Meet our volunteer bike winner!

Every summer, we get to fulfill one of our staff’s favorite traditions–picking one lucky volunteer to win a mountain bike from Ibis Cycles.

For every six hours that you volunteer with our team, whether that’s out on the trails or tabling at special events, you earn one entry into our end-of-season bike raffle. Ibis has partnered with us since 2005, and generously gives away one bike to a volunteer every year.

Our 2022 raffle saw more entries than ever before. Volunteers absolutely blew us away– we had a total of 936 names to draw from, with over 6,300 hours completed since last fall. That’s over 262 days of trail work completed by volunteers!

We picked the winner at our volunteer celebration event, an afternoon of beer-filled fun at Humble Sea Brewery.

Drumroll, please… this year’s winner was Susan Bender!

Susan volunteered with us at six events, and has completed trail work at Wilder Ranch State Park, Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve, Emma McCrary Trail, and San Vicente Redwoods. She’s a riot! When you meet Susan, her passion for the outdoors and cheerful spirit can’t help but make you smile. She chose to take home a Ripley AF to complement the existing carbon Ripmo that she has at home.

“We’re so lucky to have incredible community members like Susan join us in taking care of our trails, and generous sponsors like Ibis to help us in saying “thank you”! It takes a village, and we’re looking forward to keeping the momentum going in 2023!” - Emma Ussat, Trails Program Manager, SCMTS

Last week, Susan dropped by the brand new Ibis offices on the Westside of Santa Cruz to pick up her bike. She was welcomed by Saris Mercanti, Marketing Manager for Ibis Cycles, who gave her a tour of the factory and the team’s offices before presenting Susan with her new steed! In addition to the bike, Ibis outfitted Susan with their Pork Chop frame bag (plus a fun flask for some mid-ride relaxation), a new Ibis tee, water bottle, and even threw in some extra flat pedals they had kicking around. Susan’s bike was fit to her frame, and the suspension was dialed in perfectly for her next adventure.

Thank you to the Ibis team for gifting Susan this wonderful bike! She’s decked out and ready to take on the trails–all because she chose to put in some sweat equity with our team.

We’ve got plenty of weekly volunteer events on the calendar, and hope to see you out there on the trails with us soon! We’ll pick our next bike winner in the summer of 2023, so there’s plenty of time to rack up your raffle entries.

In addition to giving away a bike, we honor lifetime awards for our top volunteers. Volunteering for 100 hours gets you a volunteer-only green SCMTS embroidered hat, volunteering for 300 hours gets you a limited-edition volunteer t-shirt, and volunteering for 500 hours with us gets you an SCMTS Patagonia Workwear vest.