It was 2010. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the birth of Instagram. Toy Story 3 and 29” wheels.

Mountain Biking had been around for a couple of decades, but it was dominated by male riders. Karen Lynaugh said to herself “there really ought to be a ladies’ group.” She made a proposal to the BTCEB board of directors to set up a regular ride for women, in addition to the co-ed rides that the club had been putting on for years. The directors, led by then-president Michael Meija, enthusiastically agreed and made her Director of Women’s Programs. The directors have been unwavering in their support ever since.

Karen not only had the program worked out, she had a name: “Ride Like a Girl.” It’s a great name, too. It takes back a gendered insult and turns it into a rallying cry.

On June 6, 2010, six women riders gathered at Shell Ridge near Mount Diablo. Ride Like a Girl was officially a thing. Every month since then – barring rain and the odd global pandemic – we’ve ridden like girls for 15 years! As I write, there have been 143 rides at 25 parks circling the Bay Area. Ride Like a Girl has sought out fun places to ride as far North as Annadel, all the way South to Soquel Demonstration Forest.

Karen led Ride Like a Girl for the first three years, ably assisted by a group of strong women including Inga Beck, Jane Moorhead, Karen S. and Amy Arcus. Karen set the tone we’ve followed ever since: she showed her riders the trails she liked, all over the Bay Area. Nobody was left behind and everyone had fun. The East Bay women’s mountain bike community grew and thrived under her leadership.

When Karen moved away, she recalls saying, diplomatically, to Amy: “you’re going to do this, right?” Fortunately, Amy said yes. She led the program, with help from Inga, Ellen Wilson and Alex Kay, for the next seven years until the world came to a halt in 2020. (I know I’m missing some people here, which I regret. Fortunately, this is the web: reach out and I’ll make it better.)

When it felt safe to begin again, BTCEB put out a call to find a new leader. I’d been on a few of Amy’s rides and had a great time, so I raised my hand. And I got the job! I’ve had lots of helpers, but I’d especially like to thank Heather Broome. Her boundless enthusiasm and cheer are more infectious then the ‘rona!

Leading Ride Like a Girl has been a joyful experience for me. I’ve met hundreds of wonderful women and made some deep friendships. When we pause on rides, it’s deeply satisfying to watch “my” girls chatting, exchanging their details and beginning new friendships of their own. With apologies (kinda) to the guys, it’s different when it’s just women (cis, trans and femme – it’s how you identify that matters). There’s no stress and competition. It’s just women supporting women while having a whole load of fun.

To celebrate this milestone, we’re going to hit the nifty singletrack of Joaquin Miller Park (looked after by BTCEB volunteers, in case you didn’t know) and then we have a special treat: Heather lives just down the hill and we’re all invited over for a barbecue.

So join us and we’ll raise a glass to 15 more years of Ride Like a Girl!

Sign up here.

Rebecca Lewington, Board Member-at-Large

AKA what it takes to get just one trail built in the Bay Area …

TLDR (but it’s really worth the read if you care about new trails in the East Bay): We’re asking you to take two actions to keep this project moving forward.  First, send an email to the EBRPD Board of Directors asking them to support further work on the Wildcat Flow Trail project and approve work on the environmental impact report.  Second, sign on to the Wildcat Flow Trail petition to show your support for this project.  Links are listed above. Below you’ll find a more in depth discussion of the project and its history.  You can easily do this by going to WildcatFlowTrail.org. Below you’ll find a more in-depth discussion of the project and its history.

You’ve probably heard something about the Wildcat Flow Trail by now.  To be clear, it does not yet exist. It’s just an idea … and a pretty good one.  But good intentions only go so far in this world and the Wildcat Flow Trail (WFT) is still a ways off from becoming a reality.  At about two miles in length with 600 feet of descent, it would be the first bike-only trail built in the East Bay. Bike advocates first proposed the trail in 2020 and now nearly five years later we are somewhere in the middle of a process dictated by a myriad of competing interests.  In many respects, the saga of the WFT is representative of the state of trail access in our region, where riders are allowed to ride on most legacy ranch roads (except for EBMUD land!) but precluded from riding on most singletrack trails (what the Park District calls “narrow” trails). Unlike in regions like Tahoe or Santa Cruz, bike organizations in our region are rarely allowed to maintain trails and never allowed to build new ones.

The WFT would be built in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, which is owned and managed by the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD).  After considering the initial proposal from bike advocates in late 2020, the Park District began a methodical process to check to see if the project was feasible. The first step was to identify potential environmental concerns and possible mitigations. The proposed WFT passed this check, so EBRPD sought to gauge public support, which they found to be strong. EBRPD developed a preliminary trail design and held a public meeting on April 25, 2024, to discuss the trail in concept, and that’s where hope for this new trail sprang.

After clearing these hurdles, the District hired a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Assessment) consultant to start the state-required CEQA study.

