Benefield: Lake County winery, high school mountain bikers team up to create course

If you host a basketball game, you open the gym. If you host a soccer game, you hang the nets and plant the corner flags. But if you host a mountain bike race, what does that entail?

In one particular case in Lake County, it entails cutting 4.7 miles of single track nearly by hand. It entails crafting from scratch a course traversing more than 50 acres of rolling hills and creeks. It entails enlisting the athletes not to train, but to hoist a shovel or pick, and swing hard for weekends at a time. It entails asking parents and friends to pitch in, too.

Between September and this weekend, Lake County high school mountain bikers and their coaches, along with many supporters, have created their own home course. From scratch and by hand. On Saturday, they introduce their creation to the wider world at Six Sigma Slinger - race No. 5 of the NorCal Mountain Bike League series.

“They have scraped five miles of trail,” said Christian Ahlmann. “I have been amazed at their dedication.”

“They” are the riders, coaches and family members of the Middletown, Kelseyville and Clear Lake mountain bike teams. They are the group that on some weekends would swell to 100, but on most would hover around 30, everyone dragging hand tools and gear onto the ranch land at Six Sigma Ranch and Winery in Lower Lake

And Ahlmann is the guy who let them do it.

Ahlmann, vice president of operations of Six Sigma, calls himself an “avid mountain-biking person.” He gets his bike serviced at Main Street Bicycles in Lakeport. Jeff Cramer and his wife, Tami, own the place. They also coach the Kelseyville and Clear Lake teams.

After the deadly Valley fire destroyed the schools’ home course in Boggs Mountain State Demonstration Forest in 2015, word got out that area high school mountain bikers needed a place to ride. Ahlmann and the folks at Six Sigma answered the call. First they let teams train on the fire roads that ran through the 4,300-acre property. Then the idea for single track and a real race course started bubbling up.

“We wanted to keep it in Lake County,” Ahlmann said of the NorCal race. “It’s good for the county, it’s good for the kids.”

Plus, the Cramers and Debbie and Chris Bloomquist, coaches of the Middletown squad, had the project dialed in.

“They are incredibly independent and very, very well prepared,” Ahlmann said of the trail builders. “We are interested in low risk and they checked all the boxes.”

So, led by the Cramers and the Bloomquists, a trail was designed that criss-crossed 50 acres of the 4,300-acre ranch. There are switchbacks and creek crossings, rollers and climbs. This weekend, eight months of work will be unveiled to hundreds of teens on bikes and even more of their family and friends.

It’s been a labor of love - heavy on the labor part.

“It’s very physical,” Jeff Cramer said. “It takes a lot of time - you’re packing the tools in, digging the dirt, smoothing it out.”

After months of toil, the Bloomquists and Cramers say they, and the trail, are ready.

“I think it’s a huge sigh of relief,” Cramer said. “I know the Bloomquists feel the same way. We feel quite a bit of pride in what we accomplished in such a short period of time ... I really hope the kids enjoy it as much as I enjoy it.”

Chris Bloomquist has no doubt.

“It’s technical, it’s twisty, it’s up and down a lot,” Bloomquist said. “It’s pretty awesome for us to get a chance to design it without people telling you how it has to be.”

For a guy about to host the biggest bike party in town, Ahlmann’s requests seem surprisingly minimal.

“Certainly it’s a commitment,” he said. “At the same time, 2,000 people from all over California coming to our place of business doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. We can certainly put up with the inconvenience for the goodwill it generates.”

And going forward, Ahlmann simply asks that the Middletown, Clear Lake and Kelseyville riders be accompanied by their coaches, let him know in advance when they are coming and must be insured. Check, check and check.

Ahlmann said the genesis of the course fits his family’s mission for their land and for their business.

“My dad’s vision was to use this pristine ranch to accommodate guests, especially kids, for outdoor education and supported by the winery,” he said. “So when they said, ‘Hey, can we get a bunch of kids out on the property?’ That’s an easy answer.”

Plus, remember that Ahlmann is a bike guy. He has a single speed in his office.

“Two nights ago my wife and I had date night on the trail,” he said. “I can’t deny it’s a great thing.”

But they almost didn’t make it.

The wettest winter in more than a decade made it rough going for awhile, but the volunteers kept after it.

The final push has been intense. Some volunteers have pitched tents and spent the night.

“We had somewhere between 80 and 90 people out there,” Bloomquist said of a recent weekend. “We were smoothing out stuff where we had some tractor work done, fixing berms, fixing some creek crossings, cutting some weeds.”

And enlisting the riders’ help in creating their home course has multiple benefits, Cramer said.

“Some days you are inspired and some days you are not, but we tried to keep the kids going on it,” he said. “When all the kids do that, they realize how much work and stewardship is involved, so when they start using the trail, I don’t like to say ownership, but they take pride, they can see how much damage a person can do if they do the wrong things on the trail.”

But this was also a lesson in how much good a person can do, and what can happen when people work together, when they share what they have and when they persevere.

Yeah, it’s a bike race this weekend, but it feels like more than that.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes and SoundCloud “Overtime with Kerry Benefield.”