Dear mountain bike friends and advocates,

 

I have been receiving several questions about Bicycle Colorado’s PayDirt for this season. So, I’ll take this opportunity to bring you up to speed on the status of the program.

 

As you know, Colorado PayDirt was inactive last year at the request of Mountain States Cup (MSC), the Colorado mountain bike racing championship series.

 

Local trail advocacy groups have reported a subsequent drop in volunteer participation. More alarming, Colorado is now among the top 5 Most Threatened states per IMBA’s 2003 report card.

 

We have been working with MSC to resurrect the program for 2004. As in years past, we asked MSC to provide first-place equivalent bonus points as incentive for racers to do trail work.

 

Mountain States Cup has declined.

 

Bicycle Colorado has devoted its own resources to operate PayDirt. We maintain all records of hours worked and bonus points earned, verify validity of hours, answer all participant questions, and host the Colorado PayDirt website. This year we slated improvements to encourage more participation by including additional race series, providing more incentive to racers and non-racers alike, and additional efforts to raise awareness of PayDirt and its supporters.

 

Bicycle Colorado does all this free of charge to race promoters, trail groups, or the industry. In other PayDirt states race promoters run the program themselves, and even donate a portion of entry fees to advocacy. They understand PayDirt is important to sustaining their business and the sport.

 

PayDirt encourages mountain bike racers to donate 5 hours per year toward maintaining trails, by rewarding them with points in the racing series. In two years alone, Colorado’s trails enjoyed the benefits of over 1800 volunteer hours of trail work. Racers are supportive of PayDirt too; over 70% of those competing for the series title participated in 2001.

 

Bicycle Colorado still plans to provide the official Colorado Mountain Bike Trail Work Calendar and will continue to work with the state’s other trail care groups. We are looking for a replacement program, yet recognize the difficulty of a start-up program to replicate the 900+ volunteer-hours PayDirt yields per year.

 

Bicycle Colorado is still willing to operate PayDirt if MSC comes on board. In the mean time, you are welcome to let the promoters know how important PayDirt is to the MTB community. Their contact info can found by following the event links on: http://www.handlebarandgrill.com/htm/comp/schedule.htm

 

If you have additional questions about PayDirt, the negotiations between Bicycle Colorado and MSC, or would like offer support for PayDirt, reply to this email or call mw at 303.417.1544. If you would like to post a trail project on the calendar, complete a listing at http://bicyclecolo.org/site/page.cfm?PageID=387.

 

I’ll keep you posted when we know more.

 

Sincerely,

 

Scott Gordon

 

Bicycle Colorado

303.417.1544

www.bicyclecolorado.org

 

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