A Letter from Our Executive Director: Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz is Now the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship
I’m thrilled to share some big news with you. After 24 years serving this community as Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz, we’re proud to reintroduce ourselves to you as the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship. We dreamed big and planned carefully for more than two years, and we believe this name will allow us to do even more to enhance access to the outdoors for more people in our community.
Why the new name?
We design, build, and maintain trails for all sorts of trail users: mountain bikers, hikers, horseback riders, trail runners, and more. Having mountain bikers in the name signaled that we served a single group, which limited our opportunities to take on new projects. Trail stewardship communicates the work we have done and will continue to do. It signals that we serve all trail users and that we are taking an active role in caring for the lands where we recreate. As such, we’ll be a more attractive partner to the people making decisions about trail planning and who to partner with for the work. Santa Cruz Mountains highlights that we are expanding our work beyond county lines to fill a gap in community driven trail stewardship across the region.
To everyone who has known and loved us as Mountain Bikers for two decades: mountain biking will always be in our DNA. Our staff and volunteers have largely found their way into trail stewardship through mountain biking. We promise to continue advocating for more legal mountain biking-specific trails for all skill levels as mountain bike access continues to lag behind access for other user groups.
What’s changing?
The name, the logo, the website, and a few other surface-level ways we interact with you and the community. Below the surface, you’ll find that our approach to engaging with our donors, volunteers, partners and other stakeholders will stay the same. We will continue to advocate for, design, build and maintain trail networks that enhance outdoor experiences for all trail users. In other words, more trails, better trails, and more people having access to them.
Join Us
We’re excited about the new name. We’re even more excited about our flagship projects that are currently underway, like rebuilding trails in Big Basin and Fall Creek State Parks in the wake of last summer’s fires. We’re raising money to open Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument with 17 miles of new trails. Finally, we’re giving the beloved Westside Pumptrack a major facelift.
If you’re a believer, please consider becoming a member today. If you’d prefer to support specific projects, you can do so by clicking the button below.
Have questions?
We’re here to answer them. This Thursday, 4/15, we’re hosting a virtual Ask Me Anything (AMA) session to talk through any questions you may have about the state of the organization or local trail development. Please RSVP for the event and submit your questions ahead of time.
We thank you for your ongoing support and hope you will join us for the next step in this journey.
Happy trails,
Matt De Young
Executive Director
