Category: Advocacy

August 10 DMBTA Board Meeting Agenda

1. Admin
   1. Insurance (10 minutes – Monte)
      1. Million dollar policy for $640
      2. Board members and members $450
   2. Subchapter Finance Reporting (5 minutes – Bonnie/Lukas)
      1. Subchapters will have own accounts
      2. Books will be reported to DMBTA book keeper quarterly
   3. Elections (10 minutes – Group)
      1. Aiden is new board member
      2. Lukas is up for another two years.
      3. Bonnie is up for another two years as treasurer.
2. Build
   1. Wire Mesa Update (5 minutes – Kevin)
      1. On track for this
      2. Arch sites only hold up, but nothing we can’t route around
   2. Monkey Trail Day (10 minutes – Lukas/Kevin)
      1. 1 hour class followed by trail day
      2. Patrick Kell has committed to being here and teaching class
      3. Trail day on Webb Hill
      4. Back up Quail loop
      5. Tonequint School
      6. Move to second week in November
   3. Webb Hill (5 minutes – Lukas)
      1. Owned by City of St. George
      2. Waiting for MOU
      3. Could start within a week
      4. Signs numbered to help with navigation/rescue
      5. City to pay for signs
   4. SCRR (1 minute – Lukas)
      1. Ready to go
      2. Motorized could be an issue
      3. Great back up if Wire Mesa stalls
      4. Good venue when Green Valley goes away
   5. Cedar City Update (TBD)
      1. Thunderbird Gardens is built – needs touch up
      2. Parking lot has been graded
      3. Road graded
      4. Needs trailhead
      5. IMBA to be here 20th – 22nd
   6. Kanab Update (5 minutes – Chris)
      1. Joey Klein came in to do master plan for the area
      2. Public input
      3. Scouting
      4. Final master plan to be finalized soon
      5. 40-70 miles of trail
      6. Won’t be easy
      7. Cliffs and sand
   7. Trail building machine
      1. To bring in flow trail

3. Maintain
   1. Trail Stewards (10 minutes – Lukas)
      1. ACE Trail Training Day
      2. Flying Monkeys Trail Day
      3. Nominations of possible leaders
   2. Maintenance by Federal Agencies (5 minutes – Kevin)
      1. Where is the funding coming from for maintenance
      2. Fed paid trail crews in certain areas
      3. As use goes up, maintenance will most likely exceed our abilities
      4. Raffle to get to paint Goose
   3. Monthly trail days (5 minutes – Group)
      1. Kevin and Monte to do a few
      2. Goose dots
4. Ride
   1. Festivals/DMBTA movie night
      1. Rampage
      2. Quarterly social event
      3. Coasters
      4. Georgefest – sell t-shirts
      5. Camp Lynda
   2. T-shirts Sales
      1. Inventory Update (1 minute – Bonnie) 5 wmns left
         1. 5 wmns left
         2. A lot of smalls left in the mens
      2. Current budget update (2 minutes – Bonnie)

3. Monthly Group Rides (5 minutes – Group)
4. Stickers

The Dixie Mountain Bike Trails Association in conjunction with the BLM (and some serious volunteer help) was able to get two new trails constructed in the Hurricane Cliffs Trail Network.

There were two objectives that we wanted to accomplish with the construction of these trails. First, we wanted to address the issue of getting to the Upper JEM Trailhead. Up until now, one had to ride the big loop (Goulds, Hurricane Rim or some variation) or pedal up the heavily trafficked Sheep Bridge Road. Second, there is a need for easy trails in Southern Utah. We here the request from many getting into mountain biking and even more from folks who would like to introduce friends and families to the sport, but don’t feel comfortable taking them on many of our other trails.

Our first objective was accomplished with Dead Ringer. Dead Ringer travels from the JEM up to the Upper JEM Trailhead via a bench cut trail that maintains a consistently mellow grade. This means that you can climb back to the trailhead easily and completely on singletrack. This trail also adds a beginner level way to get down from the trailhead as it avoids all of the drops and with the easy grade, does not have any of the technical challenges that the Upper JEM does.

