2019-2020 Trail Work Season Recap

Before we hop into the volunteer contributions from this trailwork season, we first want to introduce you to the folks that are out working hard on the trails every day. This year we grew our Trail Crew staff by three. Please give a warm welcome to Lyn, Devon and Chris. Lyn, who is originally from Virginia, is our new Construction Manager. He has worked in professional construction for over 38 years and has volunteered with us for a handful as well. Next up is Devon, or as we like to call him, Dev Dog. Devon is originally from Santa Barbara but moved to the Bay Area after graduating with a degree in Environmental Management and Protection, making him the perfect sustainability guide and Trails Project Lead. Finally, please give a warm welcome to our Trails Intern, Chris. Before coming to MBOSC, Chris worked as a bike mechanic and has over 13 years of trailbuilding experience. While we brought on a few new faces for trailwork this year, we're lucky to also have MBOSC veteran Trails Specialists Jacob, Pete and Bruce put their shovels in the dirt every day. The MBOSC Trail Crew, shown below, not only maintain and build across the County and beyond, but they also support many of our volunteer events. Cheers to this fantastic team! We’re grateful to have such an amazing crew out on our trails.

The MBOSC Trail Crew began an exciting project this year in a whole new area! MBOSC was contracted by the City of Saratoga to build the Saratoga to Sanborn portion of the upcoming Saratoga to the Skyline Trail. We feel proud that the City of Saratoga saw our ability to build world-class trails and knew we were the ones for the job. We’re continuing to work over there, currently focusing on building large rock retaining walls. We’re hoping to finish up this project in fall 2020! Want to learn more? Check out the Saratoga to the Skyline Trail protect page, here.

The Trail Crew has also continued working out in East Glenwood Open Space Preserve. They’ve finished 3 miles of trail and are looking forward to the grand opening. We are also excited to head back out to this location to build a 44’ bridge this summer.

We are thrilled to have completed our 2019-2020 trail season. Our trailwork season ran from June 1st of 2019 to May 31st of 2020, and despite a COVID-19 shutdown, we had 458 unique volunteers complete a total of 5,236 hours of work!

In May of 2019, we finished the new West Engelsmans Reroute, and since it’s opening we’ve seen a dramatic increase in use! We saw a need for maintenance on this trail and used our Student’s Dig Day hosted by Another Bike Shop to fix it up a bit. We had 30 students from across the county come out on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and do 136 hours of work. These students ranged from elementary students all the way to college students. Regardless of age, they all cleared drains and put more rock armoring down on soft, vulnerable patches of trail.

One of, if not our biggest, accomplishment this year was the completion of Sawpit Trail Reroute in Soquel Demonstration State Forest, sponsored by Santa Cruz Bicycles. We had 257 volunteers do 1,856 hours of work on this trail, bringing it from just flags in the ground and tree markers to fully benched, renaturalized trail with 5 large bridges! We were able to do this work by hosting two Dig Days on this trail and four months of open volunteer days. This loamy trail starts at the beginning of the old Sawpit Trail and crosses through the forest, moving from dirt switchbacks to a lower rock garden. To read the full recap and see the new trail click, here! To learn more about the project and our partnership with CAL FIRE click, here.

This year we hosted two Dig Days in Pogonip. The first one we hosted was on Emma McCrary Trail, and was generously sponsored by Giro, who have formally adopted Emma McCrary Trail. We had 50 volunteers complete over 290 hours of work! Much of the day was spent clearing drains for the continuing wet weather and clearing an invasive species, French Broom.

The second and last Dig Day we were able to host happened in March on U-Con trail. Specialized’s new Santa Cruz Experience Center sponsored this event and we had 62 volunteers complete more than 360 hours of work in one day! We focused most of our time at the top of the trail where lots of erosion had occurred. Volunteers wheelbarrowed rocks up and down the trail and delivered them to teams who were rock armoring that last long, sunny climb that most Santa Cruz riders know and love (or loathe!). We also created new drains and added texture to the notorious wooden bridge to limit the danger of slipping or sliding out.

Throughout the trail work season, we also maintained the Harvey West and Scott’s Valley pumptracks. We hosted our bi-weekly Tuesday pumptrack maintenance and had 9 volunteers do 30 hours maintenance. Additionally, our Trails Intern, Chris, was assisted by students from Georgianna Bruce Kirby School who came out once a month for maintenance on Harvey West’s track. We are looking forward to continuing to work with these students once it is safe to do so.

Another big milestone from this season is the completed Chanticleer pumptrack! You may recall the old Chanticleer pumptrack had turned into an overgrown dirt lot, luckily with help from the Bicycle Trip we were able to get the excavator, Trail Crew and 32 volunteers out there to do the rebuild. We were even able to teach our Trail Academy 330 – Advanced Dirt Shaping – Berms, Rollers, Jumps class during the rebuild! Additionally, the new track is special in a lot of ways, one being it caters to all users from beginnings to jumping experts.

Want to help keep the tracks in tip top shape? We will be offering socially distant pumptrack maintenance on Tuesdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Click here to see what track we are working on this week!

Volunteer hours are listed from lowest to highest in the chart below. Regardless of the number next to your name, the team here at MBOSC would like to truly thank you for your time and hard work as we strive to make our local trail network the best it can be. We simply can't say "thank you" enough!

Did we miss your hours? If you think your hours need adjusting, please email [email protected].