ABOVE LEFT -- Mongo rolls a bridge that helpfully spans a wet place.
ABOVE RIGHT -- Jimmy Breitenstein and Sketch take a break.

THE KAISER is a real Galbraith throwback. Take the name, for instance. Kaiser was named by Jim Sullivan, the legendary Sully, at the dawn of Galbraith mountain biking, circa 1990.

Sully was a novel in the flesh -- a bitingly funny espresso machine repairman who competed at the first Mt. Bike World Championship in Durango, CO, in September 1990. The kitchen table of his home at the corner on Galbraith Lane was Galbraith Central for years.

Sully called this trail, "Kaiser," because "it rolls," and it still does. Appart from the amputation of the northern-most portion by logging in 2002, the Kaiser hasn't changed appreciably since Sully's day.

Talk to anybody who's been riding the mountain for a long time and they get all doey eyed about the Kaiser. My old friend Guano, for instance, used to list Kaiser among his favorite Galbraith trails... before it was destroyed by dirt bikes during the late '90s.

But it's been years now since Trillium's edict against mororcycles, and the benefit of that decision -- in terms of trail quality -- is nowhere more evident that the Kaiser. Although still not the best trail in wet weather, the Kaiser has healed, and it is SWEET, in a Rip Van Winkle sort of way.

UNDERSTAND, there are no big stunts on Kaiser. There aren't even any big climbs. Kaiser is just a trail that snakes through a beautiful mixed conifer / deciduous woods, where pools of sunlight fall amid the dark, farnly shadows. It's not that the Kaiser is a creme puff -- there're lots of up and down and lots of interesting moments along the way, especially if you ride it fast -- it's just that the thing that makes this trail memorable is its mellow, woody setting.

The Kaiser is also a very userful trail. Either Kaiser or lower Mullet (formerly called New Kaiser) can be combined with either Oly or Keystone as an essential link in singletrack routes from the Blue Rock to either Arsenio or the Towers. If you wanna ride trhe road from the Blue Rock to Arsenio, go ahead. But if you want a singletrack route, combine Kaiser / Oly / 187 / Granny's House. Likewise, if you wanna single track route to the Towers, combine Kaiser / Keystone / Naughty Nellie / Wonderland. Sweet!

During the summer of 2006, three giant contemporary Galbraith trail figures -- Guano (who also built Goldilocks & 3 Bears), Legendary David (who also built Kaya) and Mark Belles (who also built Wonderland) put in a ton of volunteer time building bridges, draining bogs, and hauling rock to make what was already a marvelous woodsy excursion into a true gem.

GalbraithMt.com believes the Kaiser and Goldilocks & The Three Bears are currently the best singletrack trails on Galbraith.

Jimmy B (LEFT) rippin' the Kaiser. BTW, those are Mongo's bike and shoes. Although the elevation gain/loss is negligible, there is a lot of rolling up and down on Kaiser (RIGHT).
Roll out the red carpet! Here's what the northern entrance into the Kaiser looked like in autumn 2006 (LEFT). A little tastefull hatching with a chainsaw and some discrete fill with rock have transformed what used to be a killer root crown into a delectible technical morsel for the merely mortal, e.g. Mongo. In the spring of 2005 (RIGHT), there was even a trail sign name on a tree!

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Days: 365	Rides: 220		Total vertical feet climbed: 404,900