What would you change if you could wave a magic wand at your trails? Do you want more trails? Do you want fun, progressive and bike-specific trails?! With an engaged and active mountain bike community, its surprising what can happen. We CAN have incredible mountain bike trails!
The first thing to realize is that most local trail advocacy groups are made up entirely of volunteers. They are not getting paid to assure you have quality trails to ride. They are not paid to spend their weekends doing trail work or securing funding or listening to you complain about what you don’t like. With community involvement, new trails, regular trail maintenance together with relationships with land managers can build incredible places for us to live and ride. Or maybe you like trails to be washed out muddy, overgrown messes that get closed to mountain bikers or to the public entirely?
If you DO NOT LIKE something about your local mountain bike community you REALLY should get involved. There’s a good chance circumstance that lead to certain trail work, lack of trail work or rerouting aren’t immediately clear. Make sure you’re fully educated before you give up or start bashing.
How to Wave a Magic Wand at your Mountain Bike Trails:
- Join and or donate. The benefits of joining your local trail advocacy group normally far exceed the cost of joining.
- Show up to trail user group meetings and sign up for newsletters to inform yourself. It’s easy to speculate and critique work if you don’t really know whats going on.
- Trail work – The amount of bodies needed for trail work never runs out. You don’t need ANY prior experience and don’t have to dig or carry heavy rocks if you don’t want. Trimming and cleaning drains are always needed.
- Help with planning and organization – There is way more behind the scenes other than trail work needed to make things happen.
- Be respectful to other trail users – You might be surprised at how feedback affects things with land managers.
A cohesive mountain bike community can make things happen to local trails that many only think are possible from a magic wand. Fairy tail mountain bike trails are possible! Downhill only, bike-only trails in National Forest or state parks – trails that have interesting features for all riding levels. Success stories of cohesive mountain bike communities in places where public lands aren’t widely available are happening.
