We think that a community survey could help us figure out how this trail will encourage more folks to ride the trail. We also want to take an opportunity to figure out who you are and how MBOSC can serve you.

For the purposes of the grant we would like to figure out:

• The proportion of respondents who are beginner / advanced beginner riders
• How often these beginner / adv-beginner riders who say they’d ride more if there were more trails appropriate to their ability
• The proportion of respondents who are parents and who indicate that their kids would mountain bike more if there were trails appropriate for them.

Please distribute this survey as widely as possible. Even to (or especially to) the folks who have tried mountain biking and were discouraged. The objective is to serve folks interested in mountain biking but can’t find trails or feel that our current trails are too advanced for their skill levels.

We will probably issue another survey next year after the Pogonip trail has been completed.

Thanks for your help!

MBOSC President Mark Davidson was honored by Santa Cruz NEXT in recognition for his work on mountain bike advocacy in Santa Cruz County.

This NEXTie award was an opportunity to bring awareness of local mountain biking and advocacy to a larger audience.

As part of the event, the Santa Cruz NEXT honorees were featured in the Good Times and a professionally produced profile video was made for each recipient. Mark’s profile video discusses the health and economic benefits of mountain biking and features kids and the local bike industry – like Ibis and Caletti Cycles.

The event itself at the Museum of Art and History was a pretty swank affair. Good food, good beer and good looking people.

Santa Cruz is primarily known as a surfer town. This NEXTie award recognized of the importance of mountain biking to the local community. This is one more step at bringing mountain biking out of the closet.

Check out our new website and “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

We are featuring the Bell Super Enduro at Demo – a physically challenging multi-stage race traveling a distance of 25+ miles with over 5000 ft of climbing over 6 hours. The Enduro race format is popular in Europe and is starting to take hold in North America. It represents an exciting evolution of mountain bike racing that reflects how we ride in the forest with our friends. This Super Enduro will be the first legally sanctioned race at Soquel Demonstration State Forest!

There are limited entries to this race and we are accepting applications for the Bell Super Enduro at Demo until February 17, 2012. Please submit your application!

Also on the schedule are popular events from last year such as: 831 Jump Contest, Pump Track Pandemonium and the Specialized/Scotts Valley Cycle Sport Short Track. We will also feature Bike Skills Clinics, the WTB All Mountain Challenge (Pump, Shred, and Endure), and the Specialized/Scotts Valley Cycle Sport Kids’ Rodeo.

We have openings for sponsorships and volunteers. Please contact us if you are interested.

The mission of the SCMBF is to celebrate mountain biking in Santa Cruz County by bringing people together to participate and spectate in competitive and recreational mountain bike events, and a festival to bring the community together to advocate an active outdoor lifestyle and promote the world class mountain biking facilities and riders in Santa Cruz County.

Here is a link to our press release.

Please help us spread the word about our awesome festival!

Skyline Trail assessment with Hilride May 2007

We are very close to completion and estimate only 1-2 more weeks. Even though winter has been extremely mild, the rain we have received has created some very soft conditions at locations where trail realignments were constructed to reduce grades or improve sight distance. Because of this there has been difficultly getting good soil compaction at these locations. We know this trail is going to get heavy use once opened, so we have postponed the opening date to March 23, 2012, to allow for more seasoning of the trail.

Thanks again for your generous donations that paid for bridges, retainer wall lumber, rock, new trail signage, and staff time for technical oversight of the project.

The key take away is that the opening date will be March 23, 2012. Please do not ride on the trail before then.

There had been some discussion about partnering with ROMP for an opening ceremony – which would be nice. MBOSC leadership is pegged with the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival and the Pogonip Multi-Use Trail. We have a couple of folks who are interested in helping out and we are targeting May or June. If you want to help out then let us know and we can put you in touch with other interested parties.

The funds for this particular project came out of the mbosc general fund since we did not hold a fund raiser specifically for this project. Thank you all for your donations and support for mbosc over the years!

You can renew your membership, join or donate to help replenish those funds. We are an all volunteer 501(c)3 organization so consider having your employer matching your donation if they provide such a program.

This process started with a November 2006 request from MBOSC to convert limited use trails in Santa Cruz County to multi-use. Hilride visited in May 2007 to provide an assessment of the Skyline Trail in Castle Rock. Since then we have submitted comments into the Big Basin General plan and the Castle Rock Trail plan.

The Skyline Trail represents the first legal single-track for mountain bikes opened in Santa Cruz County since the U-Con trail in 1999. There will be more miles of legal single track opened this year.

