Scott Morris over at TopoFusion posted up a cool video visualizing thousands of mountain bike rides he’s taken starting from his Tucson, AZ home. For those who don’t know, Scott is a self-described “bikepacker, GPSer, and desert dwelling MTBer” and a driving force behind the Arizona Trail 300 race we mentioned in our post about multi-day MTB races last week. Anyway, on to the video:

Note the timer at the bottom of the screen showing the length of the rides - some of the longer sessions break the 12 hour mark handily. A few of the dots seem to get stuck in various locations (mechanical problems?) while others simply vanish from the map (shuttle ride?).

Mountain bikers like Scott are fortunate to have access to singletrack (and mountains!) within riding distance of their homes and in fact some of us have been discussing the idea of “riding to the ride” on the forums lately. Hopefully this video will help motivate all of us to explore the rides right outside our front doors!

We spoke with Denny Yunk at the Hayes group this morning about everything from wheels to bars to brakes. Here’s a short video clip with Denny talking about the new Black Flag and Charger wheelsets. We’ll try to upload more video throughout the day - stay tuned!

VholdR.com is holding a mountain bike video contest through November 30 and there are some pretty sick prizes up for grabs. It’s simple to enter: just upload your mountain biking related video to VholdR.com and tag it ‘mtb.’ VholdR members can rate videos on the site and the top 5 video producers will walk away with the loot. Of course there’s even a video explaining the contest itself - ain’t technology great?

Prize details from VholdR:

Winners of this contest will receive cool stuff from Diamondback and Avenir, as well as the usual mount, battery, or store credit from us.

1st: Diamondback Drifter1 Beach Cruiser
2nd: Avenir Cargo Trailer
3rd: Avenir Home Mechanic Tool Kit
4th: Avenir Torque Wrench
5th: Avenir Handler Pro II Floor Pump

The submission deadline for this challenge is Nov. 30th.

We’re pulling for you maddslacker, make us proud with your shiny new Contour HD camera!

So this is pretty exciting: someone on singletracks is going to win a Contour HD Helmet Camera from VholdR at the end of the month. Take a moment to wipe the drool off your keyboard and keep reading…

Starting today we’ll be awarding points to members for linking MTB trail videos on VholdR.com to singletracks trail pages. We’ve set up a contest page showing the current standings where you can also read the rules and find out more.

If you’re not familiar with VholdR.com, it’s a video site with thousands of action sports videos posted by VholdR camera owners. The site is super slick and includes location data, comment features, and cool community features. Even if you don’t own a Contour HD (yet) you can still join and watch sweet vids.

Questions? Post ‘em here in the comments. Let the search for VholdR trail videos begin!

It’s June and things are heating up on the trail AND on singletracks.com. Here’s the new stuff to keep you in the loop:

Video Contest Winners: It was a battle royale and in the end we had 3 clear winners. Devin_P killed it with 1535 points making him the proud owner of a brand new set of Kenda Nevegall 2.35 tires! Maddslacker earned himself a PRO membership and a singletracks t-shirt while Goo is taking home the third place package with stuff from Camelbak, Nite Rider, and Mr. Smith. Thanks again to all our sponsors and everyone who contributed.

Trail Video Comments: Speaking of trail videos, the contest helped us iron out some kinks that were preventing members from rating trail videos. With hundreds of new videos added this month, it’s a great time to post your comments and ratings to move the best trail videos to the top of the list!

New Trail Pages: We’ve been getting overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new trail page design and if you haven’t taken a look yet, check out this page for an example. The new tabs organize stuff like trail maps, photos, and videos and we’ve placed all the “action links” in a convenient dashboard in the right column. With this new framework in place look for more trail page enhancements this summer and fall.

New Forums: Mongoose has been hard at work moderating the forums and he’s adding two new discussions this summer for MTB beginners and folks interested in mountain biking with families (coming soon). We’re also adding more moderators to help out with the avalanche of new posts - stop in and holla!

Gear Reviews: We’re currently testing hot new gear from Easton, Sun Ringle, Manitou, Yakima, and others and will be posting articles and reviews here on the blog in the next few weeks. Want us to review a particular MTB product? Hit us up on the contact form and we’ll see what we can do.

Top Secret Stuff: Yep, there are a few things coming down the pipe that are on a strictly need to know basis right now. One thing I can tell you: we’ve located 1,100 trails for our Google Maps project. It’s still not nearly 50% of the trail catalog but get ready for a new way to search for MTB trails coming soon…

Okay, so this video is a little old (2005) but I thought I’d share it for those who missed it. The video was shot during a Red Bull downhill MTB race event through the streets and narrow alleyways of Taxco, Mexico and features some pretty gnarly stuff. Riders fly down steep stairways, around tight corners into skinny corridors, and through a person’s home at one point. With a little editing this video would make a great chase scene for the next Bond film!

SRAM recently created a channel on YouTube with how-to videos showcasing SRAM, RockShox, Avid, and Truvativ service and installation. So far the most popular SRAM channel videos cover how to bleed Avid brakes, how to rebuild a RockShox Monarch shock, and how to change the SRAM X0/X9 chain. Most of the newer videos cover mountain bike components but there are a few road component videos in there as well.

There’s nothing like having an expert mountain bike mechanic walk you through an install for the first time and these videos are pretty much the next best thing. Now if SRAM could just come out with a robot to do the actual repairs to my bike

On Friday we mentioned that singletracks now supports Vimeo videos but as Steve Jobs likes to say, there is “one more thing…”

In cooperation with Broadband Sports singletracks has just launched a video channel where you can watch and share all your mountain bike videos right here on the site. There are already thousands of mountain bike videos and Broadband Sports updates the most popular video list all the time so you can get to the good stuff quickly. There’s no need to sign up for a separate account to watch videos but if you want to upload your own vids you’ll need to get a free Broadband Sports account first.

You can also embed videos from the new singletracks video channel on your favorite sites like MySpace and we’ve even integrated Broadband Sports video support into our trail video catalog. Just submit videos like always using the “Post trail video” link on any trail page.

It’s hard to believe but there’s even more cool stuff coming this summer - stay tuned!