Rocky Mountain Dirt Riders

I don't understand the information on AMSA's site about this weekend's race. Sounds like there are races on both Saturday and Sunday - both for provincial points. Are they the same race run twice? Will there be a harescramble and cross country like at the 2014 Shale Shaker?

Anyone have more details?

AMSA Provincial Off Road Series Round 6 & 7
Presented by Kaptive 8 Photography, BS Racing and Ruffles Boutique
The Mountain Goat 100
Sept 5 & 6
Double Header weekend for Adult Classes CXCC – W National Round 3 & 4

Provincial Kids Classes Saturday morning

6 rounds for provincial points

More information to follow

Looks to be a new location too.

From what I have been able to find out each day counts as a provincial "round" so you need to race both days to get points for rounds 6 and 7.

Hmm... the forecast is a high of 5 with 20-30mm of rain tomorrow. I'm thinking there's a high probability of race cancellation. Sunday is 11 with showers, so maybe more likely to go ahead?

Cancelled

Both days?

both days.

Anyone know what the deal was with SRD cancelling the race?

Permit I was told. I'd like to know more too. NDP is to blame I hear!

I presume the forecast for heavy rain had something to do with not issuing the permit no? I hope its not just that permits will be harder to come by in the future.

We started working on getting a TFA for this event in January. The ESRD officer involved made it sound like there would be no problem with hosting the race. We submitted a map with the course on it. In July we were told to make a couple of adjustments so we could use existing bridges over a couple of creek crossings. We made the course adjustments for him.
In late July he informed us that we would not be getting a TFA as a few kilometers of our proposed course went into the new proposed provincial highland park and he said he feels our type of event doesn't fit in with the South Saskatchewan Region Plan. We disputed this and found that if we used existing trails there should be no issues. He conceded we were correct.
Just before August long weekend he came back with the fact a majority of our course was in an area where no commercial activity shall take place from Aug 22 till beginning of June every year because it causes undue stress on the mountain goat population. All off road motorcycle races are consider to be a commercial activity, we are lumped in with logging and oil and gas exploration. This legislation really is intended to limit aircraft flying over the region.
We then submitted a totally new course to miss all the goat area. The ESRD was happy with the new course and we were told there should be no more issues. One week before the event we were told no TFA due to 1 kilometer of our course at the bottom of a valley touched on the edge of the goat zone. This was rectified by mid week. We were then told verbally( no record this way) no TFA, the ESRD doesn't want us in the area, and they have no more time to spend on this matter.
On Saturday morning the ESRD and fish cops set up a check stop on the entry road to event informing all BC riders they would be fined $300.00 if they unloaded their motorcycles.
They also came into the camping area to inform all riders would be ticketed for the same plus no headlight taillight tickets.
I have had to go over this ESRD officers head on previous occasions to obtain TFA's for events. Now that we have a NDP government which is not supportive of our sport this ESRD officer has been on a war path to get rid of our events in the south.
An appeal has been filed on the complete TFA process for off road racing on crown lands. I dont think it will go in our favour.
The Lethbridge Motorcycle has accomdated all requests from the ESRD to put on events so this is a real slap in the face.
All those riders and racers who never help out and whine about races may not have to worry about that anymore as it may be done here in the south.

John if you can come up with some contacts I would like to write a letter and phone some people.

That is sad news for all OHV users. The same news release that announced the new park and doubled the size of the protected area from the SSRP, also mentioned they would be "revisiting the SSRP" when legislature resumed in the fall.

Definitely time to support your local club, a letter is a good idea.

There is a lot of discussion about this going on on the Alberta Outdoorsmen Forum, thread is called "SRD Officers..... Can they do this.

Cberg77 wrote:There is a lot of discussion about this going on on the Alberta Outdoorsmen Forum, thread is called "SRD Officers..... Can they do this.

This thread started yesterday afternoon over there and has generated a lot of traffic. I am a contributing member over there (and so are several other RMDRA members) and have been for years but am staying out of this one. Someone even borrowed Johns explanation of what happened and put it up over there. Unfortunately the site is pretty anti ohv and we are starting to look like the bad guys.

I went and read the forum. It almost makes me feel guilty for riding a bike.

What really surprises me is how this one small group, whom I would think has a negative overall public perception from the safeway hunter crowd, would go off on so strongly to discourage the responsible use of the backcountry by another user group. The social media world that we live in is a scary one that it truly going to change the way we live our lives in the very near future. It's almost fearful.