And then there’s More Cow Bell. As Kevin Christopherson, Quentin Morrisette and Bill Bergeron, amongst a few others, began to walk the area and find the exact course for the trail they found a way to incorporate a beginner loop without dropping off of the mesa. More Cow Bell is that loop. Coming off of Dead Ringer, it follows the rim offering splendid views and then loops back on itself or connects back to the JEM right above the JEM Drop. There is very little elevation change, but what is there is nicely utilized to create a fun, fast trail that would be great for beginners.

Below is a map of the currently constructed trails.

What you are looking at… The upper dot (in the map, this is lower in elevation on the trail) is the junction of JEM, Goosebumps and Dead Ringer. The lower dot is the junction of Dead Ringer and More Cow Bell. More Cow Bell is the inner loop. The line on the right is the JEM. The line coming in from 59 is the dirt road the tees with JEM to the right and Dead Ringer to the left. Map courtesy of Red Rock Bicycle.

Construction of these trails would not have happened this fall without the countless hours of volunteer work put in by DMBTA board members and our local trail experts. Kevin Christopherson, DMBTA board member, wrote the EA that was reviewed and accepted by the BLM. Having Kevin write the EA sped the process up for building this trail by a year.

The original lines drawn on paper were put there by Quentin and DJ Morisette of Over the Edge in Hurricane. Both helped with flagging and design of the exact alignment spending hours tying ribbons to bushes and putting pin flags in the ground. Bill Bergeron put in countless hours working and reworking the route. Bill was also instrumental in the design of Goosebumps and Cryptobionic from last year.

The BLM provided the bulk of the manual labor paying for the ACE crew to come in and construct the majority of the trail. With the amount of rock work and bench cutting that was needed for Dead Ringer, they weren’t able to quite get the entire trail finished.

As you can see from the above photos, a few locals went out and did the back breaking work that was left to finish the trail. Without Bill Bergeron, Brian Herreweyers, Fred and Regina Pagles this trail would still not be finished. We are lucky in Southern Utah to have such passionate and willing individuals in the mountain biking community.

Luckily, we have some great new trails but we aren’t finished yet. There is a section ready for construction and the ACE crew will be returning in the next few weeks to put in about 4 more miles.

With this project wrapping up, we have already moved on to our next one. With the amount of work and time that these trails take to build, we can use all the help we can get. Join up here, http://dmbta.org/join/membership/.

The Dixie Mountain Bike Trail Association began working with the City of St. George almost nine months ago with the objective of bringing a mountain bike skills park to Southern Utah. With an incredible amount of help from Assistant City Manager Marc Mortenson, meetings were held and slowly the key decision makers caught the vision and value of such a facility in St. George. This left funding as the biggest obstacle.

This past November the Recreation Arts and Parks Tax was on the ballet for Washington County. We made known at that time via our Facebook page that if passed, this tax would fund the construction of the bike park. It was close, but the measure was successful. With the passage of the RAP Tax, the obstacle of money has been overcome.

The city has identified six locations that they feel would work for a bike park based on infrastructure, needed acreage and proximity to the population base. The next step in the process is identifying the best location for the park.

This past week, we spent some time viewing one of the sites off of Sunset Boulevard. It has the needed grades, the size, is located within the city limits and is designated as open space for recreational use. There is also enough acreage that a bike park and some beginner singletrack could be built to compliment the skills park.

We’re excited about the prospects of getting a place for people to develop the skills they need to ride the more difficult trails in the area. We will be working hard to ensure that this project makes it to fruition and promise to keep you all in the loop as thing progress.

More pics of this site.

With the recent changes the DMBTA has seen, we saw an opportunity to re-think and re-focus what it is we hope to achieve as an organization.

As we looked back upon the couple of years that the group has existed, we can see the rallying of the troops around the announcement and public comment period of the BLM’s Travel Management Plan. The mountain biking community came to life as soon as it was known that we could lose, or possibly gain some trails. And thus the
DMBTA were born.

Since that time we have grown, our relationship with land managers has continued to mature and we are more organized. We became a Charter Chapter of IMBA last year and with the strength of that international organization behind us, we hope to be able to make Southern Utah an even better place to ride.

In our last meeting, there were a lot of ideas thrown around about what we wanted to accomplish. In the end, everyone agreed that it comes back to trails. Without ’em, we have no where to ride. And thus it was settled, our focus has been and will always be trails; Building, Maintaining and Riding.