April 2011 Chapter News

An excellent group came out for this month’s meeting; we love to see new faces. If you haven’t made one of our monthly meetings, come on out in May and join us for the latest news and some good times. 

We got off to a ceremonial start this month – our own Charlie Schultz was presented with a CRPA Volunteer of the Year plaque. Charlie was recognized for the tremendous amount of time and superb contribution that he makes in his work for our chapter and the community. In a not-so-surprisingly brief acceptance speech, he agreed to accept the award on behalf of all of our volunteers and thanked everyone for the recognition. Way to go Charlie! 

Lisa Randall of Mountain Goat Adventures was also on hand to voice her appreciation for everyone’s efforts in making this year’s Dirty Duathlon a rousing success. Lisa and her husband Scott did an amazing job organizing and staging the run & ride formatted race and we are looking forward to more race events on the Woodstock trails with them at the helm. You can find the results of the race on their website. 

Big news at the big park, Blankets Creek will be getting some additional trail! Our Board voted unanimously to fund the construction of additional trail on our beginner loop, Mosquito Flats. The 1 mile trail will be getting an inner loop section that we hope will yield an additional .5 mile. We have quite a few folks that regularly make multiple laps of the Mosquitoes trails and this should go a long way to making those circuits more fun and interesting. We’ll have more details on this as we start to lay it out and begin cutting it in. We expect that this will go fairly quickly. 

Quehl Holler’s yet to be officially christened Wall Ride is shaping up nicely. There’s still much to do but take a look when your next out there and you’ll see that this is going to be an incredible addition. Thanks for everyone’s patience, we are trying our best to get this and the downhill run completed soon so that we can get t’ Hollerin’! 

Perhaps less exciting but every bit as needed, we’ve added a third Port-a-John to the Blanket’s parking area. These will all be replaced with permanent facilities as part of our trailhead and parking area makeover that looks to be set for this fall. 

Rope Mill’s Avalanche Trail has received a new “to the right” switchback entrance trail. This allowed us to make the earlier entrance section directional as the “to the left” entrance. Go out and give it a ride so we can get the new section seasoned and bedded-in. The pedestrian bridge over Little River is seeing more delays, unfortunately. Testing is being conducted on the concrete footers to ensure the bridge meets all the requirements. 

In better news, the EA has been submitted to the Corps of Engineers for approval. This is now a 90 day process of review. If approved, we will have the green light to begin construction on the already flagged beginner loop that will be staged on the west side of I-575. The new loop will be between 3 and 4 miles and is situated in a very picturesque area of the woods with views of Little River. This will be a great addition to the Taylor Randahl Memorial trails and Olde Rope Mill Park. 

Next up on the docket is Pedalpalooza!! Come on out to Blankets Creek on Saturday May 7th for a fun-filled day of group rides, bike giveaways, bike demos, food, music and more! If you’d like to help with the event, please contact Malanda Murchison at events@sorbawoodstock.org to see how and when you can help out.