GHORBA > Trail News > 2007 Year in Review

Trail News

2007 Year in Review

2007 was perhaps one of the most active years in GHORBA’s history on the trails front, with notable successes in advocacy, trail construction and grant awards. In addition our membership increased, we set record attendance at our race and skills clinics, we resurrected the Sprockids program, and the GHORBA Girls held more rides than ever.

State of Our Trails Report by Kevin Highfield, vptrails@ghorba.org

Building on recent years of progress in improving our relationships with local park management authorities and associated groups, we found that we have more opportunities for new trails than ever before. The question arose: How do we capitalize on those opportunities?

One way forward was to apply for grants to fund professional trail building. We were successful in winning both grants that we applied for. Each of those grants will provide completely new trails at Conroe (Carl Barton Jr. Park) and on Spring Creek in The Woodlands (more about those below). At the same time, we are also not forgetting that volunteer trail construction remains our core task. So we’ve revisited how to energize more people to help with more trails. We’ve also swelled a core of trail-building expertise within the GHORBA ranks.

Double Lake

We completed the first expansion of this trail since its initial construction in the early 1990’s by HAMBRA. The one mile extension was designed by Talon Trails and built by GHORBA volunteers. The extension was a relatively modest addition, but while providing some nice extra trail, it also served as a useful tool to establish new relationships with current park management and for us to learn the processes necessary to obtain approval for new trail construction on federal land in a National Forest. Going forward, in November, we applied for a $10,000 grant from Bikes Belong which, if awarded, will be used as matching funds for a $100,000 RTF grant in 2008, which will then be used to fund a major expansion of Double Lake Trail.

IMBA Trail Care Crew Visit

Following the demise of the TBC Trail Docs program, we decided to renew our links with IMBA and had the IMBA Subaru Trail Care Crew spend a long weekend in town. Actually, they spent the entire three days at Double Lake, helping us with meetings with park management, holding a trail building clinic and doing trail work. The TCC visit was a huge help in jump-starting the Double Lake trail expansion.

REI Grant

We were awarded a $5,000 trail grant by REI. This grant will be used to fund trail construction at a completely new site on Spring Creek in The Woodlands. Even better, when we told the Spring Creek Greenway Project that we would use our grant money for this new trail, The Woodlands Development Company and Montgomery County Precinct 3 each committed matching funds – so we know have $15,000 to spend on this completely new trail. Thanks are due to Sheryl Sitts of REI for recommending us for this grant, and GHORBA board member Bill Begnaud for doing a great job in putting the application together.

Spring Creek Trail

This is so new, we haven’t told you about it yet! In December, following meetings with the Spring Creek Project, we were given permission to build a completely new mountain bike trail on a 100 acre plot of land in The Woodlands on the north bank of Spring Creek (between Gosling and Kuykendahl Roads). There is also a 2 mile extension marked to a trail head at Kukendahl, so we expect to build about 7 miles of new singletrack trail. The SCP are keen to start as soon as possible. Woodlands Cycling Club will be taking up the majority of the volunteer work and Talon Trails will be providing professional support for design and construction. Design work will be done in January 2008, following which construction will commence immediately.

$45,000 for Carl Barton Jr. Park, Conroe

Work on this project started in 2006 and volunteers have built about 2 miles of new trail – heavy undergrowth has made it heavy going to do the job properly. We decided that we would apply for a Recreational Trail Fund grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife to see if we could fund professional construction to get the job completed quickly. Talon Trails assisted by providing a grant writer, familiar with the process, and we made Conroe City Council the recipient. A matching fund requirement of 20% was needed and utilizing volunteer hours and funds from Conroe Parks, we were able to apply for $45,000 in funding. We were successful, and the plan now is for Talon Trails to construct a further 3 miles of trail in February – March 2008. So, by Spring 2008, there will be a new destination in our area with a 5+ mile trail that we think will be well worth a visit.

Memorial Park

Memorial Park suffered a lot of damage due to the record setting rainfall experienced during 2007. It was time for a renewed campaign to save what remains the core trail of our very existence. We asked seasoned campaigner Larry Pruitt to step up and take over leadership and to manage the campaign to repair the damage and work towards improving the MP trails. Larry agreed and assisted by another seasoned campaigner, Russ Adams and park administrator Jay Daniels, we have been making great progress. Russ Adams has been leading evening work parties, and even directed a night work party done under bikelights after dark! Thanks also to members of the Houston Adventure Racing Team for providing 16 workers on that night.

Additionally, Larry was also named as Chair of the Memorial Park Conservancy Trails Committee, which is the first time that a mountain biker has ever held this position. This is a major leap forward from our early days when we were trying to save our very existence on the MP trails.

Huntsville

Huntsville State Park continues to enjoy renewed attention to the trails, thanks in the main part to the new park manager Chris Holm, who is taking a strong lead to improve the existing trails. Trail steward Jimm Schroeder, has established a great working relationship with Chris and a number of re-routes and repairs were completed during 2007 to make the HSP trail as good as its ever been – and we’re looking forward to more and better trail in 2008.