The process followed by the WFT illustrates the long, costly path needed to get a new trail built in Park District land and, honestly, much of California.  While frustrating to riders like us who have been waiting for years for better bike access, it’s important to acknowledge the constraints imposed on the district by the California Environmental Quality Assessment (CEQA), opponents to bikes, limited staff time, and the mission of the Park DIstrict with its strong emphasis on conservation.

The WFT has its origins and has been largely moved along by a group of teenage mountain bikers and their coaches  from schools in Berkeley, El Cerrito, Albany and Kensington.  For those riders, the 2,790-acre Wildcat Canyon park is close to their homes and it’s where they ride every week.  And we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of riders.

With its grass and weed-covered hills, the area around the proposed WFT resembles a cattle ranch more than a fully developed park and so it is reasonable to think that there is plenty of spare room for a new trail or two. After all, in recent years, off-road bike use has grown exponentially, yet the supply of legal trails has remained nearly flat.

In 2020 the idea of putting a flowing singletrack in the park began to get traction.  A great spot seemed to be on the west-facing hillside of the park, where the existing Mezue fire road makes its way down the steep slope toward the bottom of the valley. Due to its steep and eroded surface, the dirt road is no joy to ride up or down.  Less steep and meandering trails like the WFT are more fun to ride on, and bike speeds are slower, which makes them safer both for cyclists and for hikers. Such trails are built all across North America and Europe and are hugely popular.

Wildcat Canyon Regional Park is contiguous with its older sibling Tilden Regional Park to the south but sees far less visitation than Tilden.  Whereas Tilden Park is both an open space park and a traditional urban park — with a variety of amenities and attractions, from a swimming pond to a half-scale steam railroad — Wildcat Canyon resembles more the private ranch it once was.  Encompassing the Wildcat Creek watershed, the park runs from ridge top to ridge top, affording some nice views of the San Francisco Bay to the west and Mount Diablo and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the east.  The park is crisscrossed by 25 miles of wide, dusty ranch roads and is grazed by cattle under a lease managed by the Park District.  So it sounds like a blank slate for trail building, right?

EBRPD actually has a staff of professional trail designers and managers who could probably do more if the process to get new trails in the ground wasn’t facing constant pushback and legal challenges.  In fact, the Park District’s small team of trail experts spend a great deal of time getting multi-use paved trails built in urbanized, highly constrained spaces.  It takes years and millions of dollars to get just a mile of paved shoreline trail installed, but the result is that the more remote parts of the parks get less attention.

Off-road bicycle use in the East Bay has long faced vocal opposition from a small group within the local chapters of the Sierra Club, Native Plant Society and the local chapter of the National Audubon Society — despite the fact that this opposition strays far from the national missions of those organizations. Several years of engagement by the mountain bike community with the local SF Bay Sierra Club chapter has resulted in a moderation of their position and, most recently, in a letter to EBRPD supporting further study of the WFT.  In case this isn’t obvious: this is no small feat!

Legal challenges under CEQA have become a bludgeon wielded by opposition groups to hinder the efforts of public agencies to approve and build projects, be that trails or affordable housing. In fact, this mechanism has been used so often to stop infill housing development that major changes to the law were recently enacted by our state legislature (for a deep dive, search on YIMBY – Yes In My Backyard).

Despite the negativity of a few, the EBRPD board has approved several hundred thousand dollars of  funding for a CEQA study related to further work on the trail. The first phase of the CEQA environmental impact report was to be completed by the end of 2024, but it has been delayed.  Now, with some changes in the membership of the EBRPD board of directors, staff will review the project status and request confirmation to proceed with the environmental impact report work at their August 5 board meeting.  We need our biking community to express their support via an email to the Board and by signing the petition that can be found at WildcatFlowTrail.org.

One argument for new trails is that they take pressure off the other trails and therefore reduce potential conflict between various kinds of trail users.  There is truth to this since hikers tend to want to pick a more direct route between points on a landscape even if it means marching straight up a rutted fire road, whereas bike riders usually don’t mind a more involved path if it means that it’s less steep overall.  For many bike riders it’s the journey that matters the most, not just the destination.

You can find past reports on the Wildcat Flow Trail project in these previous BTCEB posts:

April 2024 Wildcat Flow Trail Public Meeting Report

Wildcat Flow Trail Stewardship Study Published

2023 Advocacy Wrap Up

January 2022 Advocacy In Action

Tom Gandesbery, Trails Director

Update from August 5 EBRPD board meeting: The Wildcat Flow Trail (or, as EBRPD referred to it, the Wildcat Bike Trail) Notice of Preparation passed by a vote of 5 to 2, with the two opposing votes placed by Olivia Sanwong and Lynda Deschambault. Sanwong opposed to make a point on some procedural items but was generally supportive otherwise and expected that it would pass. Deschambault was hung up on a lack of adequate detail on trail user numbers and balancing the missions of conservation with recreation, but is not against MTB access.

