Trail News
Trail News - August 2006
Well, we said that this summer was going to be busy. It turned out to be even busier than we expected due to new opportunities and developments. Here’s a summary of activities – there’s a lot of stuff, but we think you’ll find it worth reading!
Lone Star Trail
The big news, which we can now announce, is the work we have been doing to make the Lone Star Hiking Trail multi-use; in other words, there’s about 129 miles of singletrack trail in the Sam Houston National Forest which will become available for off-road cycling. Its still a way from being a done deal, but the conditions for making it a reality have never been better. GHORBA, its predecessors and other cycling advocates have dreamed of this for many years, but previous attempts and hopes have been dashed by opposition from other groups.
Here’s why this is now a realistic opportunity. In April, we attended a volunteer appreciation meeting at the US Forest Service (USF) headquarters and met with other Sam Houston National Forest (SHNF) user groups. GHORBA attended since we have been stewards of the trails at Double Lake, which is part of the SHNF. In particular, we met with members of the Lone Star Trail Hiking Club (LSTHC), who’s current president, Jeff Stull, is also a cyclist and supports conversion of the trails from hiking only to multi-use. Multi-use means all non-motorized transport, and may include equestrians. At the moment, the state of the trails in the SHNF is pretty unfair to us: there are 129 miles of hiking trails, 85 miles of motorbike trails and quite a few miles of equestrian trails. There are 7 miles of bike trails – Double Lake! A meeting was convened in early July at which the Texas Trail Docs (Ryan Spates and Susan Stormer) gave a presentation on multi-use trails. The USF also explained that substantial portions of the LSHT are in very poor condition due to lack of use and maintenance and unless usage and volunteer work can be expanded, they would have to close them. This is the reason that the timing is good – we have explained to the other groups how we can provide a lot of resources and it will only improve the trail. Even with cycling use, the trail usage will still be very light compared to many other local trails. The USF have told us that if we can obtain letters of support from local user groups, particulary ourselves, the LSTHC and the Sierra Club, then they can re-designate the trail without having to undertake environmental impact studies or other lengthy beaureaucratic measures.
Many will know that in previous years, the Houston Sierra Club has opposed multi-use and has proposed establishing dedicated single-use trails. However, efforts to build new trails have failed and the goal now is to save existing trails. So, we have been on a campaign to educate non-cycling groups about who we are, what we do and what is our impact on the trails. We have developed a good working relationship with the Houston Sierra Club (HSC). HSC will be sending members to the Conroe Trail Building Clinic and we are also inviting them (amongst others) to attend and help with trail work parties.
There has never been a better opportunity, and when opportunity knocks, we are doing are best to exploit it – we have no other choice.
Carl Barton, Jr. Trail (Conroe)
The Trail Docs Trail Building Clinic is next weekend – 12-13 August. The course is now fully subscribed with a tremendous response from the off-road cycling community. We now have some names on the "stand-by" list. We will also have a separate work party on the Sunday of this weekend so we can try to get as much as possible completed of the inaugural 3 mile section.
We’ll send a separate notice on the Sunday work party. If you are on the trail clinic, you’ll be getting a separate notice with complete instructions. A special word of thanks here to Bike Barn, who are sponsoring the Conroe clinic, providing all the meals and drinks for the weekend, as well as giving Gary Rogers, who will be trail steward, time-off from his duties at Bike Barn Champions to attend.
We’re excited about this completely new project, and pretty soon we’ll be riding it!
Spring Creek Greenway
The Trail Building Clinic was given by Ryan and Susan on the weekend of 22-23 July at Montgomery County Preserve (on Spring Creek, near the Woodlands). This was a very successful weekend, which was more about building relationships than new trails. The biggest group attending were the Texas Master Naturalists, but we also had Robert Collins, who is the project director for the Spring Creek Greenway and Evelyn Merz (Chairman of the Houston Sierra Club) and her husband John. We also had a smattering of well behaved cyclists, particularly Jim Davis and David Ritchey, of Woodlands Cycling Club. The idea here was to demonstrate to the Spring Creek Greenway how we could provide resources to build single-track trails. A short (500 yard) trail was built in the preserve. Interestingly, last week I was speaking with the director of the Legacy Land Trust, Jennifer Lorenz, and she remarked that she would not let just anybody go and build a trail in "her" preserve (LLT and Jennifer are proud of the preserve, with some justification) and she knew that the work was in very capable and environmentally sensitive hands with Ryan, Susan and GHORBA.
Jim Davis has been leaping into advocacy work with great skill and enthusiasm and is using the new relationships we’ve forged with the Spring Creek Greenway project team to explore new trail opportunities. There’s a lot of real estate available and we are hopeful that we’ll be able to announce new trail plans soon.
