This ride has ended
The race that started mountain biking. Riders on 1930s-40s balloon-tire bikes bombed 1,300 feet of fire road in just over two miles, so fast their coaster-brake hubs overheated and had to be repacked with grease after every run, hence the name. First run October 21, 1976, organised by Fred Wolf and Charlie Kelly.
Repack was the race that invented the sport. Twenty-four of them were run on an old dirt road west of Fairfax, twenty-two between 1976 and 1979, mostly in the autumn as the road season wound down, and a handful more into the early eighties. The course dropped 1,300 feet in under two and a half miles from a start line on Pine Mountain's east face, and it was ridden on modified 1930s Schwinn cruisers with coaster brakes. The name is a maintenance instruction: the descent got the hubs so hot that the grease inside vaporised, and after a run the hub had to be repacked. Gary Fisher's 4:22 still stands.
It ended by decision, not by fading. After the 1984 race, Marin County land and water managers made it clear that Repack, the race, could be no more.
What nobody wrote down is why. The Museum records the decision and notes it met little resistance, but not the reasoning behind it, no erosion report, no liability memo, no meeting minutes that survived. The most consequential race in the history of mountain biking was stopped for reasons that are now simply missing. That is the whole argument for this site, made forty years early: rides do not usually end with an announcement. They end, and then the reason evaporates like grease out of a coaster brake.
These came from a published schedule, not from a rider. Been on this ride? Help verify — +15 pts.
Deer Park Fire Road trailhead, Fairfax, Marin County, top of the historic course.
No course on file. A GPX or TCX route is the single most useful thing anyone can add to this ride — it turns a meeting point into a map you can follow. Sign in to add one, +15 pts.
Historical, see "Why it ended."
Obituary sourced from the Marin Museum of Bicycling and Mountain Bike Hall of Fame (mmbhof.org/mtn-bike-hall-of-fame/history/repack-history/) for the race count, course, the origin of the name, Gary Fisher's 4:22 and the 1984 decision by Marin County land and water managers. The first-race date of 21 October 1976 is from Wikipedia. Neither source records WHY the managers ended it — that gap is stated in the obituary rather than filled in.
Seeded from published schedules: https://mmbhof.org/mtn-bike-hall-of-fame/history/repack-history/ · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repack_(mountain_bike_race) · https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/7066931/repack-via-deer-park-fireroad. Details are unconfirmed until a rider verifies them.
Once riders start calling roll here, the most frequent names appear — so someone turning up for the first time knows who to look for at the meet point.
Nothing here yet. This is the place for the things that do not fit a form field — where the group actually regroups, which turn everyone misses, whether the café at the end is still open.