For the supporting votes: Elizabeth Echols provided solid support, beyond her normal support, and Colin Coffey stepped up his MTB support. Dennis Waespi noted that the environmental impact report will bring more information and supported the study. Luana España said that Echols made her comments so eloquently, explained that this isn’t a final design for this trail, and supported additional outreach. John Mercurio noted the huge enthusiasm at this meeting, the biggest in his three years on the board, repeated the message that having a bike-only trail increases safety, and noted all of the volunteer groups that were represented and that the MTB community turns out volunteers.

This was a 5 1/2-hour meeting that started after a 30-minute delay and had good turnout by Wildcat youth, with two particularly strong youth comments by Aria and Harper from the Wildcat Youth Advocates during the second Zoom commenter section. Thanks to everyone who contacted the EBRPD board in advance of this meeting to express their support and to everyone who showed up at the board meeting to comment on behalf of the project.

Thanks to Elizabeth Echols, Colin Coffey, Dennis Waespi, Luana España and John Mercurio for their support of the Wildcat Flow Trail. Feel free to reach out to them to thank them for their support. And if you live in Ward 2 (represented by Lynda Deschambault) or Ward 5 (represented by Olivia Sanwong), please consider reaching out to them to express your support for the Wildcat Flow Trail and hope that they will vote for access for MTB riders at future meetings. If you aren’t sure which ward you live in, check out the EBRPD ward map. Here’s a list of the EBRPD board members, and their email addresses are available if you click on each name in turn.

It always amazes me when I meet fellow riders carrying nothing on a ride but one water bottle, a phone and faith that nothing will go wrong. Personally, I distrust faith.

All those years mean that I’ve had a lot of things go wrong. I’ve had plenty of rides turn into long walks because something broke (or, more honestly, because I broke something) and I didn’t have what I needed to fix the bike then and there.

I’ve been mountain biking for a long time. Seriously. When I started, “suspension” is what you did to belief, and three rings was something circuses and front derailleurs had in common. The phrase “dropper post” didn’t mean anything at all!

My pack is a testament to all those walks. And also, sadly, a reminder of times when I, or those I’m riding with, took a tumble and needed patching up.

Stuff for Bikes

Stuff for Humans and Other Animals

All this adds up to about a kilogram, once you add in the zipper pouches that keep it neat. Cheap at the price, for peace of mind alone.

Am I over-cautious? Maybe, but I hate seeing my blood leak out. Or other people’s blood, for that matter. And I still hate walking when I should be riding.

Rebecca Lewington, Board Member-at-Large

The 2025 CAMTB Month Dreambike Giveaway closed on June 30 with a bang! A huge congratulations to all of the prize winners and an even bigger thank you to everyone who entered, donated, and supported along the way! Together we raised over $77,000 to protect and expand and enhance cycling, trails, and public lands across California. That includes $45,000 going directly to local trail stewardship programs across the state. Thanks to your generosity, BTCEB is earmarked to receive $4,098.40 to help fund our advocacy and trail stewardship programs. The donation window to participate is now closed, but if you’d like to support BTCEB’s ongoing local advocacy efforts in the East Bay, please consider making a one-time or recurring donation here or keep visiting us at btceb.org to follow our efforts. 

Thanks to our partners who made this possible – especially Ibis Cycles for the dream bike and unwavering support for trail advocacy. Shoutout to Crankbrothers, Maxxis Bike, Sierra Nevada, Loam Pass, A SingleTrack Mind, Formula 100, and more for making this our raddest giveaway yet.

Trails don’t build or protect themselves and this is what advocacy in action looks like.

• Grand Prize: Choose Your Ibis: Ibis Bike of Choice ($7,200.00 Value)
  • Tracy Hanson, La Mesa
• Prize Pack 1: Choose Your Tread: Maxxis MTB or Gravel Tires for a Year ($400.00 Value)
  • Ross Blanchard, San Anselmo – Access 4 Bikes Supporter
• Prize Pack 2: Choose Your Slides: Crankbrothers Shoe/Pedal Combo ($400.00 Value)
  • Scott Alvord, Weaverville – Redding Trail Alliance Supporter
• Prize Pack 3: Choose Your Brew: Sierra Nevada Brewing Commemorative Yeti Cooler ($400 Value)
  • Matthew Thiede, Chico – Chico Velo Supporter
• Prize Pack 4: Choose Your Line: 1:1 Coaching with A Singletrack Mind ($500 Value)
  • Dimitry Struve, Santa Cruz
• Prize Pack 5: Choose Your Adventure: Loam Pass– Two days of mountain biking at 40+ bike parks and shuttle services in North America ($250 Value)
  • David Shiba, Chico – Chico Velo Supporter
  • Jonathan Fonbuena, South Lake Tahoe – TAMBA Supporter
• Prize Packs 6 and 7: Choose Your Lube: Formula 100 Gift Bag – assorted selection of bike washes, degreasers, lubes, and oils ($100.00 Value)
  • Tim Vincek, Benton
  • Jonas Wermter, Bremen
• Prize Packs 8 -12: Choose Your Tool – Crankbrothers M19 Multi-Tool + CAMTB 5-Year Anniversary Commemorative Shirt ($100.00 Value)
  • Lucas Filshill, Sunnyvale
  • Graham Hobbs, Bonita
  • James Collins, Truckee
  • Douglas Tiner, Los Angeles
  • Denise Larsen, Woodside
  • Tim Vincek, Benton

