4th of July Ride at LOP, Sunday Trail Work Cancelled

4th of July Ride: Hello everyone! Yeah, it is time to get those hamburgers, hot dogs and apple pie purchased and ready to eat. The 4th of July is here! It is also time for our annual 4th of July weekend ride!

Riders look over the ruins of a pioneer structure during last year's ride, held on January 5, 2025.

In what has become a bit of a tradition, we'll be headed our to the Land of the Pioneers Trail near Vernon. Yes, it is a bit out of town, but going out to Vernon gets us out of all of the 4th of July parade madness going on in Show Low and the associated traffic snarl.

Mike and Carol Godwin will guide us at on a twelve to fifteen mile ride "Director's Cut" of the area they get to ride or hike pretty much everyday. There are multiple sites to visit out there, and Carol has been working hard on trail improvements so you are sure to have a great experience. The LOP trail requires intermediate MTB skills, so bring those along. But it will be a fun social ride that will stop regularly to make sure our group stays together and nobody gets lost or abandoned.

Meet at the Land of the Pioneers trailhead at 7:30 a.m. If you've not been to LOP before, there are two ways to get there, depending on whether you live in the Pinetop area or if you live in Show Low. There is a good trail description and specific directions you can get to the trailhead on the TRACKS website: https://tracks-9a142c.webflow.io/trail-maps-gpx/land-of-the-pioneers-651. One way involves heading east on Highway 60 from Show Low, and the other takes you on a trip through McNary and the Vernon-McNary Road.

Hope to see a good sized group out there Saturday. This ride is popular both because we only get out there a few times a year, and because we usually have a good number of summer visitors from the valley that are up for the holiday.

July 5th Trail "Give-Back" Work Day Cancelled: Due to Stage II Fire Restrictions that have been put in place, we need to cancel the work day we have scheduled for July 5th, 2025. Yeah, I know, groan. We can't take vehicles in to haul the tools we need to the worksite, so that pretty much means we can't get any work done out there on the Flintstone re-route. It's OK though. It will rain. Eventually, And we will get back to this. Eventually.

Sunshine and Rainbows are Finished: And yeah, thanks to the great work of the TRACKS trail crew, Sunshine was completed on Monday, June 29th. Both of Rainbows and Sunshine look great, and you now have a place to send people looking for an easy hike or mountain bike ride, with very little elevation gain or technical features. Each of these trails have only about eighty feet of elevation gain or loss, so they don't ask a lot of the trail user.

Sunshine was completed on Monday . . . and is already adorned with true Buena Vista style trail decorations! Anybody have a name for this new creature that oversees trail users near the high point on Sunshine?

These trails are real assets for the community! We just need some rain on them to help them settle in and keep the dust down. If you haven't been out to check them out, please go do so! They are easily found near the U.S. 60 trailhead as they break off from Buena Vista near its starting point, and are both completely signed and ready to use.