I am heading to this meeting but the more people that come out to support MTB Trails the better.  A large turn out to a meeting like this could only help to get more mountain bike trail built at Uwharrie National Forest.

It says that their will be more meetings but I imagine the first one could set the trend for how future development will proceed. 

Opportunities like this are pretty rare so go voice your opinion and see whats going on!

I'll be there.

2014: 1 trip, 13 miles.

I ride Uwharrie 4 to 8 times every month, more when the shuttle resorts are closed.

I live in China Grove.  I will not be able to make the meeting because of work, but would love to see more trails out there.  It is a great trail now and has the potential to be even greater.

Every time I ride I stop at one of the gas stations on the way in (they look at me funny if I am already wearing my bib), so I do support local business.

When we ride as a group, we also stop on the way out and have a snack.

Good turnout from the MTB crowd last night.  I think the Forest Service was impressed.  They said they were going to make the mountains bigger and install some lifts for us. 

I am thrilled to hear that there was a good turnout.

Is there a summary of the meeting?  Was anything interesting proposed?

Here's a report. There's lots that folks can do to help maintain and eventually build new trail at Uwharrie. It's not hard to get plugged in. 

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The Uwharrie staff as well as some of their compatriots from the Ashville office kicked off a strategy planning initiative for trails at the UNF. District Ranger Deborah Walker suggested this is similar to what was recently done in either Piscah and/or other forests in the Western part of the state. Basically they want to involve all of the trail user groups in strategizing how best to maintain what they have and then offer the best possible trail user experience possible for each of the user groups. I’m not exactly clear what the end “Strategy” will look like, but it will give the FS a plan and outline to follow as they address any future trail issues, whether that’s re-routes and closures for braided OHV trails they now have in the Badin area, new trail for any user group, potentially dual-use or multi-use trails for areas further from trail heads, potential new trailhead locations, etc. I didn’t hear any negative views expressed by the FS about potential new trail per se, but they want to be sure that any potential new trail fits within an overall strategy that meets the following goals:
1.      Provide  quality of experience over quantity of miles;
2.      Sustainability - environmentally, economically and socially sustainable (socially mean in a way that works within the whole forest and related support facilities);
3.      Provides loop opportunities with properly designed trail heads;
4.      Provides long distance (multi-day) backpacking opportunities (Deborah suggested this may be limited by the size of the forest, but that there is substantial ability to do overnight hiking now. It wasn’t discussed, but there is no reason this could not be expanded to include backcountry bike touring too!);
5.      A design that supports existing recreational facilities vs. requiring new recreational facilities.

This initial meeting was primarily a presentation by the FS staff, including the FS’ State Archeologist,  Biologist and Public Relations guys. They gave a very good overview of all of the special considerations they need to manage at Uwharrie, including all of the other recreational users. At the end of the presentations, we met with the individual staff to talk about their various areas of expertise. I learned a lot about the Forest I didn’t know. 

Deborah suggested she thinks this Trail Strategy process will take upwards of a year or so; meetings will be scheduled perhaps every 2 months and will involve working both in single user groups and also putting groups together to address certain issues.

Overall, because of the generally very good condition of the mountain bike system, we should be in great shape to be able to move forward with new trails once the total Trail Strategy is formed and in place. Also, compared to most all of the other user groups, we have the least available current mileage in the Forest, have few if any user group conflicts (as the equestrian and UHV folks seem to) and the FS knows we want to build more professionally designed and built trails like the new stuff Ed and TS put in recently. Although the FS won’t likely be ready to have us  flag new corridors until the Trail Strategy process is complete, we can work to identify where we do want our new trails to go, including potential new trail heads, and where we could potentially share some existing hiking trail or new dual-use trail. Then try to get these ideas instituted into the Trail Strategy as it is developed.

In the meantime, we have plenty of stuff we can do now. Brian Bristol (with the Land Trust as sponsor) secured a grant (from the Center for Disease Control of all places) for I believe $20K for a professionally done economic impact study for what new trails would bring to the Montgomery County area. They have hired Holland Consulting Planners, Inc. from Wilmington  Wes McLeod is doing the work and would like any similar studies we have that can give him ideas how to structure an prepare the report. He has the Coldwater Mountain study. I sent him the Pinkbike compilation of economic impact studies. I’m looking for the one from Oregon, and any others we have showing impacts on smaller, more remote communities. Let me know if you have these available or where elsewe might go. I also need to review my Summit notes to see if some of the presentation materials from those seminars may be available.

Next up is a $47,000 2012 RTP grant Ranger Theresa Savery (Terry) applied for that apparently has been approved. This would be to finish the 2 or 3 remaining re-routes that were approved for Supertree but were unable to be finished with the original RPT grant. Terry said something like she had been in contact with SORBA about matching funds – first I’ve heard of it.

Terry also applied for a 2014 RTP grant for $50,000 to build/ rebuild the renegade trail someone built from the lower parking lot to the beginning of the new connector trail. The FS closed that non-authorized build as soon as they saw it, but I heard it was well laid out. Apparently it encroaches on an archeological site and needs to be re-routed around it. She has no word yet from RTP about the application, but we should contact the committee and let them know we want this to happen if at all possible.

We spoke with Deborah about installing some trail counters so we can begin to get ridership numbers. We have some available and Deborah said they  be happy to work with us to install them.

The Trailblazers should be planning a work day soon to address normal maintenance. We also need to “adopt” the trail as the FS suggested previously (18 months ago). They’d really like us to sign on.