Construction Officially Begins! Saturday Ride/Sunday Evening Work Session

Trail Construction Officially Begins: Having received approval from the USFS, TRACKS officially began construction in the Buena Vista on Monday, June 1st. They are starting by tackling the two beginner trails, Rainbows and Sunshine. At this point, a little over 1/2 mile of Rainbows has been more or less built, or at least roughed in..

Picture of the intersection of our two new trails, Rainbows & Sunshine! The intersection is already sporting the new trail signs routed out by Doug and Rhonda Forsha, whom we are very grateful to have had help us with this project.

Construction will continue on Rainbows next week, Monday June 8th, at 7:00 a.m. The start time has been moved back an hour because one thing we noticed last week is that it is getting hot really early in the day. Well, that's June for you.

We really need volunteers to come out and help get these new trails built! If you can at all help out, please turn out next Monday at the Buena Vista trailhead off of U.S. 60. We are meeting there and heading to the work site from that location. Bring your work gloves. Bring plenty of water (it's hot and dry) and sunscreen. The TRACKS trailer will be there with all its tools, so really don't need to bring any tools of your own unless you have a favorite you like to work with.

Saturday Morning Ride: Saturday's morning's ride is going to be in the Buena Vista this week. Having spoken of the trail construction, our route is going to be designed to include at least parts of the new trails. There's nothing that is going to get these trails into shape quicker than getting some wheels on them, and that's exactly what we plan to do. Start trying to burn them in. Yes, they are very green and can be hard to follow. But we're mountain bikers. We're tough. And we need to get these beginner trails ready for actual beginners.

Meet at 7:30 a.m. at the Buena Vista trailhead, about two miles south of Show Low off U.S. 60. We'll be doing a 12-15 mile MTB ride and should be back to the trailhead between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. As most know, the Buena Vista trails require intermediate level riding skills, but we move at a reasonable pace and take regular breaks to gather our group back together and to rest.

Bring plenty of water. It's getting hot these days.

Sunday Evening Work Session: Sunday, May 7th from 4:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. we'll be having another trail work session. We'll be working Petrified, working it from the southerly trail entry off old Uncle Tom's that was completed last weekend, and working on down the trail from that point. We'll be benching out a couple of areas that need some additional benching. We'll be building at least one berm. We'll be fixing the troublesome road crossing. The trail is mostly riding OK and has been burnt in pretty good from people riding the flag line, but there are some areas that need some finish work to make them better, and we can attack those too. Finally we'll be installing the "line-of-sight" white diamonds as well.

Meet at 4:00 p.m. at the end of Wagon Wheel Lane. You can either walk down to the work location, or you can ride your bike down there if that works better for you. We'll have some extra tools for you to use that we've stashed out there, but if you have a good stiff garden rake, a garden hoe that can be used to scrape grass down, or some trimmers for tree trimming, or maybe a pick, those might help. We won't have the TRACKS tool trailer for this one. We are intentionally starting late so that the sun is dropping while we work, but it will still be pretty warm. So bring plenty of liquids, because you dry out fast doing this work. Definitely remember work gloves. We'll end by 7:00 to give ourselves plenty of time to walk out before it gets dark.