The Sea Otter IMBA Summit was a long time ago it seems, and I have not written anything about this great event.
Leaders from the mtb industry and advocacy groups from all over converged on the Sea Otter, Friday afternoon, just before the awesome showers let loose on the racers and merchandisers, given us advocates a cool dry place to discuss a variety of topics. This Summit was much different than the first, which was much more of a workshop.I can’t seem to find my notes, so I am going to have to wing it. We went around the room, and from industry we had folks from Giant, Specialized, Bell/Giro, Fox and perhaps others. We had advocacy folks from as far north as Humboldt, as far East as Sierra Buttes, and as far south as Los Angeles. There were a bunch of IMBA folks too.
As you may know, IMBA has a part time advocate dedicated to California, and paid for by the kind folks at Specialized. Tom Ward used to work for State Parks, and wants to find some low hanging fruit to do trail use conversions in State parks. To me the obvious choice would be the Skyline to the Sea Trail, which goes from Highway 35 and 9 down to Highway 1, through Castle Rock, Portola Redwoods, and Big Basin State Parks. If you have any suggestions about what we should be working on, bring them up now, or come to the next ROMP business meeting.
IMBA CA Affiliates
There was a presentation by the head ranger for Soquel Demonstration Forest. We are truly blessed to have this kind of progressive land manager in our area. The difference between CDF and other and managers is that their mission is to teach forestry and permit some recreation. Most land manager missions are to, preserve and protect the environment, and where applicable permit recreation.
CDF SDF
Mountain bikers do the vast majority of the trai work here, and there is plenty to do as a result of the rains. Avoid riding here until the rains let up for a week, and be sure to put in some hours digging.
TrailWorkers.com
Another land manager who has permissive use is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM is taking control of the Coast Diaries, which is north of Wilder Ranch in Santa cruz counties. This has the potential to be a great new multi use opportunity.
MBOSC Coast Dairies
Further North, North of Marin, there is the Lost Coast and King’s Range. This is also a BLM property our friends up north are busy building epic single track, called the Fools Paradise trail project. I hope to organize a ROMP trail building weekend up there this summer in July or August.
bigfootbicycle
We heard a presentation from the NorCal Mountain Bike League. They are organizing teams of young racers and raising advocacy awareness in their young impressionable minds, and hopefully making them into responsible trail users. As far as I know, their is currently teams in Burlingame and Redwood City. This is a great organization. I hope ROMP will work more closely with them in the future. I encourage you to consider starting a team. NorCal MTB League
So that is what I recall. I hope I will find my notes. If you were there and I forgot something, please fill in the holes. We will be discussing Norcal MTB and State Parks at our next meeting, April 24 at 7PM at Roundtable Pizza in Sunnyvale.
ROMP Meeting
