Campbell Mt. and the Peat Bog - Pinkbike Post

I posted this on the Pinkbike Discussion Forum - popular with DH riders in the valley:

http://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=349&pagenum=120#commentid4381604

There are sections that I believe will be of interest to all riders, as such, I've reposted it below.

Support your local bike club, become a member!

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To everyone who rides Campbell Mt.

The bike club will be replacing the posts and rehanging / painting the old gate at Morgenstern’s at the bottom of the Campbell Mt. DH trail. If you wanna’ help, the gig goes this Friday at 5pm - meet onsite at Morgenstern's Gate, bring shovels / hoes / picks / pry-bars / pliers / gloves / eye-protection / club membership....

Also, we’ve been asked to decommission the very last section of trail leading right down to the gate; the last 30 feet or so causes water to funnel down it and erode Dave Morgenstern’s driveway. The left-hand egress / access will be improved and dipped to shed water.

Also, the lower section of trail - that small bit of singletrack between Morgenstern’s Gate and the green mailboxes below will be closed this summer / forever. I’ve been up to speak with Dave Morgenstern today, and it "is what it is". He’ll be fencing off the top trailhead in the future due to liability, lawyers etc. Please respect this minor closure.

Regarding the Bog; The bike club, would like to kick in and offer you guys manpower for Bog projects but we can't because of the bike club's insurance / liability, and because the projects that you guys are building on Crown land up there are, how shall I say, "Bootleg".

The bike club signed a three-year land-use agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resource Operations (John Glaspie) to maintain the Carmi Rec. Trail network (two-track XC trails, some sub-trail XC stuff within it and the Carmi Canyon trail) but nothing with stunts; what they call Technical Trail Features (TTF). We will, at some point, be able to add TTFs to Carmi trails, but the TTFs have to be built to what’s known as "Whistler Standards".

Whistler Standards are easily attainable www.mbta.ca/assets/pdfs/trail_standards_first_edition.pdf and many bike clubs throughout North America are already building to this spec’.

Topsog, you might wanna' sit in with John Glaspie and I over a beer this spring and have a BS session about TTFs in the Bog. He’s really great to deal with and he does "get it". He just wants to cover his butt / job and make sure that TTFs are built in a manner that protects Ministry staff, you and everyone who uses the stunts.

At some point, Bog builders will have to get onside with the MNR Operations on this stuff - and they ARE willing to work with you. Otherwise, most of the really cool, "you worked so Fkn' hard on that" TTFs in the Bog will be torn down by MNR - and that = waste of time and material / bummed out riders.

Kelowna is just beginning to feel the heat from the Gov. on illegal TTF construction. Oregon and Washington State are up to their necks in it at the moment. If some rugrat gets badly hurt on illegal Bog TTF’s and his parents decide that someone need suing… the powers that be will figure out who built the stuff and the builders are looking at defending themselves - which would suck maximus!

To date, Forest Service has done nothing about the BogWorks, but nowadays lots of folks go into the area besides riders, and many people are seeing stuff being built- especially the obvious roadside stuff, or reading about it online, so it’s only a matter of time. Lets face it, a lot of the stuff in the Bog is,"sketchy" to say the least...

Everyone reading this should watch the PEDAL DRIVEN documentary (http://pedaldriven.howellatthemoon.com ). This is how dimension lumber on Crown land needs to be approached. I have the DVD to LOAN out to folks who want to view this freeking pertinent Bush Building video. Contact me at 250.486.2443 to arrange to pick up the DVD if you’re interested.

Andrew
Trail Manager
Penticton & Area Cycling Association
www.bikepenticton.com

How much time do you need on Friday?

1.5 to 2 hours max.

A.

Warning; huge post below; grab a beer before you start in on this one...


TOPSOG

Well, that's a lot more of a welcoming reply than I thought I might get :-) Which is cool.

