Advocacy and Trail Stewardship Leaders Meet
The first Singletrack Summit Central Coast was held October 10 – 12 in Fairfax. The Eureka to Redding trail stewardship/advocacy organizations have been holding Singletrack Summits for four years now. CAMTB has visited those events for the last couple of years and BTCEB’s Scott Bartlebaugh headed to Weaverville last year. CAMTB has also held CAMTB Connected, their fall strategic planning kick-off meeting, for the last three years at Downieville and Santa Cruz. This year, CAMTB shifted to regional Singletrack Summits instead of the single CAMTB Connected event, which reduced travel for member organizations in a single region, allowed more locally focused sessions, and still provided for state-level discussions and information sharing. Four Singletrack Summits were held this year at Big Bear in SoCal, Redding for NorCal, Quincy for the Sierra, and Fairfax for the Central Coast. You might argue that we’re not really the true Central Coast, but in this geographic breakout it’s close enough.
This year’s Singletrack Summit Central Coast featured:
- a trail work day on the soon-to-be-completed Caballo Rojo trail at Tamarancho
- a screening of the most recent Freeride Film Festival movies
- a full day of presentations, discussions and exercises on Saturday
- group rides every day
- camping on Friday and Saturday nights
- dinner and camaraderie at Camp Ghilloti on Saturday night.
Participating local organizations included Access 4 Bikes, Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Monterey Off Road Cycling Association, Stewards of Briones, Bay Area Mountain Biking, Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewardship, Mount Diablo Trails Alliance, Silicon Valley Mountain Bikers, SF Urban Riders, Coastside on Bikes, and BTCEB. Out-of-region organizations included Redding Trails Alliance, Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association, Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association, San Diego Mountain Bike Association, Lowelifes, Motherlode Trail Stewardship, and Orogenisis Collective. In total there were 18 of the 41 CAMTB member organizations participating along with IMBA, a CAMTB partner. Additionally there were land manager staff or elected officials from East Bay Regional Park District (4 staff members), CA State Parks, Marin Parks and Open Space, Marin Municipal Water District (1 staff member and 3 elected directors), CA Assembly Member Damon Connolly, and the mayor of San Anselmo. BTCEB Board members Jamuel Starkey, Jon Adams, David Wilcox, and Scott Bartlebaugh attended, and we partnered with the Stewards of Briones and East Bay Regional Park District for a session on adoption of non-system trails discussing the Briones Pilot Project.
Topics for the Saturday sessions included:
- adoption of non-system trails
- state of the region
- IMBA update
- agency partnerships
- fire hardened trails
- EMTB past, present and future
- organization names (e.g., do you include MTB or not?)
- long distance trails.
In many cases, the Saturday sessions only had time to scratch the surface, but they primed discussions later that day and evening and provided contacts from other organizations to reach out and learn from and share ideas with.
This first Singletrack Summit for our region was definitely a success and built on the CAMTB Connected Retreats. It marks another step up for stewardship and advocacy organizations in our region. We look forward to next year and the years beyond along with the collaboration between organizations that continues to grow.
Scott Bartlebaugh, Advocacy Director
