There has been some confusion about the extraordinary Warringah council meetings coming up but have had these clarified:

February 23: This meeting is only to cover the items that were missed on Feb 9 in their famous, meeting of disarray. The motion to re-instate volunteer maintenance days at Manly Dam is on the agenda, but the recent closure is not.

March 23: In this meeting council will discuss options for the future of riding at Manly Dam (ie. the recent closure).

Given council need to be shown immediately what a mistake has been made, and how many riders are effected, and as others have suggested it would be a very good idea to show up at the Feb 23 meeting for a silent show of support. Speakers are not allowed at this meeting and rowdy, insulant or other petty behavior would not help our cause one bit.

While I would encourage everyone who can to attend both meetings to show support, please only go to these meetings if you know you can control your emotions, bite your tongue, and have the patience of a saint!

Two events in the calendar here:

http://nobmob.com/node/13111
http://nobmob.com/node/13112

The meetings will be held at: Council Chambers, Civic Centre, 725 Pittwater Road, Dee Why (enter Civic Drive) and commence 6pm. More details should appear here:

http://www.warringah.nsw.gov.au/council_then/meetings_council.aspx

Update: Want to show support for riding at Manly Dam? Sign up to Manly Dam - Save the date and come along!

Update 17/2: Press coverage of this:
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/bike-rider-to-defy-ban/
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/council-backpedals-on-bu...
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hart-backs-biking-ban/
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hopes-bushwhacked/

Update 22/2: Warringah Council issue a FAQ "...in response to many letters and emails received..."

Update 24/2: Track will be re-opened to riders but at the expense of walkers. Press coverage here:
http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/way-clear-for-bikers-at-...

I just don't know how to put this, so am going to just get straight to the point:

Manly Warringah Council have decided that due to a bureaucratic error that happened many years ago the single track sections of the Manly Dam circuit have never actually been technically legal riding. As such, instead of turning a blind eye, or deciding to make an extra effort to work around what is their mistake, they are to penalise riders by closing sections of the track.

If you look at the linked map, it's obvious that the circuit is basically unridable given this decision.

They are sighting safety concerns for this, but that is a complete joke as, as far as I'm aware there have been no documented incidents involving riders and another party there. I spoke to the Mayor on Wednesday night who admits this isn't an issue as he is aware of "only one incident in 5 (or is that 10?) years" (he wasn't sure of the timeframe).

Please take a look at the closed sections on the map (and you note the map says that 'Penalties Apply') and steer clear of these tracks.

Reading the release it seems this will be discussed at an extraordinary meeting of the council Mar 23 to discuss this. I'd advise anyone with interest in riding Manly Dam to attend. You might also like to email or call councillors (their contact details are available on Warringah's Elected Council page) with your views on this.

Please see the attached map, and full press release below:

Thanks to a local tour by Lach last week we've just finished mapping out trails around North Turramurra.

Overlooked for a long time, this area is actually pretty large and goes into number three spot in the Northern Beaches - areas by trail distance. Sadly the vast majority of this is firetrail of the out and back variety but it has some small pockets of single track (yes, outside of NPWS managed lands!) that add a little interest. It's a good destination for training though - some rather brutal climbs in there!

Apparently this has been made possible by some new firetrail created recently by the local council, so if steep hills are your thing, go check it out.

As some of you will know, there are a number of riders in our midst that enjoy riding on the road. A while back we created the tongue-in-cheek named 'scummers' group to cater for these people but this was little known and hard to find if you didn't know about it.

Enter road.nobmob.com. This is a public site for all the road related content and as such should be easier to find. On the plus side for some poor misguided souls who only like to ride on the road, use of this site only shows road related stuff in much the same way use of nobmob.com only shows MTB related stuff.

That is... unless one edits their profile and selects to see content from one place when actually using another. Eg. if you select to always see content from road.nobmob.com you don't actually ever have to login there to see what's going on - that content will show up for you on nobmob.com. This is akin the the way the 'scummers' group worked and I've set that option for everyone in that group so you really shouldn't see any difference at all.

So... long story short... loads of work for apparently no change. I'm sure there was a good reason for doing this though... watch this space