Continental Divide Trail Work, this Weekend!

Email from Amy:
"The Montana Wilderness Association, Prickly Pear Land Trust, and the Helena Bike Club are putting on a pair of trail workdays on the Continental divide Trail north of Butte, Saturday and Sunday, Sept, 13 and 14. They have contacted IMBA and have an IMBA Trail Care Crew participating also. The Montana Mountain bike Alliance needs to put up a strong presence. Basically, the MWA and the Helena Club do not take us seriously. We need to put on a show of force. Our plan is to just go there for the Saturday session, but to show up in a big way.

It will help if participants sign up on the Prickly Pear Land trust website. Then they will have enough trail tools on hand. Also the Back Country Horseman are feeding us afterwards on Saturday, so by signing up they get a head count of workers.

This trail is being built as a result of the High Divide Agreement between Helena, Butte, and Anaconda bikers and the Montana Wilderness Association. The work area is up above Basin, MT. Exit 156 on I-15. 9 miles up Basin Creek road #172. ¾ mile past Winters Camp turn left on road #8513. Follow this for 4 miles to Joe Bowers Trailhead. I hope there is signage to assist us. A presentation by the IMBA trail crew is scheduled at 10 am."


-DNA

Protest update

They wrote a great article about their protest that probably won't help their cause.

Check it out at New West:

It was late when we left Missoula on a Friday night. We planned to sleep at the trailhead, wake early, hike in six miles, stay overnight, and fish and walk out seven miles the next day. We stopped to fill up our gas tanks in Dillon, where an article in the local paper caught our eye. We weren’t going to be alone in the Lima Peaks. A group of mountain bikers, the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance, planned to ride in the Garfield Mountain area in order to protest the pending wilderness recommendation. We weren’t happy about having to share the trails with the group, and, moreover, we weren’t happy about the intent behind their ride. We soon took matters into our own hands, laughing and tearing up a cardboard box. We were going to have a protest of our own.

The comments are REALLY good

By regular joe, 7-27-08
I love how pretentious city yuppies move to places like Missoula and then try to tell Missoula residents how they should live, where they should recreate, how they should recreate.

"Oh those mountain bikers -- they tried to KILL US with their high-speed fun! We were just walking along, 6-across on the trail, having a pleasant conversation about what a miracle Barack Obama is, and here comes this CRAZY mountain bike rider going at least 3 miles per hour! He tried to KILL US! We actually had to interrupt our impressively deep and sophisticated political conversation! CLEARLY mountain bikes should be banned!"

"Signed,

Peter Predenshus
Jill Konducenshun
Bob Sooperyer
Ted Eauppie
Gladys Cnobb"

Look for a response article from the MMBA in New West soon.


Trail report content: We "rode" from Bridger Bowl to the M yesterday on the Ridge. The trail was dry, the cornices were still large and in charge up on the ridge line.

Lima Peaks Fat Tire Festival

We got protested by wilderness advocates with signs on little sheep creek trail.

Ride report content:
Italian peaks loop is in and SICK. Ok, maybe it's a little hard to find but still good. Little sheep creek is good as well. GPS tracks will be appended to this at some point.

Sheep Creek, Coffin lakes

I went on the second two MMBA advocacy rides this weekend. Coffin lakes trail was in good shape all the way to the lake, as long as you didn't mind fresh cow pies too much. It was a good trail, but stormy weather and cramped quarters at the view point for the lake made it the lesser of the two rides.

Sheep creek was a real gem of a trail, one of the best mountain lake trails I've ever ridden. It was dry up to just about 9,000' (right Denny?)and featured a 3 mile high speed meadow section second to none.

There's Denny and someone whose name escapes me.


Here's the lake


Get out there and ride it, and write! Info here and from IMBA here and a easy to use form letter here.

Feel free to ignore the rest if you don't like looking at CSS.

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410 pixel width? optimized for all those people at 800x600 eh? Someone hates freedom. If this were my blog i'd do

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(just joking, this blog is a great, thanks for letting me contribute)