Thanks you once again for your support!

The Celery Tree along the Pogonip multi-use trail

The next event related is that it the proposal/study will be presented to the Parks and Recreation Commission Special Meeting Monday March 5th 4 pm at City Hall.

If all goes well then it will be off to City Council shortly afterwards.

Please consider attending the March 5th meeting to show your support. Some of us plan to attend and present the petition and speak on behalf of the mountain biking community. You don’t have to speak but it would be great to have a strong showing of supporters. The opponents are bringing their supporters so we should as well. This may be considered a dress rehearsal for the City Council meeting.

The Pogonip multi-use trail support petition has been going well but we are stalling in the numbers of new signers recently. If you haven’t signed the petition yet then please do so. Signing the petition is an easy, effective and passive way to express support for this trail.

If you work for a bike shop or the local bike industry then please encourage your employees and customers to sign. If you work for a local business that supports the trail then please consider soliciting your employees to sign the petition and attend the meetings.

Consider printing a Pogonip petition poster and hanging at your place of business and local trail heads.

A small amount of effort will yield huge dividends! Your reward will be super sweet new single track by this fall – or earlier!

After we get though this political process the fun part begins: constructing the trail!

Raffling off the Santa Cruz Carbon Nomad was a huge highlight of the year

2011 was another year where Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz knocked it out of the park! Since 2007, the club membership and participation, fundraising, events and activities have been growing. Our ability to raise funds, engage volunteers, land managers and decision makers really broke through this year.

First of all: Thank you to the volunteers, attendees and donors who have made MBoSC and our events so successful! It’s so rewarding to all of us to see the community come together on a shared passion for the local dirt. We have earned a great reputation as an organization who are easy to work with and can get things done. We are making progress toward getting more bike access in public lands.

Some of our larger accomplishments this year…

• In March the IMBA Trail Care Crew trained 40 of us on sustainable trail building techniques and we practiced it on the Zane Gray trail in Wilder Ranch. Event weekend included a diverse crowd of land managers, trail builders and riders. Support from the bike industry and local shops. It was a very productive visit.
• The Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival was a knockout and exceeded our wildest expectations. This community supports mountain bike events! Thanks to volunteers and supporters like you! We had well over 2000 attendees and raised $16K towards Aptos bike parks. We intend to hold the 3rd Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival April 4-15, 2012 in Aptos. It should be a great show. You’ll enjoy it.
• At the Sea Otter Classic in April we raffled off a Santa Cruz Carbon Nomad and raised $11K for the Pogonip multi-use trail.
• We helped with the XTerra event in Wilder Ranch with course design, marking and volunteer course marshals. It was a great way to demonstrate the Santa Cruz experience to an international audience.
• This summer we helped launch Trips for Kids Santa Cruz. T4KSC is committed to giving at-risk youth the experience of mountain biking by providing the equipment, transportation, moral support and skills instruction to help kids discover our sport. This is a great cause to support. Consider donating time or money to this cause.
• In August mbosc went to Tahoe to do trail work with other northern California clubs. There was another trip to Downieville to ride and enjoy the trails.
• In August, we partnered with “Take Back Santa Cruz” on a Pogonip cleanup event. About 40 of us pulled out 15 yards of trash and waste. Folks got to see first hand the type of trail experience we’ll get.
• The Pogonip Multi-Use trail was progressing. After a brief setback from the resignation of Park Superintendent Steve Hammack, new Park Superintendent Mauro Garcia took on the project and moved forward. We completed the public comment period for the environmental review and will be heading the Parks Commission and then to City Council in Q1 2012.
• We donated $2,500 to State Parks to help with the conversion of a hiking only Skyline Trail in Castle Rock to multi-use. This trail is currently in construction and will be ready by the end of January.

In between we rode together, ate together and had profound discussions over pitchers of beer around Santa Cruz, Aptos, Soquel, Monterey and other places in the great state of California!

2012 is going to be a year of opportunity. Our focus on the first part of the year will be the Pogonip multi-use trail, raising funds with the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival and a custom Caletti bike raffle at the Sea Otter Classic. The second half of the year we are planning to implement the Pogonip multi-use trail, participate in the Soquel Demo State Forest trail plan and work on the Enchanted Loop reroute in Wilder Ranch. The 14,000 acres around Davenport represented by Coast Dairies/CEMEX properties will start to appear on our radar again. We are a volunteer organization and are looking for your help to accomplish our goals. Please consider being a member, donor and/or volunteer some of your time.