The Crown land manager that I've been working with over the past few years is:

John Glaspie RFT
Recreation Officer
Okanagan District
Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations
2501 14th Ave. Vernon, British Columbia V1T 8Z1
Phone: (250) 558-1728
Fax: (250) 549-5485

He has 'say' over what goes on in Crown Land around here. The RDOS has, at various points, suggested that I had to go through them, and I did attempt to do so in the past, but it always ended up that RDOS really had no power to make any proclamations about anything, and John always had the final say anyway, so I just deal with him now - and it’s been great!

Ya', the club fee had to go up because the fee we pay to Cycling BC went up. In years past we were paying $35.00 per year, per member, to them, and keeping $5.00 per member for the club. In 2012 they upped their take to nearly $40.00, so we inched our rate up a hair as well!

The biggest deal for us is the insurance coverage. If we get hurt on PACA group rides, we’re covered by insurance. If we [accidentally] damage property or others, we’ve covered, if someone tries to sue us, we’re covered. For a measly $45.00, hell, I can spend that on one night’s worth of partying [[[easy]]] In truth, it’s one of the cheapest membership fees around. Specific insurance details are here:

http://cyclingbc.net/cycling-bc/insurance/comprehensive-general-liability

As far as convincing folks to join the club; that's something that I go on about all the time, but in truth, it really comes down to individuals wanting to kick into their riding community, help their fellow riders and share the Trail Love.

Think about it, why do we spend hundreds of hours per year digging dirt, cutting dead fall, battling Oregon Grape and plucking off wood-ticks? At the core, it’s because we love trails and being in nature, but secondarily, it’s because we secretly love to see our friends smile when they ride trails that we build / maintain, and we like meeting new people who we haven’t met before, riding with them, showing them new trails, and feeding off the groove that they give off when they’re happy because of it all. I know that sounds wishy-washy, but the raw truth is buried in there somewhere.

To date, the bike club has done some really great stuff; we helped pay for a bunch of the signage that you see in the Mice, we GPS mapped it all and provide free access to said maps. We negotiated with BC Parks, the Nature Conservancy and the Land Conservancy, securing the right to sign and maintain the WARD1, Rock Oven - and hopefully soon, Fox / Kraut and Jamie’s Extension trails in the Gillies Cr. watershed. The three land management groups were set to decommission those trails and bar riders from the area! We talked to them, showed them respect, described our intentions and won legit’ access.

We’ve picked up where the now defunct Oliver bike club left off with access and trail maintenance in the Rattlesnake Lake trails (located within the White Lake Grasslands Protected Area) and we’ve just secured the legal option to sign and maintain a trail on Mt.Keogan in 2013 - which will likely be a combination of the ‘Groovy Bob’, ‘Poison Ivy Alley’ and ‘Go East Old Man’ trails to the summit. We worked with Palmer Sather, gaining permission to build those two Canyon Trail detours on the backside of Campbell Mt. We even rebuilt the thing that you love; The DQ Table :-) After we finish the Carmi detour trail that we’re working on now, we’ll get started on a full-bench-cut diversion on Campbell’s north face, below the ‘garbage dump’ where the dirt-bike riders hang / burn / litter / smash...

I can’t tell you how much satisfaction it gave me to inform a quad rider that was hoping to give us a hard time about “working on private land” during the Campbell east side project, that we had permission to do so, and watch him spin on his heel and walk away without being able to say anything further about it :-)

In short, we’re building a portfolio of legit’ land access and trails. Stuff that we can work on without ever having to put up with folks thinking that they can tell us what to do on a given piece of land; which is the flipside to the PITA of having to deal with the “asking permission to build” bit in the first place.

We’ve forged excellent working relationship with BC Parks, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, local hiking clubs, Trails BC and numerous private land owners / managers and NGOs up and down the valley. It’s feels good to be where we are with the club now, and we’ve only scraped the tip of the iceberg as far as what’s possible.

