Fattest Ever Tyre Festival 2011

We have been a bit tardy about getting info out this year but plans are well advanced for the 2011 Festival. We start with a welcome party on the 19th of Feb and end with a last ride on the 26th and manage to cram nuff awesome riding and crazy fun in between. Spaces are very limited get on board while you can. Give us an email before it is too late!!!

Mt Airy revisited

SMORBA head honchos Jonathon and Andy did a recon ride of the Mount Airy to Annatto Bay 'cross the island' route yesterday, with a view to including it in the 2011 Fat Tyre Festival. This ride is usually a gem, lots of elevation change, great scenery, technical but still fun for any experienced rider and lots of singletrack descending. BUT Jamaica was hit by Tropical Storm Nicole recently and some areas had ridiculous amounts of rain in a very short period. Well my guess is that the area that received the most rain was the forestry road we have to climb during the first third of this ride!! What a mess! We soldiered on and encountered multiple landslips, downed trees and mini grand canyons and more than one local who tried to warn us that we couldn't make it and luckily managesd to complete the almost endless singletrack before the heavens opened. 21 miles in 4hours; not the fastest ride ever but we couldn't have gone any faster! The post ride Red Stripe was definitely appreci-loved.

Hopefully the local coffee farm will rehabilitate the forestry road in time for February.

SMORBA-rific update

This is the first post from the SMORBA crew. The plan is to keep updating information about mountain biking in and around St Mary and in Jamaica as a whole. Since the Fatta Tyre Festival in February, we have discovered an exciting off road trail that traverses from close to Kingston all the way to Annotto Bay on the North Coast.Dubbed 'The Dark Side' by the pioneer riding crew from Kingston [Bikenutz], It is a really fun ride with a long gentle double track climb, some amazing views and a wicked singletrack descent. Hopefully we will add this to the next Festival.

There is a lot of work to be done on the existing trail network in the Pimento Hill and Robin's Bay area. We are really excited about a new trail that links onto the Scotchie trail to make it more of a ride and less of a climb at the end. There are also some possible ways to ride downhill to Kwaaman Falls that we will be exploring.

In the Ocho Rios area there are a couple of trails we recently discovered/heard about. Not sure how worthy they will turn out to be but it is going to be a blast trying them out I'm sure.

So watch this space for more smorbarific developments!!!