Written by Colin Marthaller, Stewardship Director & Quartermaster ([email protected])
The trails at Sandy Ridge see a very high level of traffic throughout every year. This is especially noticeable over the past year and a half. Right on the heels of our (NWTA) formal Volunteer Stewardship Agreement with the BLM (more info here), 24 volunteers came together on October 16th to give the trails some much-needed maintenance and improvements.
Lower Hide & Seek is the primary route down to the parking lot for most riders. It sees the most traffic of any trail in the system. The uphill connector trail from the bridge to the start of Lower H&S is one such section that has needed maintenance and tread improvements for quite some time. Since the addition of Johnny Royale, this section is also now bi-directional. The majority of the volunteer efforts on this day went into rebuilding the tread surface in this section to better hold up to the high traffic use.
Additionally, thanks to our new agreement and the result of a recent land swap, we are now official stewards of Little Monkey and TNT. With funds from the recent Revel Bike Drawing, we brought Sasquatch Trails to fine-tune Little Monkey. Some of the volunteers assisted in the finishing work needed as a result of the machine work. Little Monkey will remain closed during this time of the rework. Please respect the closure for the safety of riders and the trail builders.
Many thanks to all our fantastic volunteers!
As we look ahead to this fall build season, the focus is on getting Lower Hide & Seek back into shape and completing the refresh on Little Monkey. If you are interested in helping with these trails, please sign up for our next Dig Day on October 30th (here). There will be additional Dig Days in November as well. So keep an eye out on our website and social media.
As always, please email [email protected] with any questions.