riders were sopping wet even without riding in the rain! After that morning rain, temps rose to mid 80s and the air sure felt thick!
Phill making moves!
Although riders could go to any stage, most seemed to go towards the furthest away stage first, Burning Stump to Smiley. This stage had a bit of a climb in it, and is otherwise a pretty straight forward flow trail with plenty of pedaling if you wanted it. Then you could choose either Southern Cross to Old Yellow, or the most technical stage Chunder Muffin! With easy access and plenty to watch, spectators lined the bottom of Chunder Muffin to enjoy what I’m certain was a lot of excitement!
Aleautian giving the people a show!
In the end, Moses Waite was able to top Ryan Zinzow for the men’s win! While Lilli Regenold (U16 rider!) took the win over Kyia Anderson for the women!
Day 3 - Downhill
If you and your bike made it this far, it’s finally Sunday, Downhill day baby!!
Of course we raced the Marquette classic, Gypsum! But this year, Phill Ott thought we ought to switch up the rock garden. Instead of the classic straight line down the rocks, this year we did a little zig, a little zag! Found some fresh off camber that changed throughout the day and it had riders puzzling.
Make the treacherous left corner!
Above the off camber the trail crew had made some changes to the trail that riders loved. Some of the flat sections that were difficult to hold speed through, and created a lot of pedaling, had been buffed a bit and were flowing so nicely for the racers! Plus the moisture the day before really helped set up the dirt well for race day.
Ride the off camber!
With new taping came new line choice. Coming into the rock garden you could snake high between some very tight trees, or you could dive low and hop your way over some roots to get back into the line. A right hander started the drop into the rocks. Here you could choose left or right. Left keeping you more planted and controlled, right having a big rock you could jump off of and straightening out the next left hander. The left hander gave people a lot of issues. Come in too fast and you dropped the off camber to the bottom, or maybe you went into the tree that divided the lines. You really needed to be patient here. Finally the fresh off camber. Roots started to show up in the high line and the high line kept creeping its way lower and lower. Riders had to navigate this mid race run! Showing up and the line had moved made riders make choices on the fly!
In the end, it was great to spectate the new taping, and it seemed most of the riders enjoyed it as well!
Try not to crash!
Lilli Regenold took the win for the women’s division. She was almost able to sweep the weekend! Next year she just needs the Dual Slalom win as well and she’ll have all three!
Ryan Zinzow came out swinging after coming in second for the Enduro. His seeding time was 3 seconds faster than the next rider, and even with going offline in the rock garden he was able to go a second faster than that! Taking the win and almost breaking the two minute mark with a 2:01. Will anyone break the two minute mark on this trail next year??
Ryan’s thoughts “That sure is a nice looking tree….”
Thank you to the organizers and volunteers for putting on another amazing event!
Thank you to all the racers and spectators for coming out and making these events so fun to be at!
Story written by Alex Anderson of Lake Superior Gravity Series