Timberlane Trail

This is another new trail, this time on Cypress Creek in Spring. This trail was constructed by Talon Trails working for the Timber Lane Municipal Utility District. As a result of contacts that we had with the Cypress Creek Greenway Project, we were able to hook-up the Timber ;ane MUD with Talon Trails. The result is a completely new trail, with some sweet singletrack, completed in December 2007. GHORBA attended the ribbon cutting ceremony with Commissioner Jerry Eversole in November. This is the first section of this trail, with much more under construction or planned, for 2008.

Click here for pictures of the Timberlane ribbon cutting ceremony and some maps of the new trails.

Cypresswood Trail

2007 was a challenging year for Cypresswood Trail, following logging of the central, privately owned, section. But there was good news in 2007. Precinct 4 approved adoption of the entire western section of the trail by the parks department, which includes a connecting piece of land between the existing trail and Collins Park. The Cypresswood Group, lead by Brandon Moss, Dennis James and Jerry Nicodemus, have been constructing a lot of new trail on the public sections of land, including a new half-mile section of singletrack from Collins Park to the existing trail. Another team of volunteers continue to develop “Cypresswood Improper” further upstream. GHORBA continue to be deeply involved in the Cypress Creek Greenway Project, which has numerous trail opportunities in progress along the 33 mile length of the creek.

Lake Houston Park

GHORBA formed part of the “Stakeholder’s Committee”, which held several meetings during 2007 in order to develop the plan for the park’s future following its transfer from the state Parks system to City of Houston. Kingwood resident, and GHORBA member, Chris Nowak volunteered to take the lead on this project and thanks are due to Chris for helping maintain GHORBA’s presence on this project. The result is that mountain bike trails will become an integral part of this 4,800 acre park’s future.

There are a number of other irons in the fire:

We continue to maintain close contacts with The Hill at Sims Bayou project – this will be a major project in our future; but, we have to wait for the moment for both the newly laid vegetation to mature and stabilize the surface of The Hill and for local political leaders to decide on future management of the park;
In August, we met with Precinct 3 managers to discuss opportunities out west – there’s a lot of land that they have available, including John Paul’s Landing, which will be a major park and we hope to include mtb trails as part of the parks plan;
A new MTB trail is being constructed in Sugarland, and GHORBA along with our partners Houston FitAR is helping with that project;
We were also offered an opportunity to scope new trails at Oyster Creek Cullinan Park, a City of Houston property which is very close to Sugarland Airport;
In January, we met with City of Houston Parks deputy director, Karen Cullar, and it was amazing to see the number of properties that provide trail opportunities – Oyster Creek was one, Keith Weiss Park is third only to Lake Houston and Memorial Parks in size in the COH parks inventory. We just need time to digest current projects before we look at all the others!

Trail Heroes

We mentioned a few names above, but we thought it appropriate to mention all the people who made special contributions in 2007:

Steve Booker – Booker (as he’s commonly known) continues to provide outstanding leadership at Jack Brooks Park, putting in hundreds of hours working on JB trails. We are talking to Booker to lure him further afield to become one our regional leaders on new trial projects. If you’ve seen Booker working, you’ll know he’s one mean trail cutting machine!
Russ Adams – Russ was once VP Trails of GHORBA and we’ve been pleased to welcome him back concentrating his efforts helping out with major trail repair projects at Memorial Park. Russ is yet another GHORBA stalwart who adds to our extensive depth of trail building expertise;
Dennis James – Dennis is another trail builder extraordinaire, this time at Cypresswood. If you ride Cypresswood, you’ll know that some troglodyte has built something new just about every time you’re out there. The troglodyte is Dennis, who contributes most of his spare time to building trails. He’s also been helping trail steward Brandon Moss provide leadership to a core group of workers to help remake Cypresswood as one of our area trails;
Jimm Schroeder – Jimm has been quietly beavering away up north in Huntsville, establishing a great working relationship with park manager Chris Holm and helping to make HSP trails better than they have ever been;
Jim Mackey – Jim is another GHORBA stalwart who really came back to the fore to help lead the effort to build the trail extension at Double Lake. Jim went out between the main work parties doing preparation work to help get the trail extension completed.
GHORBA Trail Stewards: all the guys who lead the work on each of our trails – we’ve mentioned most of them already, but we should also note – Robert Patrick (Double Lake), Rafael Fontela (Jack Brooks and Booker’s right hand man), Brian Thigpen and Clay Fenton (MP trail stewards before Larry Pruitt took over, but still a leading supporters of MP trail work) and Scott King (Stephen F. Austin SP).

All the GHORBA volunteers – thanks to all of those who helped make 2007 such a successful year. We look forward to seeing you out on the trail in 2008.

Here’s a final thought, a suggestion for your New Year’s Resolution: bring at least two new volunteers on a trail work party in 2008. And, if you have not had a chance to come to a work party in 2007, then we hope to see you in 2008!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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