By Aaron Crowder, HIGHLINERSmtb — HIGHLINERSmtb is a subgroup of the western region cycling community. Our mission is simple. Enduro, Community, and Good Times. Call us a team. Call us a club. Call us a bunch of dirtbags who seemingly only care about rolling around on dirt with likeminded people. We have a competitive elite racing side to our team that intends to compete and push the local limits of the Enduro discipline. Equally important is our community driven, beer, and burrito fueled club level which only exists to have fun, ride with friends and help drive the cycling community. The demographics include male, female, pro, expert, intermediate, young, old, and all wheel sizes. Our passion is driven by the people we meet and ride with every day. We facilitate group rides, skills clinics, Enduro racing, BBQ’s, and shenanigans. Needless to say, if you like to ride MTB, you are welcome to ride with us anytime.
The most important aspect of HIGHLINERSmtb is our sense of community and engagement in local events and needs. On the rise in Utah, where we are based, is the Salt Lake Valley Trails Society. Their mission is to educate about, promote, develop and maintain bike trails in the Greater Salt Lake Valley. HIGHLINERSmtb and one of our supporting sponsors, Bingham Cyclery has partnered with and helped build the Salt Lake Valley Trails Society to boost community involvement, sustain, and enhance bike trails. The importance of trail maintenance, trail etiquette, and trail development at all levels becomes increasingly more evident as the cycling community grows. With that surfaces opportunity to engage and connect new members of this community to the needs of the longer term developments and housekeeping of all those trails we enjoy every day. Without community involvement, interest, and action, growth and sustainment will not happen. We at HIGHLINERSmtb care deeply about these efforts.
We also care about ripping fun and fast trail against the clock. The Western Region offers several Enduro race series which our team partakes in. California Enduro Series, Big Mountain Enduro Series, Montana Enduro Series, Enduro Cup Series and many smaller grassroots races are all on the menu for 2017. One of our favorite races each year just happens to be the longest running Enduro in the USA. Fears, Tears, and Beers Enduro is hosted in the unique town of Ely, NV and offers plenty of good times and competition for all ages and abilities. Of those who race for HIGHLINERSmtb, several are at the professional level with specific goals to succeed on the national and global stage. We have up-and-comers Bryn Bingham and Lauren Bingham who are already well accomplished at the national level. Most of our race team is built with expert level riders who still care to compete at a higher level but don’t care to commit to the demands of the pro class. All of our experienced racers lead group rides, skills clinics and weekend get-a-ways for any and all team/club HIGHLINERSmtb members and friends. We want everyone on the team to be able to benefit from and feed off of one another in efforts to progress on the bike and have a network of great friends to ride with.
HIGHLINERSmtb formed mid-2016 and attended our first race as a team in Ely, NV at the Fears, Tears, and Beers Enduro, our favorite race of the year. The 2016 race was on rain delay for 24hrs which gave us plenty of time to fill a cooler full of beer and head back to the Jailhouse Casino Hotel to craft our website and recruitment strategy. We sat here for hours watching the rain come down and chatting about the Western Region Cycling community. Its competitive and offers plenty of racing, which was our initial passion. It’s also filled with great community, good breweries and the best trail around. All of this was familiar, important and exercised by us in the past. From that day forward we knew we wanted to be about Enduro, Community and Good Times so we made that our mission. We are fortunate to have great support from Bingham Cyclery, KIND Snacks, Celtek Bike Gloves, DNA Cycling, DAKINE, and SMITH Optics.
Beyond all of the community relations, group rides and racing, we spend a great deal of time on social media. Sure we have the standard Facebook and Instagram accounts. We also have a website www.HIGHLINERSmtb.com that consistently pushes media out to the information superhighway. We have bike/product reviews, blogs on adventure/lifestyle/travels, and a feed of photos homegrown from some of our talented photographers on the team. We focus a lot on the lifestyle of our team and the supporters who back us. Above all of that, we push the fact we have an open door policy and want nothing more than to invite likeminded people to join us and engage in the cycling community to help us sustain and improve the land access, trail networks and voice of the western region mountain biker.
For more information on how you can join HIGHLINERSmtb or get involved in the local community, please go to our website at www.HIGHLINERSmtb.com and click “Join Us”. We would love to hear from you.