Congratulations to this year’s drawing winners!

Thank You to the 2025 Ibis Dreambike Giveaway Partners
This year’s Dreambike partners helped us put together one of the best giveaway packages CAMTB has ever offered. Thank you to Ibis Cycles, Ornot, Maxxis Tires, Loam Pass, Trailforks, Crankbrothers, A Singletrack Mind, Formula 100, and Sierra Nevada Brewing for their generosity.

Thanks to CAMTB for leading this fundraising effort and collaborating with member organizations. 23 of the 38 coalition member organizations participated in this fundraiser.

BERKELEY, CA – The Bay Area’s mountain biking community can look forward to an even more impactful future, as the Board of Directors for the Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay (BTCEB) recently concluded a focused strategic planning exercise. Held on Sunday, May 18, for a half-day session, the off-site brought together board members to review past achievements, assess the current landscape, and set ambitious goals for the organization’s advocacy, trail work, and community engagement efforts across the East Bay.

The session was highly productive, with key outputs including a revised mission statement that better reflects BTCEB’s current scope and aspirations. The approved mission statement reads: “We advocate for equitable trail access for mountain bikers in the San Francisco East Bay. We promote the responsible use of public lands, a culture of community, and the active stewardship of trails. We aim to unite riders, land managers, and local communities to build and maintain sustainable trails in order to create shared spaces that celebrate outdoor recreation and preserve our natural environment.”

Additionally, the board collectively established five core priorities for the 2025/2026 year:

• Make advocacy sustainable: Build a long-term, effective approach to advocating for mountain biking interests.
• Increase the membership base: Grow the number of individuals who support BTCEB’s mission.
• Increase engagement with the membership: Foster deeper connections and participation among existing members.
• Strengthen the BTCEB brand and communications: Enhance the organization’s public image and improving how it shares information.
• Make trails sustainable: Ensure that the volunteer-driven trails program to maintain trails is sustainable from year to year..

“This strategic planning session was an invaluable opportunity for the board to collectively reflect on where we are and, more importantly, where we want to go,” said one of the new board members, and added that this was a great opportunity to be onboarded into the organization

The insights and decisions from this planning session will directly inform BTCEB’s initiatives and priorities moving forward. Members and supporters can expect to see new projects, expanded advocacy campaigns, and increased opportunities to get involved as the organization translates these strategic discussions into action on the ground. BTCEB remains committed to its core mission of preserving, protecting, and expanding sustainable mountain biking opportunities in the East Bay. If you’re passionate about any of these priorities and would like to volunteer or contribute your skills, we invite you to contact the BTCEB board to get involved. Stay tuned for more updates on specific initiatives stemming from this strategic planning work.

Are you passionate about mountain biking, trail stewardship, and building a strong East Bay riding community? Do you have leadership experience or simply the desire to step up and make a difference? BTCEB is currently seeking a few volunteers to join our Board of Directors.

Why Volunteer with the BTCEB board?

Joining the BTCEB board gives you the opportunity to shape the future of mountain biking in the East Bay. You’ll be part of a team that advocates strongly for sustainable trails, hosts fun and inclusive rides, and builds partnerships with land managers and the broader outdoor community. This is a volunteer role, ideal for someone who wants to get more deeply involved in the local MTB scene and support an organization that’s been protecting and expanding trail access in the East Bay for more than 30 years.

What We’re Looking For

You don’t need prior experience as a board member — just enthusiasm, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to the mission of BTCEB. If you’re organized, responsive, and passionate about mountain biking, you’re already a great candidate. You can join the BTCEB board as a Director-At-Large, but if you already have finely tuned project manager skills or experience with recruiting and retaining members for other organizations, please consider helping with our Secretary or Membership Director positions.

If this sounds like a fit for you — or if you want to nominate someone you think would be a great match — please reach out to us at info@btceb.org. We’d love to hear from you, answer any questions, and talk about how you can make an impact.

Join us and help us advocate for keeping East Bay trails open, fun, and rideable for everyone. We look forward to hearing from you!

Your Friends at the Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay