I just seen it for the first time today too, and my first thought was,
"who the hell ruined the trail?"
but then i figured, work that extensive had to be done by SWAMP, and figured there was a logical reason for it. I won't complain, because I do like being able to carry speed, and technical root crossings just aren't my favorite part of mountain biking...but I also believe the trail should live up to it's "extremely difficult" tagging. They wont permit us to build trails on the little bit of rolling hills, I've seen off the trail of several locations throughout the trail system...Not 200 feet from a flat sandy single track will be a 14 foot tall, hill, with various possibilities for fun, flowy and still relatively
easy drops. I can only imagine the crazy restrictions that prevent that from happening, but that be the case,
the roots are the only thing that give WTA any challenge whatsoever...I'd like to clear a low hanging, dead branch that jabs you as you go to hit the first little drop coming off Grandpa on the second sand valley. I started to pull it down today, but figured, I'd ask before, I go altering anything..But getting poked in the eye sucks..lol
For the record, I also seen a pair of people that had no buisness on Heartbreak ridge, I wanted to say something, but didn't know if, I should, there was a rather, "robust" woman, trying to ride a beach cruiser through it, with no helmet, a young 16 year old kid on a NEXT, who endoed going over a 3" root, also with no helmet on...his head missed a cypress knee by inches, and he jumped up laughing like it was the funniest thing.....
....And I'd be willing to bet that if he'd have hit his head, and gotten paralyzed, he would have sued the county, SWAMP, me for being on the same trail at the time, NEXT for building the bike, Walmart for selling the bike, and he would have won all of them.