Cypresswood
Another reason life got busier recently was the crisis at Cypresswood Trail. 2 weeks ago, we received reports that the bulldozers were working at the trail removing trees. The landowners of the section of private land have elected to harvest the pine trees on their 76 acre tract, which forms the center portion (about 60% of the total area). We had a very intensive 2 days, working the phones and pulling in every resource available to see what we could do. In the end, some good news was developed from the situation: within 30 hours of the work starting, we had managed to get Harris County Infrastructure Department, Harris County Flood Control District, Precinct 4 Parks and the Trust for Public Land to convene a meeting the following week to pool their resources and make a realistic offer for the land. It looks like the long term plan will be for about 8 acres to remain with the landowners for later commercial development (at the corner of T.C.Jester and Cypresswood) and the county will purchase the remainder, which is an acceptable and viable plan, preserving the majority of the trails we have.
Unfortunately, the center portion of the trail is lost for the moment. The foresters are removing 60% of the pines, leaving the remainder (mostly younger trees) and all of the hardwoods, leaving the forest very different, but still viable. If you are interested in learning more details or helping at Cypresswood Trail, please join the Yahoo! group CypresswoodTrailGroup
Huntsville
Trail steward Jimm Schroeder has been quietly working with the new park manager, Chris Holm, to work on some major re-routes at Huntsville State Park. They now have 15 major re-routes approved and ready for construction. These re-routes will address some major erosion problems on this trail and are long overdue. If you want to ride "rooty climb", you’d better ride it this week, because that ’s the first re-route which will be done next weekend. Many of you will miss some of the technical climbing provided by the conditions, but we’re sure that all will agree that the erosion that provides this feature is unacceptable. Interestingly, the erosion of some of the Huntsville trails is a reason cited by opponents of multi-use trails; people see the erosion and the cyclists and immediately link the two. Better informed people will know that water is the biggest eroder of trails and if a trail goes straight down a fall line, particularly with sandy soil, then massive erosion will follow – no matter who uses the trail. We have invited the Sierra Club and other groups to attend the next work party at Huntsville to show the work that we can do. Don’t worry, the hills at Huntsville will still be there – we’ll just have a different type of experience as we go up and down them. Jimm has planned a work party next weekend, which we know is something of a conflict with other events, but Jimm is anxious to get started, since the re-routes need to be done will in advance of the TMBRA race. He will be working with park personnel on Friday 11 August, then have a group work party on Saturday 12 August. Details of this and other trail work parties will follow in a separate message.
Jack Brooks Park
Steve Booker and some of his excellent Jack Brooks team will be meeting with Galveston County Parks this week to discuss expansion of the trails into additional areas of the park. Those of you who have ridden JB will know that there are substantial areas of woodland around the developed area of the park that are just waiting to provide additional singletrack. We look forward to more news from Steve after the meeting.
Green’s Bayou
First a public apology to Phil Niccum, who is the prime mover for the new Greens Bayou trail: sorry Phil, we have been distracted from your project lately. However, we have spoken with the Precinct 1 parks director, as a follow up to the introductory letter we wrote in June, and we have scheduled a meeting with P1 Parks next week to give them a trails presentation.
Memorial Park
We don’t seem to talk about dear old MP much these days. But the team of stewards – Clay Fenton, Brian Thigpen and Larry Pruitt continue to work hard, though quietly, to keep the trails open and work to open up more trails. The regular trail work party is scheduled for Saturday 12 August, so if you are an MP regular, go and lend them a hand.
Lake Houston State Park
The official handover of the park is now scheduled for 25 August and GHORBA plans to attend the ceremony. This was originally planned for March 2006, but its taken a little longer than expected to work out the details. City of Houston parks department have great plans for the park and they have already requested input from GHORBA for developing new trails. We’ll use the handover ceremony as an opportunity to speak to COH and see where we go from here.
ALL HANDS ON DECK!
Reading all this, you may think that we are over-extended! You would be right if we continued to rely on the "regular" band of volunteers. But, with so many opportunities available, none of which we want to miss, we feel that this is the time to make a clarion call to the entire cycling community to turn out and muck-in. If you have not volunteered before, please make the effort – the reward is a feeling that one cannot adequately describe, unless you have been a volunteer. We think that the “I am holier than thou” feeling is the best – shame your friends into helping out as well. You will also find that you will make a whole new bunch of friends if you volunteer, as well as a new appreciation for our trails. We are faced with many challenges, as well as opportunities, this is a great time to join us.
Since we continue to build "multi-use" trails, we’re also making a new effort to contact other groups to help with trail work. We’ve already mentioned the Sierra Club and the Lone Star Trail Hiking Club. We’re also inviting the Houston Adventure Racing Team and Houston Area Runners Association, amongst others.
We also need more of you – newbies or old-hands – to get involved with the club to help out with all this activity. We need several people in particular to help with volunteer coordination, event organization, group ride leaders. The best way to offer your help is to meet us…...so, come to our member and friends meeting at REI Willowbrook this Monday August 14, 7 PM
View all Trail News
