Trail News

National Trails Day 2007 - A New Record for Workers on Houston Trails!

At Double Lake Recreation Area, 18 hardcore mountain bikers turned out and cut ¾ mile of new trail – the first new trail approved at Double Lake since its initial construction in 1992. And it’s going to be a sweet trail to ride.

Twenty of the Jack Brooks Park trail crew worked to rebuild the floating bridge and do trail maintenance. If you haven’t been to Jack Brooks park, where have you been? This is some of the coolest trail in our area.

Sheryl Sitts of REI Willowbrook once again showed herself to be the “Pied Piper” of volunteers – rounding up 90 people to work on the new Timberlane Trails on Cypress Creek near the Mercer Arboretum. The workers cut new natural surface trail and laid gravel and woodchip on sections of the improved trail. Experienced GHORBA hands Gerry Nicodemus and Sam VanRyder of the Cypresswood Trail Group helped Ryan Spates and Susan Stormer of Talon Trails leading work parties.

At Lake Houston Park, the Park People and ExxonMobil sponsored a major clean up of the trails. GHORBA secretary Veljko Roskar was one of the few volunteers that actually got to ride – he GPS’d 17 miles of trail to produce the first complete detailed map of the park’s trails. Of the 17 miles of trail, about 60% is jeep road and the rest is singletrack. A lot of the singletrack needs work to re-route and make sustainable, but this reconnaissance mission is the first step towards making LHP a desirable off-road cycling destination.

The Park People and ExxonMobil had several other “Trail of Trash” events in other Houston parks. So, there were well over 200 people working on Houston area trails on National Trails Day and we got new trail built at two locations with a lot of other important maintenance and planning work. Just think how much trail we would have if we could keep mustering this kind of support!

Thanks to everybody who showed up and helped. If you missed out on the fun – don’t worry, there will be lots more opportunities to help build and maintain trail. Make sure you sign up for our updates or RSS feed to keep up with the latest news.

Not a member of GHORBA? Well there’s no time like the present – if you ride the trails in Houston, you need to be a member of GHORBA.

Kevin

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  1. REI partnered with Timber Lane Utility District, Cypress Creek Greenway Project, Texas Master Naturalists from the Gulf Coast and Heartwood Chapters, Greater Houston Off-Road Bicycling Association, Harris County Precinct 4 Parks, Talon Trails, and Order of the Arrow Eagle Scouts for some exciting results on National Trails Day 2007 last Saturday.

    Ninety volunteers joined park and REI staff onsite to contribute 370 volunteer hours providing over ½ mile of new trail construction, ½ mile of major tread construction, and 1 mile of trail maintenance, and cleaning trash from the lake and surrounding 37 wooded acres of a future park site at Treaschwig and Whitaker in northwest Harris County.

    It was an honor for me to keep company Saturday morning with such an extraordinary group of people. I also know that this event was only the success that it was because of all that each of our partners brought to the table.

    MANY, MANY THANKS to every individual involved whose support made this such a great event!!! Also, please pass this along to others you know to have been involved so they can realize the outcome of their efforts.

    By: Sheryl Sitts, REI Outreach Specialist
    Jun 6