Getting started - our first meeting

Mt. Shasta Mountain Bikes
29 May 2008 meeting

Well, we had our first meeting last night at the Stage Door, since it kept raining out and Shastice Park wasn’t an option. We had a good turnout, despite the number of people Jeff and I had heard from who weren’t able to make it. This is to everyone to let you all know what transpired at the meeting and what’s coming up next.

First off – those in attendance were: Renee Casterline, Jeff Williams, Vinnie Poch, David Marchi, Tuli Potts, Jason Allen, Ryan Cazneaux, Remy Croft, Miriam Potter, Heather Schwarzenberg, Sean Doyle, Chad Thorpe, Ed Palfini, James Stewart, and Tom Tharp.

The first order of business was to discuss if we do indeed want to become an organized group. After discussing the potential benefits and challenges, the majority of the group expressed interest in organizing. Some of the things we talked about: regular trail maintenance performed by groups to preserve the trails we have, working with the Forest Service, the City and private landowners on new trail development, getting education about building trails, working with other regional groups on trail development, getting folks from out of the area involved in trail building and maintenance, contacting IMBA to build trails to a certain standard, holding regular group rides, and looking at other area’s that have developed trail networks as models as we discuss what we want to do here.

We scheduled two group rides for next week:
Wednesday, June 4th at 6pm – meet at the MS High School parking lot and
Thursday, June 5th at 6pm – meet at the MS High School parking lot.
We’ll decide where to ride based on who shows up, their interests and skill levels. We’ll probably end up splitting into a couple of groups. Come prepped for a shuttle ride or to pedal up the Tunnel. We talked about shifting group rides between riding regular trails one week to riding in old trails the next week. We’ll see how that develops based on who comes to the rides. Please tell everyone you know about the group rides, this is an opportunity for us to get to know all of the riders in our area.

We also scheduled the next group meeting:
Thursday, June 19th at 6:30pm at Shastice Park at the picnic table above the tennis courts.

In the meantime, we’ve got a list of tasks to complete:
– Contact the Forest Service about doing trail maintenance as a group: do we need waivers, are there any special considerations or limitations, is the area above/behind McBride Springs open for exploration/development, same for the Nordic Center trails, what are steps for trail development? Contact the new Ranger – that’s Priscilla Franco (Renee)
– Contact the City of Mt. Shasta (Renee)
– Contact private landowners about possible future trail development (Tuli)
– look into possibility of getting YCC crews to do trail work (David)
– contact IMBA (Jeff)
– contact Downieville trail organization (Jason)
– create a blog so folks can post their comments (Renee)
– send out group email, post posters about next week’s group ride (Renee)

That's all for now. We'd love to get comments from riders in the area or who visit the Mt. Shasta area regularly who'd like to see more trail maintenance and development.