Mountain Biking - Just arrived in Toronto from SA

Hi there everyone

I have just arrived in Toronto from South Africa, JHB. I am avid mtb biker and would appreciate any advice / tips / suggestions or links to any local mtb forums, clubs, groups that I could get involvd with.

Thanks
Stormies

www.dropmachine.com is a local mtb club/site. Otherwise give it time, we have a number of TO based riders :D

Welcome to the forums

Thanks for the reply, much apprecaited.

Getting withdrawel symptons since it's been a few week since I have been on the bike !

Stormies

I am workig on months without seeing a trail. Unfortunately, with the snow, I am stuck on a freaking trainer. "weeks" would be nice ;)

Hmm tell me about it ! I have just started doing some invstigations on indoor trainers for my mtb bike!

Coming from South Africa, sunny SA should I say :) this is a HUGE adjustment!

Do you have your mtb on the trainer ?

Stormies

Yes I do. A minoura rim trainer or something like that. I plan to buy a mid range stationary with all the fixins. The trainer just bores me to death. I need some stats to look at or something

The T.O. area has some good mtn biking, but you may also want to grab a road bike. There are many beautiful road rides you can do in the area while you wait for the snow to melt.
http://biketoronto.ca/
http://tbn.ca/
http://www.out-there.com/ton01mtb.htm

Hardwood hills north of T.O. near barrie has some fun trails. There are also great trails down along the niagara escarpment from milton through to waterdown (kelso ski area is great, for biking not skiing). I haven't mtb'd there in 10 years but these areas should still be great. For road riding, just get north of town into caledon hills, real nice countryside.

As mael said most of the freeride and DH types such as myself lurk on dropmachine.com, although there are some XC guys there too. They organize group rides every so often in the Don Valley, including some in the winter as well. Watch the 'Don valley' or 'organize local rides' threads and just show up one day when a ride time is posted. The rides are usually pretty slow paced and give everyone time to sample the stunts and builds there, or at least watch someone else ride it if that's not your thing.

Getting withdrawel symptons since it's been a few week since I have been on the bike !
welcome to the forums. i'm another rider from t.o.

a few weeks? i haven't ridden since the snow ride in november that ghettocruiser also went on :( . can't wait until i can go ripping through the don again ...

like ghettocruiser said, keep an eye on those two sections on dropmachine and show up to some of the planned rides.

Hi

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated everyone.

I will definitly check out the links that have been provided.

Happy MTB'ing

Stormies

Hi
I ride at Hardwood a fair bit, nice xc and usually quite a few xc races there all summer, they have some pretty good trails for southern ontario. have fun
jay

Thanks Jay

Hi there everyone

I have just arrived in Toronto from South Africa, JHB. I am avid mtb biker and would appreciate any advice / tips / suggestions or links to any local mtb forums, clubs, groups that I could get involvd with.

Thanks
Stormies

It's not usually this cold at the end of February. Mind you, we had an incredibly warm January. By the way, this is our winter, not summer (I know you know that) :)

hahhaah, winter yup in a big way - trying to adjust to the winter on this side of the world.

In South Africa, the coldest our winter would get is maybe 0 celcius in the evening and during the day i would it around 10, as in +10!

:)

Stormies

I remember, with wind chill, temps could drop as low as -40c in southern ontario. Something I definately don't miss.

This winter has been a bit lame even by Toronto standards, although the last few weeks have been pretty good winter riding weather.

It was -13C this morning on my ride to work, but that's about the coldest it's been I don't think it's dropped below -15C at any point this winter. It rained through pretty much all of January, and I did no real off-road riding for a month.

Normally there is decent winter riding in the winter here, because the ground gets hard frozen and the snow, which we don't get too much of without a melt cycle, gets packed down hard. It's supposed to stay cold for the next little while, so things might improve.

-15c....holy smokes thats great weather for southern ontario...

Bike show this weekend at the Ex. http://www.telsec.net/bicycleshow/ Check out shops, find good deals and watch some races and demos. The don valley has a great trail network (just about any dirt path leading into the trees in the valley is a trail :)). Downtown has a lot of cool stuff to hit as well.

Might be a bit late, but the Toronto International Bike Show is this weekend.

http://www.telsec.net/bicycleshow/

lots of local clubs will be there, some good deals as well.