2003 MEDICINE WHEEL TRAIL WORK REPORT

Greetings from Medicine Wheel!

Well, here it is, the end of another season, and here is the
report on this years' work.

We started out early this year, on April 26th, working at the
Air Force Academy. Because this was the first work day of the
year, and you had to sign up early to even get onto the Academy,
we didn't have many people show up, but 5 or 6 of us went out
and helped them celebrate Earth Day and build some check dams
on the Falcon Trail. We got some nice t-shirts and some other
schwag. But as you know, we haven't been able to ride any
trails there this year, with the exception of the Santa Fe Trail.

On May 16-18, we had a trail building class led by Joey Klein
of IMBA. 18 attendees had a great time, and learned a lot about
building sustainable new trails. This culminated in a trail
building session on the 18th at the new Cheyenne Moutain State
Park. And that was just the start. There have been trail building
sessions there on Thursday evenings for the remainder of the season.
Many thanks to Bob Wells for leading those sessions, and to those
of you who have managed to attend. We've all been pumped about
building new trail instead of doing the same old repairs year
after year.

Of course, those repairs year after year are how we have earned
the reputation that brought us to building that new trail. So
on May 20, we got to do some trail repair at Stratton Open Space.
This is the first time that we have been allowed to work there,
even though I have asked about it for several years now. This was
mainly due to the new section that we built on the Gold Camp Path
hiking trail near the top of the Chutes last year. Fifteen people
showed up for that effort.

We had a work day scheduled for June 7 at Cheyenne Mountain State
Park with VOC. Trouble is, with the laid back way that we do things,
plus the fact that VOC filled up the slots, only one person from
Medicine Wheel made this work day that I am aware of. They built
about a mile of very nice trail down there, a great compliment
to the trail we have built, and the ones built by Tony Boone of
Arrowhead Trails West. There will be almost 19 miles of trails
down there. I won't go into the accomplishments there this year,
because I think that effort deserves it's own report. And we're
not finished yet anyway. We also had a group ride on October 12,
and had 32 people show up and enjoys the trails that are already
done.

June 25th was the start of four trail work days in Palmer Park this
year. We dedicated all of those days to the Grand View Overlook
trail. The first day we improved the drainage on the trail right
below the Grand View Overlook parking lot. This was desperately
needed due to some major erosion there. The other remaining days
were spent working on a short, steep section where the Overlook
Trail and the Cheyenne Trail meet. We did some major rock work
there, restructuring twice to try and get people to actually ride
it instead of going around. I'm still not sure we were successful,
but it wasn't for lack of trying. We had 13 people on that day,
18 the July 22nd, 14 on August 6, and 10 on September 16.

There was quite an uproar caused by the widening and graveling of
trails in Palmer Park. I had quite a few animated email sessions
with those who were concerned about that. And they were right,
there was cause for concern. But we all hope that that project
is over, and the city park and rec crews are finished with that
improvement.

On July 8th, we joined with a group doing trail improvements at
the Fire Center in Monument. I found out that many people are
not aware of the fine riding there. We didn't have much of a
turnout for that work day. I think that was mostly due to the
nasty traffic on I-25 at that time of day. Only three of us made
that work day. But we had a lot of fun working with Jon and Kim
Nordby, and learned how to build "tractor bars".

The remaining work day was in Ute Valley Park on August 26,
where 14 people joined us for some erosion control on the main
highway through the park. So with 18 people at the second Palmer
Park work day, Palmer supplants Ute Valley for the first time in
years as having the highest turnout.

This years numbers are off from last year . This could be due
to the elimination of the Pay Dirt Points program done by
Bicycle Colorado. This allowed licensed racers in the state to earn
first place points for doing trail work. I guess when they aren't
able to earn points, they aren't able to do trail work. I hope
that the program can be started up again next year. But the
turnouts were lower for all of the work days.

This years sponsors were:

Bristol Brewing Company
The King's Chef
Pro Cycling
Brian's Bicycle Repair
Old Town Bike Shop
Bicycle Village
Criterium Bike Shop
Zio's

So here are the numbers from this year:

Trail work volunteer hours: 258 (vs. 414 last year)
Number of volunteers: 51 (vs. 100 last year)
Total amount of schwag given away: $1600.00 (vs. $1800.00 last year)
Value of all this trail work: priceless

Thank you all for another great season of trail work.