Director’s Report: by Greg Bettencourt

This Year - Trail Work Plans for 2009-10

Maintenance:  Our focus will be primarily on maintenance as we need to prepare existing trails for the rainy season.  In the first storm of the season we already saw damage to trails on West Cuesta Ridge, Irish Hills and MdO.

Reroutes:  In addition we will probably be building at least one reroute at MdO – on the back side of the old Ridge trail.  It is already flagged and cut in roughly.

New Trails:  We are building a cool new trail at Lopez Lake.  We just built the first sections last month and will continue to work out there to create more trails to ride. We are waiting for the state to acquire Wild Cherry Canyon.  Hopefully, that deal will be concluded in the next year.  We will have the opportunity to build some new trail in the Irish Hills when the city concludes its purchase of the Froom Ranch.  It seems likely that will happen in the fairly near future. 

Last Year - What a Year!

CCCMB’s goal at this time last year was to greatly increase our capacity to move dirt. That was necessary because, over the next few years, we’re faced with the prospect of designing and/or building 35 miles of trail, in addition to maintaining most of the multi-use trails in SLO County. 

We were remarkably successful in achieving our goal. Here’s how we did it:

• Involved a new group of dedicated and skilled people to help CCCMB get things done.

• Implemented a public relations campaign that led to articles about CCCMB in most of the print media in SLO County, along with regular press releases and thank you letters.

• Created and regularly updated a dynamite website which is full of info and easy to navigate.

• Instituted an education program that features a web-based education page, a crew leader training program, and materials for first time volunteers.

• Created a CCCMB Google email group which now has over 320 participants.

• Created a Regional Trail Crew Program where an experienced CCCMB leader organizes work at one of 9 specific trail areas, communicates with the land managers, and facilitates special workdays. 

Those improvements lead to the following record breaking results:

- CCCMB did 2,511 hours of official volunteer work.

- 288 individuals volunteered through CCCMB to do trail work.

- CCCMB helped to design, build, and open nearly 4 miles of new trail in 2008-2009.

We’ve only begun and we have MUCH more trail work to do. We really appreciate the work you did last year and hope you will join us again this year. If you worked one day last year please try to work two this coming year and if you worked two please consider working three. There is plenty to do and lots of fun to have doing it. Hope to see you on the trail.

There’s news and then there is no news.  Sometime they are the same thing.

The first 2 plus miles of trail on the Johnson Ranch will be open to the public on May 22.  We made great progress at TrailWerks on April 18 finishing all but two very difficult sections which the City and CCCMB intend to complete in the next month.  The section to be opened is the “front” loop of the trail system.  For those of you who aren’t aware, it is a huge accomplishment to complete over two miles of new trail (with 6 bridges of various size) in just 9 months.  CCCMB played a very big part in this accomplishment by spending hundreds of hours designing and laying out the trail, providing crew leaders and lots of volunteer labor.  However, we were only one part of the effort.  The City has invested many thousands of dollars for supervision, labor and materials as well as hiring the Civilian Conservation Corps for nearly two weeks of work.  The Corps did an outstanding job of constructing over a mile of trail.  In addition other volunteer groups have chipped in to a degree we have never seen before. 

In addition to the “front” loop at TrailWerks we also began construction of the “interior” trail which loops through the back of the ranch.  The City and CCCMB will continue to work on that interior 1.5 miles of trail over the next 6-8 months and plan on having the entire ranch trail system open by 2010  

When riding Elevator, please be careful to NOT disturb the erosion fencing.  The city and county are working with the pipeline construction company in ways to best minimize erosion and to accommodate trail users.  In the meantime we need to do our part.

MdO to Avila Coastal Trail – the first and by far the most important step if for the American Land Conservancy to purchase of Wild Cherry Canyon. It is the key piece of the puzzle. They are working hard to make that happen in the next few months.

Next time you go up or down Shooters check out the reconstructed Rolling Drain Dips.  After CCCMB worked up there in January the FASTA boys (after consultation) reworked the uppermost RDD’s.  Actually they transformed them.  Now they are much more fun to ride at speed, more sustainable and they way they drain water is more environmentally considerate.  Get off your bike and look at them, they are worth an inspection.