I know that it’s a lot easier to "just go out and do trail-work", and I’ve done my fair share over the years, but it’s a real pain to have to deal with people who want to destroy your work / kick you off the land / bitch you out when they meet you working in the forest etc. That was ok when I was 15 or 16, but nowadays, I just wanna’ build and maintain without dealing with the antagonistic crap.

Regarding Canada vs. USA. Yup’, they are different; they have a real leader, we have Harper… The Penticton bike club is cooperating with the Kelowna and Vernon clubs / sharing information / attending each other’s AGMs etc.

The Kelowna club is currently dealing with the Prov. Gov. over Gillard, which is kinda’ like their Peat Bog, but bigger - and Powers Creek; another “kinda’ like the Bog” area. MTBco is in the midst of a request from the Gov. to “build / rebuild to Whistler Standards, sanction the trails or lose them altogether” - and are actively dealing with this request. As such, it isn’t a stretch to assume that at some point, the Bog will come under the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations scrutiny as well.

I realize that there are some bad vibes hanging around from the previous three incarnations of Penticton bike clubs / club failures; but that’s was then, this is now. We’re in our fourth year of existence and getting stronger every year. We’ve accomplished more effective “on the ground progress” as all of the previous clubs combined. We have a really great group of relentlessly dedicated executive members, a handful of dependable trail maintainers and we intend on being here for the long run. To date, we’ve experienced success after success; especially with BC Parks and the Crown.

For me personally, I’ve stepped away from the president’s position this spring in order to concentrate specifically on land access / trail maintenance / trail signage. The club rocks and its good juju for valley riders!

Dino joined this year, I haven’t spoken with Vance and Frank the Builder about memberships yet, but they both signed up for the past few seasons. Even the wildest builder in our valley; Wolfgang, has offered to lend a hand in the Carmi area this year!

Slowly but surely, I hope to see a lot more local builders / maintainers realizing that we have shiploads of Crown (as opposed to First Nations land) BC Parks and private land that we can negotiate access to. Working together we can make some really great stuff happen for ourselves, our friends and those who come in from other parts of the world.

Consider your expectations when you road-trip; the first thing you wanna’ see is a map of the area, and after that you appreciate some signage and if possible, a guide - preferably a beautiful blond Swedish gal who rides - which is exactly what we happened upon the last time that the club did a camp / ride gig in 2011. We rode Cosens Creek in Vernon; and no, I’m not making up the beautiful blond part! Speaking of which, there’s another cool benefit of the club :-) Each year we go to one or two other riding areas in the Okanagan Similkameen - further afield is planned. There we camp and ride and ride and ride and party and ride.

Perhaps the ultimate example of the movement toward legit’ trails can be found in the NSMBA and Whistler clubs on the lower mainland. They’ve gone full-on / hardcore into legal / insured access and construction. Something that I never thought that I’d see was Digger - the province’s grandfather of BC trial-building, leading the way with 'open' trail-building / maintaining / training!

When I was a kid in Whistler, all we had was the service road up Whistler Mt., and three illegal trails in the valley; now look at the place, dozens of amazing, fully sanctioned, technically challenging trails on the mountain and the valley - and all because people like Rolo, Charlie Doyle, Cathy Jewitt, Grant Lamont and Lumpy realized that they could create mountain biking heaven at their doorsteps.

Some might assume that the Whistler trails must be tame in order for them to be legit and sanctioned; and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even the “easy-for-guys-like-us” trails like ‘A River Runs Through It’ are wicked fun, and possess more than a few features that are beyond typical all-mountain riders (if there is such a thing?). If any of you reading this visit Whistler this year, be sure to ride 'Comfortably Numb' and ‘Trail Wreck’ (among others in the valley) They rock!

Ok, enough. I can’t believe that you actually read all of that; I’m off to a Vees game. For those of you who wanna’ cool Whistler History lesson, check out this great vid; http://vimeo.com/6448809

Andrew