Tribute Trail Construction

Today, I joined other Land Trust volunteers to work on a new portion of the Tribute Trail in Nevada City. This section traverses a beautiful forest on city-owned land near the sewage treatment plant on the south side of Deer Creek. This is a very exciting project which will establish important new singletrack that you can access from downtown.

Today's work focused on rock cribbing and establishing a berm on a formerly tight switchback. We harvested rock from the immediate area to build up the downhill side of the trailbed, which occurs on a steep sideslope.

The volunteers are wonderful group of skilled, enthusiastic people who contribute regularly to these trail building events. Sarah Frietas and others focused on widening the radius of the turn to accomodate cyclists. I peeled off to work on a choke point to prevent skidding. Bill Haire led an effort down trail to build the cribbing. It was very collaborative process and I thank Bill Haire for organizing this.

The trail will see some mechanized construction in the near future. The Land Trust has hired Bob Hale, a licensed, insured mini excavator operator who has helped build other local trails.

I look forward to contributing to future Land Trust trail building days. Here are some pictures; unfortunately, some of them are blurry, as trail dirt found its way on to my iPhone lens:

Pictures

Land Trust or Bust

As many of you know, I recently transitioned my trail advocacy efforts from BONC to the Bear Yuba Land Trust. I've had a good long run with BONC since joining the organization in 1999. But 13 years is a long time to be invested primarily with one non-profit, so I am excited about this new direction.

In this time, I served as BONC member, vice president, president, chair and director. I feel proud about what we've accomplished in this time, especially in raising BONC's strategic partnerships with other important entities, such as the Tahoe National Forest, BLM, Land Trust and others. For a full list of BONC accomplishments, please visit http://bonc.org/accomplishments

My future plan is to devote much of my time to Land Trust trail projects. Frequent readers of this blog have long heard me extoll the virtues of Land Trust trail endeavors; BYLT continues to be the premier creator of trails in our greater area. They've planned trail projects for every part of the county, involving hundreds of miles of trails. And I want to help make these trails happen. But I won't forget my mountain bike roots, as I'll continue to advocate for bicycle access and features on area trails.

Look for me to be a fixture on Land Trust projects in the future. I want help them hire contractors, plan and design trails, you name it. I'll be sure to invite BONCers to participate in these projects and support the Bear Yuba Land Trust. See you on the trail!

PS. Be sure to see the latest BYLT newsletter for my article about BONC trailwork on the Hirschman Trail.