We live interesting times. The fundamentals of the economy is being questioned. The status quo is challenged and a new generation is rising to lead the path to a sustainable existence. Mountain bikers have demonstrated qualities that can help ease us through some of our local issues to create a bold new future for our community.

Have a healthy, happy and prosperous 2012! See you on the trails!

Pogonip Multi-Use Trail Proposal

The Santa Cruz Parks department has proposed a 1.5 mile single track multi-use trail which would connect Golf Club Drive to the U-Con trail at Rincon Road. This scenic family and beginner friendly trail will connect downtown Santa Cruz to Upper Campus and will be a much more pleasant experience than riding along Hwy 9, the train tracks or parking at the Rincon Parking lot.

The approval of the Pogonip mutli-use trail will be on the Santa Cruz City Council agenda in early 2012. This trail was proposed as a long term solution to the problems of transient camping and heroin dealing that had taken root in the area. There is an organized opposition to this solution who fundamentally oppose bikes on trails.

This trail is the most important issue for the long term expansion of legitimate mountain biking in Santa Cruz County.

Here is how you can help

Please help us demonstrate the social need for this trail by signing the petition.

Consider printing and distributing this poster in support of the Pogonip Multi-Use Trail.

MBOSC will not use the information gathered from the petition for any other purpose than for the support of the Pogonip multi-use trail. We respect your privacy and we will not share your personal information with any third parties. You may opt into being informed about this issue only.

Team MBOSC for bike build 2011

On a sunny Saturday in early December 850 volunteers came together under one roof in San Jose for the Turning Wheels for Kids bike build. We donated our time, skills and money to provide kids with a Christmas gift that we hope will lead to a lifetime of good health and fitness.

The mission of Turning Wheels for Kids is to provide children with brand new bikes to encourage life long habits of exercise and outdoor activity. Turning Wheels for Kids started in 2003 by Susan Runsvold and is a true community gem. The original goal was to build and distribute bikes to underprivileged children at Christmas but the mission has expanded to provide instruction to help kids maintain their bikes and to teach kids to ride their bikes safely on the roads. If we can teach every kid to love the bicycle and the joy of riding, then the world has a better future.

MBOSC supports the mission of Turning Wheels for Kids and have participated in the charity bike build since 2006. This year we had a team of 9 volunteers and built 24 of the 2400 bikes. Over the years the quality of donated bikes have increased and we are giving kids the bikes they want – which includes mountain bikes, BMX bikes and beach cruisers. These new bikes will be donated to Bay Area and Northern California charities and individuals and will include helmets and locks.

This event is an excellent demonstration of how bike groups and businesses in the Bay Area/Northern California come together. Some bike related organizations who participated include ROMP, MBOSC, Vello Girls, Team Wrong Way, MTBR.com, Fox Racing Shox and Specialized.

Thanks to Alan Strahsberg for stepping up to organize team MBOSC.

Some other accounts of this years event:

* An excellent event writeup with photos on mtbr.com.
* Erik – member of Team MBOSC’s event writeup
* Article in the Mercury News about TWFK 2011

This post is going to address the misinformation and provide the facts about this proposal.

Misinformation: This trail was proposed by the mountain biking community

Fact: The Parks and Recreation Department with the support of the Fire Department and the Police Department proposed the construction of the Pogonip MUT for the following reasons: increasing access to the east side of the park and as a way to mitigate the negative activity in the area by displacing it with positive activity.

Currently, 150 acres of the east side of the Pogonip is currently closed to the public. The MUT is a mechanism for which it can be open to the public again. MBoSC and the mountain biking community completely supports this trail and will provide financial support, physical support (trail design and construction) and political support for the implementation of this trail.

Misinformation: Motorcycles will be able to use this trail.

Fact: There has never been a proposal for motorized vehicles to use this trail. The threat of motorized access was used to incite opposition to this trail.

Misinformation: The proposed multi-use trail will be paved.

Fact: Proposing a paved trail through the Pogonip has never come up for consideration in the context of the MUT. Mountain bikers do not advocate for paved trails in forests. Period. We enjoy natural surface trails. We believe that there has been some confusion with the proposed Arana Gulch trail – which is to be paved.

The multi-use trail opponents at Pogonipwatch.org has a series of points used to support their opposition to this trail. The rest of this post will address these points by presenting Pogonip Watch points in block quote text and our counter points are below them.

