Rally for new trail with CBMBA

“It’s definitely an ambitious project”

Thanks to a cooperative effort between the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA) and the Forest Service, a new trail, dubbed Point Lookout Trail, is slated for construction at CBMBA’s overnight trail work weekend on Saturday and Sunday, August 24-25.

In true CBMBA overnight fashion, there will be a campsite set up, with food provided by Rim Tours and beverages by New Belgium Brewery. Crews will head in from the Brush Creek side, where trail 409 comes into Farris Creek and from the Caves parking lot at 9 a.m. on Saturday. After a hard day’s work, volunteers are encouraged to spend the night at the campout location along Farris Creek, enjoy dinner and be supplied with beverages and a raffle. Sunday morning, volunteers will wake up to a breakfast from Rim Tours and will be sent back into the hills for more work—with lunch provided as well.
“You’ll get three catered meals, all the beer you can drink and likely a raffle prize,” says Whiting. “And you end up with a beautiful trail to ride the rest of your life.”
In an effort to make sure there is plenty of food and beer CBMBA asks that volunteers RSVP by contacting CBMBA at crestedbuttemountainbikeassoc@yahoo.com.
“Our dream number is 70-plus,” says CBMA board member Matt Whiting. “It’s definitely an ambitious project. Hopefully we’ll be riding it on Monday.”
The Point Lookout Trail will be 1.4 miles long and connect 409.5 to 409, replacing the current connector, 405.
The groundwork was laid down long ago when CBMBA put together its master plan for the north end of the valley. In that master plan, CBMBA listed trail 405 as in need of replacement. That foresight will now come to fruition.
Trail 405 is a non-motorized trail, accessible from both the Brush Creek and Cement Creek drainages, and while a section of it is in great shape, a long portion of the trail follows the fall line straight down, resulting in major damage over the years.
Last year, former CBMBA board member Matt Steinwand, along with current board members Rob Mahedy and Whiting, took the bull by the horns and made the new trail a priority. CBMBA opened the conversation with Greg Austin of the Forest Service about replacing trail 405. Due to a number of circumstances, the new trail idea proved to be a good one.
“It doesn’t happen every day that we get to do a new trail on Forest Service land,” says Whiting. “They liked the idea of replacing 405 because it was already in our master plan.”
In addition, CBMBA had already earned kudos from the Forest Service for their massive outpouring of volunteers to collaborate with the Forest Service on a trail building project two years earlier when more than 70 volunteers showed up to help build the Cement Creek Trail.
Furthermore, the idea also dovetails with the Forest Service’s resource objectives to replace unsustainable routes.
The next step for CBMBA: find money.
CBMBA was successful in garnering $41,800 from the Resource Advisory Committee (RAC) when they proposed the Cement Creek Trail plan. It just so happened that as talk of replacing 405 was under way, RAC announced another grant cycle.
CBMBA, and Whiting specifically, were charged with writing a grant to RAC requesting funds to cover the cost of a Forest Service-driven Sustainable Trails Project crew to do work on additional trails in the area, including sections of 409 to improve access to the new Point Lookout Trail as well as access from Brush Creek to Cement Creek.
“If we want to do this new trail, we wanted to make it possible to ride to it,” explains Whiting, “[and] improve the connectivity between the two drainages.”
After a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process had the proposed trail reworked to accommodate elk habitat, Austin and Mahedy attended the RAC meeting in September with a proposal flush with support from several local entities.
The proposal garnered the support of RAC to the tune of $19,900, allowing the Forest Service to fund the efforts of the Sustainable Trails Project crew’s work on 409, among other projects planned, and giving the green light to CBMBA from the Forest Service to build the Point Lookout Trail.
The proposed trail is designed to make for an incredible downhill for bikers as well as a rideable uphill, and a smooth trail for both hikers and horseback riders as well.
“It will be between 5 and 7 percent grade, which will make it really good for uphill too,” says Whiting.
Now it’s up to CBMBA to mobilize its forces.
“We realized it’s going to be a huge project and decided to make it an overnight project,” explains Whiting. “We need a really big turnout.”
The Forest Service will use burros to pack in the heavy tools to the site of the new trail.
“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to get in there and work,” says Whiting.