Thursday, August 29, 2013

Trailfest @ Highland Mountain Sept 21-22

More XC trails going in at Highland!

The NEMBA Trailfest will be held in a few weeks on Sept 21-22.  Several NEMBA Chapters will be headed up to help.  Plans are to build 1mi of advanced intermediate trail.

Info can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/502655893159545/

http://www.nemba.org/nembaevents/trailfests2013.htm#highland

Hope to see you there!

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Adopt-a-Trail Program

We have a theory that there are many folks out there who are interested in trail work , but for one reason or another cannot attend organized trail days.  Since we could use all the help we can get, the Chapter would like to start an "Adopt a Trail" program for all of Central NH Chapter trail networks. The land managers expect us to provide  "Perpetual Care " of the trails, but until now it was rather haphazard and unstructured.

Central NH  Chapter holds about six "Trail Care" events per year. At those events we want to focus on building or reparing the trails, rather than perform standard maintenance. As the miles of trails we are responsible for grows each year, so does the responsibility to keep everything in order. All of you are already empowered to take care of obvious problems when you are out there riding. Limbs fall every day.

We would like to reach out to more of our members and friends to help keep the trails in tip-top shape by selecting their favorite trail to maintain. This maintenance can be any time they wish. The adopter does not need to be a NEMBA member either! All help will be greatly appreciated! Spread the word. It will be a great way for anyone to give back to the sport.

The Agreement:

The Trail-Adopter will be allowed to rake or leaf-blow the forest litter, remove fallen branches, do minor drainage and trim back new encroaching sapling growth.  Leaf blowers are OK but if you need chainsaw work or use some other power tool such as a brush saw we'd like to know and we want you to employ proper safety gear. If your not a chain saw person we can rustle one up to help. If you have a bridge on your trail make sure it is sound and repair it if you are handy. If not, just report back to the officers and we'll deal with it.

 The amount of work will depend on the trail. Some never seem to need much maintenance, while others seem to grow brush overnight. The frequency that you visit your trail is up to you. Probably once a month is a good rule of thumb. In the autumn raking or blowing us usually desirable, we have three chapter leaf blowers we can loan. There seems to be quite a few people already blowing and raking the leaves. We'd like to know who you are!

The trail adopter will not be allowed to make re-routes or build trails or features without going through the proper permission cycles or the NEMBA leaders and land managers. Suggested improvements however will certainly be considered as you see fit.

We would like to know how much time you spend on maintenance. The land managers all want us to keep track of volunteer hours. The more we log, the better we, as an organization, are looked upon. We want our land managers to be happy !

 Adoption will be first come first served. If you want to adopt a trail, or several trails  please contact me here or contact Mike Geldermann for Franklin Falls and Jesse McGowan for Page Hill. I will be handling Ahern State Park.  It would be great is anyone wanted to do something at Elm Brook, you can contact me for that one too.

Rusty Bucket, Lower Heritage, Cellar Hole and Lost Wall at Franklin Falls already have people signed up. If you don't know the trails by name or you want the leaders to make suggestions we certainly know which ones need to be loved the most.

Thanks, Grant