I urge the Council to direct City staff to work instead with the County of Santa Cruz to explore the superior route of a Rail Trail—open to bicyclists and pedestrians—adjacent to the Big Trees Railroad tracks from Harvey West Park through the Pogonip.

The Big Trees alternate route is a non-starter which will be explained in detail later in this post. The proposal of a rail trail is expensive, will need to be negotiated with several agencies, will still carry a risk for trail users and Big Trees management already said no to the request. The environmental review and trail plan already addressed this point on page 12.

The Pogonip multi-use trail is far superior to a proposed rail trail. The funds for the environmental study has been released and spent on a very comprehensive document. Money and volunteers have been recruited for the construction of the trail. All we are waiting for is the approval from the City Council and we can have this trail completed by the summer. An adjacent rail trail will need to be negotiated with Big Trees, will be costly (where is the money?) and doesn’t have the same level of support.

Drug activity in the Pogonip has been successfully eradicated owing to the efforts of city police and park rangers, and the area cleaned up, with additional help from community groups. According to park rangers, no arrests of those involved in drug activity have been made for the past six months. The primary reason for constructing the proposed “multi-use” trail (to reduce drug activity) has gone away. There is no reason to expect it to resurface if our police, rangers and community groups keep up the good work.

The primary motivation for the trail – according to the environmental review published by the Parks Department – is to increase public access to inspire residents and visitors to learn more about resource management and environmental stewardship. The secondary objective is to displace negative activity with legitimate public use.

Drug activity has been eradicated due to the ongoing engagement by Police and Rangers – which is an expensive use of City resources. This is not a long term cost effective solution given the state of city budgets. The transients/drug activity will come back if a long term solution is not found – like the MUT.

The MUT implementation will be largely financed and constructed with community involvement. The construction will be a great opportunity to bring the community together for a cause and will provide an excellent recreational and economic resource for the city at a very low cost while providing the long term solution for that area. This is a win win for the city and will represent a really high return on a small investment.

The U-Con trail (in the Pogonip!) is a case study for how a MUT drove out negative activity and created a great resource for the City.

The proposed “multi-use” trail (see map) as currently laid out by Parks staff working with Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz, comes within 50 feet of an existing pedestrian-only trail (the Fern Trail) and would co-exist with another currently existing pedestrian-only trail (the Lower Meadow Trail). This would encourage bicyclists to stray onto these and other pedestrian-only trails in the Pogonip.

This portion of the Fern trail follows a fall line and exceeds 25% in several locations. Several ruts and small gullies have formed on the former alignment that follows an old ranch road. A short reroute around the old road to east also follows the fall line and is beginning to erode. MBoSC has proposed a re-alignment of the Fern trail as part of the construction of the MUT in order to create a sustainable grade (generally around 10%) and out of view of the MUT. The Fern trail realignment has several benefits: it will provide a nicer experience; greater separation between the Fern Trail and the MUT; eliminate the erosion of an unsustainable trail; and will eliminate transient campers – which were evident during the survey. Furthermore, the forest type and habitat is similar to the study area and will not require any additional environmental review.

The proposed Fern trail realignment will continue to be pedestrian only. It’s very doubtful that mountain bikers will be encouraged to ride the Fern trail. The MUT will be a purposely built recreational trail that will completely satisfy trail users.

A rail trail adjacent to the Big Trees Railroad tracks would start from Encinal Street in Harvey West Park and run northward 1.5 miles to the southern end of the rail trestle just south of the crossing of Highway 9 by the rail tracks. Many bicyclists (approximately 50 per day) now make use of an ad-hoc path adjacent to the tracks, which is hazardous, illegal, and presents a liability to Big Trees Railroad.

We agree that it’s hazardous, illegal and presents a liability. Point taken. Cyclists know this but are willing to take these risks anyway since this is preferable and safer than Hwy 9.

The fact that 50 bikes/day (their numbers) use the tracks demonstrates a social need for a way for bicyclists to travel parallel to the tracks instead of using Hwy 9.

A safer and adequately surfaced bicycle and pedestrian path would travel along the west (rather than the east as the ad-hoc path does) side of the tracks. Such construction was analyzed in detail in a 2006 engineering study, and is quite feasible. Also such a rail trail could provide a good connection to the University Connector (U-CON) Trail through the upper Pogonip up to UCSC. A rail trail along this southern 1.5 miles would also constitute the first segment of a much-desired bicycle and pedestrian route linking Santa Cruz with Felton.

