MORRISVILLE - Lake Crabtree is the granddaddy of Triangle mountain bike trails. Blazed in the early 1990s, it's at least twice as old as the region's other single-track trail networks. The legal ones, at least.

Over the years subtle changes have been made on the trail -- a trail reroute or a log stack or other new feature added.

But that has changed. I noticed the shift three weeks ago after riding there for the first time in more than a month. There was a new rock garden on Loop 5, a new "S" skinny and jump in the play area, and a whole new loop -- 6.

Crabtree had undergone a renovation -- overnight.

What's the deal?

Crabtree is under new volunteer management.

"We used to have a workday once a month and get two or three people out," says Drew Cade, manager of Lake Crabtree County Park in Morrisville. "TORC decided to have fewer workdays, but plan them out a little more."

TORC is the Triangle Off-Road Cyclists, which formed nearly two years ago as an umbrella mountain bike club serving the entire Triangle. Previously, there were maybe a dozen smaller clubs with parochial interests. The North Raleigh Mountain Bike Club, for instance, concentrated on the New Light and Beaverdam trail networks at Falls Lake, the Durham Orange Mountain Bike Club focused on the Little River Regional Park.

And Lake Crabtree was under the direction of the N.C. Fats Mountain Bike Club, which largely built the trail and had maintained it since.

Make no mistake, Cade and his predecessors were grateful to N.C. Fats. Without the club there would have been no trail; Crabtree, like every other land manager with singletrack, simply doesn't have the manpower to maintain such a trail. It's just that when you have a workday like Crabtree had on Feb. 12, when more than 30 TORC club members turned out, lots of things can happen.

Five things, in this case:

1. ROCK GARDEN ON LOOP 5. "We've created a rock garden feature out of what was becoming an incised slope," says Cade. Translation for those of us without a background in landscape architecture: There was an erosion problem so they filled in the resulting gully with riprap, those bulldog-size rock chunks typically used to shore up dams.

Depending upon which way you're riding, the rock garden is either open or not. If you're riding clockwise and thus going up the garden, have at it. (Or don't; there's a bailout trail that skirts the rocks.) If you're riding counterclockwise and going down it, well, it's still not quite safe. TORC trail coordinator John Whitfield and the crew are working on it, though, and the crime scene tape blocking the entrance from above could be down any day.

2. NEW JUMP. It's not huge, maybe two feet. But it's the first of its kind in Crabtree's features area.

3. NEW SKINNY. The features area used to have a small teeter-totter (just what it sounds like: you ride up one side and down the other) and a big one. One too many broken bones caused the big teeter to be pulled from service last year. TORC tried to make it safer, but couldn't pull it off. So the volunteers replaced it with a third skinny (a narrow plank maybe 8 inches wide running maybe 20 feet and several inches above the ground that riders can ride).

Unlike the first two, which are straight, this one is in an "S" shape.

4. LOOP 1 REROUTING. About two-tenths of a mile has been altered, mainly because of erosion.

5. NEW LOOP 6. "It's about a half mile long," says Cade. It follows the fall line -- essentially the most direct line down the mountain -- down to the lake.

"It's an intermediate to advanced trail," says Cade. "It's the hardest trail out here for sure."

Quite a boast for the grand dame of Triangle mountain biking, long regarded as the ideal place for beginners.

There goes its reputation for being easy.