It’s on the move again. The original 24-hour mountain biking race, once known as 24 Hours of Canaan and 24 Hours of Snowshoe, will relocate this year to a new Mountain State home at the 4,000-acre privately owned Big Bear Lake area in Hazelton, W.Va. The race relocation comes on the heels of increasingly low turnout and continued complaints about the course.

The Snowshoe course, where the race has been held for the last five years, was plagued by boggy mud that often became impossible to ride. As a result, the number of participants decreased significantly each year, dropping from a sellout of 500 teams in 2001 to 200 in 2004.Dave Wotton, a Charlottesville, Va., rider, has competed in three of the last four 24-hour races at Snowshoe, finishing 16th overall last year with Team Gwadzilla. From his experience, he says the attendance decline definitely came from bikers getting fed up with the course. “There were long sections where you would have to pick up your bike and run through thick, deep mud,” says Wotton. “There were fun bits to ride, but it was one of those courses where you found yourself waiting for the up-hills, because they were more fun to ride, which is unusual, especially for me.”Wotton also says he would often pass seasoned riders pedaling these muddy sections while he was on foot. “Every mountain bike race has stuff like this, but this was too much.”Mountain bike hall of famer Laird Knight, the purveyor of 24-hour racing and owner of race producer Granny Gear Productions, says he took drastic measures to try and save the Snowshoe course but was repeatedly foiled by West Virginia spring rains. Knight spent $60,00 trying to repair the course, hauling in over 120 tons of crushed stone to armor the trail surface.“Unfortunately we needed to do about twice that,” he says. “Racers had to run sections of the course, and that’s just not fun. I get that.”Now he’s looking ahead excitedly to the new 24 Hours home. Big Bear is already a well-know riding spot in the fat tire community. Located 20 minutes east of Morgantown right off Interstate 68, the area is always open to riding from January through September and contains 30 miles of trails. Knight describes the terrain as remarkably identical to that on Canaan Mountain. The plateau altitude is a similar 3,100 feet with the same sandstone strata and red spruce forests. “It’s like a little piece of Canaan gone astray,” says Knight. The course is still being finalized, but it will be between 11 and 12 miles. Already set on a high-elevation plateau, climbing is actually limited to only 900 feet. Snowshoe had 1,900 feet of climbing. Knight says riders will be enthralled with a bomber singletrack downhill set at about mile 8 of the course. Most of the course will be singletrack with a few spots of what he describes as “technical still-keep-your-wits-about-you doubletrack.”Best of all, wet or dry, it will be rideable. “Even if it rains and there is some mud, there is rock underneath everything, so it’s easy to move through,” says Knight. “I’m confident in that.”The venue at Big Bear is all camping, so a rustic festival scene will replace the cushy condo nights of Snowshoe. The main grounds and race starting line are located beside a 2,500-foot gravel runway, once used as an Army training base. The cap at Big Bear is 500 teams through a range of class standings in men’s, women’s, coed solo, veteran, masters, expert, sport, and junior categories.Will the new location help revive the landmark race?“I’ve been psyched to get a lot of emails from people telling me they’re coming back,” says Knight. “It’s clear that no one is holding Snowshoe against me. I feel redeemed.”24 Hours of Big Bear rolls out June 18-19. More info: www.grannygear.com.-Jedd Ferris