The 2006 SLV Trail Feasibility Study presented four alternative routes from Santa Cruz to Felton. The rail trail was the one with the greatest support among bike advocates but was not the most economically or feasible route. The study concluded:

“the Railroad Route and the southern portion of Highway 9 from Santa Cruz to Felton were deemed by the County Public Works Department, as the responsible local agency, to be economically impractical for the department to improve as connecting bicycle and pedestrian routes. The extremely high costs of the improvements are associated with the severe physical, operational and environmental constraints, including potential impact on natural resources in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. In addition to the design, environmental review and construction costs accounted for in the cost estimates, use of the railroad right-of-way would entail access acquisition costs that could potentially be significant.”

Later in that document it states that the costs of the 5.5 mile rail trail from Santa Cruz to Felton will be about $25.6 million or about $4.9 million per mile. Even if only 1.5 miles of the rail trail was built it would still be about $7.5 million – money that the City, State or Federal doesn’t really have.

The study presents the Plymouth-Sims/Graham Hill Road route as the most feasible connection from Santa Cruz to Felton and even then the costs are still significant – $2.7 million per mile.

In contrast, the MUT will be largely built and financed by the community. The costs would be in the tens of thousands of dollars and MBoSC has already raised $11 K towards the construction of the trail and we have a volunteer labor force trained in sustainable trail building techniques who can construct this trail.

A rail trail along the tracks would not require amendment of the 1998 Pogonip Master Plan, unlike for the proposed “multi-use” trail.

The Parks Department Mitigated Negative Declaration includes a master plan amendment and has been paid for and completed with the $25K funds approved by the City last year. It’s already done.

The Pogonip Greenbelt is one of the few public natural areas in the county where bicycle use is strictly limited (to the existing U-CON and Cowell Connector trails). The proposed “multi-use” trail would introduce bicycles into the sensitive Redwood Creek drainage—one of the most beautiful areas of the Pogonip. It is also questionable whether the proposed trail will be truly “multi-use”.

There are many places in the county where bikes are excluded outright and severely limited in other places in the County. With the exception of Wilder Ranch State Park mountain bikes are mostly limited to dirt roads. Mountain bikers are the largest growing constituency of trail users in the past two decades yet the number of trails authorized for mountain biking has not kept pace.

There seems to be a pattern of local opposition to legitimate mountain bike access on trails. When a proposal for legitimate bike access goes through the public process but the outcome is not what the NIMBYs want then they will file a lawsuit against the public agency. We should trust that our local land managers know and understand the best ways to manage access to the natural resources. They should not be second guessed by these NIMBYs.

Redwood Creek beautiful but is is hardly sensitive. It takes quite a beating from the winter storms every year and manages to survive quite well. Bike are zero emission vehicles and do not leave any trace from using the trail. The MUT will be built using state of the art sustainable trail designs which will minimize the impact from all users. There should be no concerns about erosion and siltation into the creek. Furthermore, the secondary design objective is to minimize trail conflict by providing choke points (speed reducers) and long sight lines.

The negative activity related to transient camping and drug activity that has been escalating over the past decade or so is the real environmental issue impacting the Pogonip. Trees have been cut and burned for firewood, garbage is strewn around and human and drug waste has left behind. This detrimental activity has been allowed to occur over decades and led to the closure of 150 acres of the park in 2009. How can these “stewards” prefer the status quo over healthy family friendly activities?

The Redwood creek watershed (a.k.a “Heroin Hill”) feeds the San Lorenzo river at about 1/2 mile from the Tait Street inlet where the city of Santa Cruz gets 50% of its fresh water. Having transients camping, crapping, doing their drugs, leaving their needles and bloody rags in this watershed compromises our water supply and transports needles and garbage from the San Lorenzo river to our beaches. If we cant protect our own fresh water from contamination then what is the point of environmental stewardship?

This isn’t a new problem. We read all the documents related to the 1998 Pogonip general plan process and bike access to trails was definitely the overwhelming concern of the local “environmental stewards”. There was a couple of comments concerning the transient camping problem but they were not addressed. The environmental problems of transient camping and drug activity were allowed to fester and grow since then. However, as soon as a proposal to allow bike access that the “Friends of the Pogonip” and the local Sierra Club decided to become active again to oppose this plan.

The Friends of the Pogonip may have had good intensions for protecting the Pogonip during the acquisition phase but their stewardship of this property since then has been less than optimal. Many of the proposals in the Pogonip Master Plan remain un-implemented. Perhaps it’s time to bring more stewards on board. If we get the Pogonip Multi-Use trail then the mountain biking community will not allow those environmental problems to take root again.