Written by Bob Carey, TSI Instructor
The Cascade Locks International Mountain Bike trail (CLIMB) has been a long-time vision of Andy Jansky. If you don’t know Andy personally, you have likely biked somewhere he has been involved directly or indirectly. Andy is the cornerstone of stakeholder collaboration for bike access development for NWTA.
Andy and The Port of Cascade Locks, the US Forest Service, and the Gorge Land managers have been working on approval of a bike trail network with front door bike access from Cascade Locks for some time now.
This past weekend we had the second opportunity of many to put shovel to stone in the Gorge to bring this idea to life.
Our first project addressed critical drainage issues, armoring creek crossings, recovering an abandoned section of trail, bench recovery, and brushing on the Gorge trail 400. The Gorge 400 is a 4-mile intermediate-level trail open to mountain biking.
This last weekend’s success was led by Bob Carey, an NWTA TSI instructor, who planned the work and coordinated with our excellent crew leaders, Paul Hobson, Andy Crump, Charles Kim, Owen Rodabaugh, and Matt Novak. The team of twenty-two volunteers combined seasoned trail work veterans and several people new to trail work.
NWTA welcomes anyone willing to pick up a shovel to help out and offers instruction if needed. The weekend’s highlight was the free camping at the Wyeth group site, courtesy of USFS. What a fantastic camp area provided as a thank you for our work. Big sites, clean bathrooms, and unlimited firewood for a nice campfire. It was a pleasure on the smiling faces of all involved to be part of a big group event like this. We also want to thank Hopworks Urban Brewery for their gracious beer donation for the event.
weekend will combine a bike ride, trail work, and a BBQ. We may continue some other traditions that weekend, but only if you sign up early and let us know how you can help.