Lots of really good things are happening for trails in SLO County.  Here is the scoop on new trails: 

The increasingly popular Elevator Trail is essentially finished.  All the bridges and the switchback are completed.  Although you will have to walk your bike about 15 yards to negotiate the swath cut through the trail by the pipeline installers that inconvenience should be short lived.  We and the City are assuming they will rebuild the sections of trail they destroyed.  If not we’ll do it. 

The Coastal Trail from MdO to Avila, as we have said before, is a looooong term project.  Here is the tentative timeline we just verified with State Parks:  CCCMB will have identified a tentative route by fall 2009; All permitting will be done (we hope) by fall 2010; a Letter of Intent will be sent by State Parks to the powers that be in Sacramento by March 2011; Parks will submit an application for a trails grant for construction etc. by September 2011; Find out if we get the grant by January 20012.  Start construction sometime in 2012.  Receiving a trails grant would be fundamental (maybe essential) to this project because there might be as much as 5 miles of trail to build in really rugged terrain.  That would probably not be an effective use of volunteer labor.  So for those of you who want to ride from MdO to Avila stay fit as it will be at least 6 years before that is possible.  On a positive note., if and when State Parks does receive ownership of the properties it looks like it will be possible to ride and hike from Avila to the top of Perfumo/See Canyon.  In essence that provides access to the southern half of the route. That might be possible as early as the middle of 2010.

Johnson Ranch Trail is coming along nicely.  We’ve had great turnouts for workdays and have several including a TrailWerks planned for the fall.  Also the City is getting a lot of help from various sources including the Civilian Conservation Corps.  No one thinks we will finish the 3+ miles of new trail construction soon.  But we are all thinking it might be completed by the end of this calendar year – remember it took us 3 years to complete Hazard Peak Trail. 

I am also excited that CCCMB recently held a very successful workday on Shooters.  It is a little embarrassing to say that in 20 years we have never done erosion control work on Shooters.  Consequently for 20 years we have watched it become more eroded and degraded.  Now it has fundamentally sound waterbars the entire length of the trail to keep it ridable for at least the next 20 years.  Also, we just had over 90 hikers, Boy Scouts, equestrians and mtn. bikers working at MdO for our 22^nd Super Bowl Sunday work day.

The story begins with the fact that CCCMB has been asked to design and/or build up to 30 miles of new single-track in SLO County.  The requests have come from State Parks to identify a route for the new Coastal Trail from MdO to Avila, from SLO City to design and build trails on the Johnson Ranch & the Stenner Springs property, and SLO County to route-find for trails at Santa Margarita Lake.  Those requests posed a huge challenge because the time, effort and abilities required to meet the challenge were way beyond CCCMB’s existing resources.

In response to this challenge, CCCMB has launched a capacity building program, one that will grow its ability to build and maintain trails in SLO county.  Basically we decided to develop the organizational means to engage more volunteers and to train more leaders.  This new website is one of the key components of that program.  It is designed to engage people by providing information about CCCMB’s work as well as local trails but more importantly it is meant to be interactive, e.g. to give folks a chance to log the hours they put in doing trail work, to share info about trail problems and to learn about how to fix those problems.   In addition to this website, we are spending more time and energy on public relations and communications.  Part of that effort is more and better press releases and another part is adopting a new Googlegroup that will allow all interested parties to communicate about trail matters.  We are developing an education program by which we can train & mentor crew leaders and other volunteers so they can work skillfully and independently.  And lastly we are reorganizing how and when we do trail work by dividing county trails into regions with corresponding regional leaders and by offering opportunities to do trail work different times per month and on weekdays.

We have made remarkable progress over the last 6 months thanks to the efforts of many folks who are new to CCCMB and many energized veterans who are spending more time on trail issues than ever.  Despite this great progress we have a lot more to do and we need all the help we can get.

So please explore the website and let us know how you would like to be involved.