The Report

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It's Sunday and I just got back from a beautiful weekend in Downieville. 27 folks showed up for the trail day, including 6 youth, to knock out 1000 feet of new trail. The North Yuba has seen a lot of work on it in the last few years and we're really close to finishing this 7 mile section of trail, which when complete will link a new 15 mile trail straight out of town that will be open almost all year round. This is a big deal and we're so close. But how close are we really?

I've had ideas of how close we were but had never ridden the whole thing to see for myself how much was really left to do until today. Tod (1D), Todd (DoubleD, Toe-Clip Todd), and I rode it today to see for ourselves . We spent a little less than 30 minutes hike a biking a half mile of unfinished trail til we hooked up with the finished half on the other side. Once we got to the other side, we were greeted with sweet flowing single track (minus a couple down trees and debris) that descended 3 miles into Goodyears Bar.

The hike a bike was way easier than I thought, but still hard enough to be questionable for the Epic. The new trail looked so sweet that Todd came up with an idea to finish it that I quickly jumped on board with. The two of us are donating some last minute funds to pay a crew for a week of work to punch the trail through. In addition, I will lead an extra volunteer trail work weekend of May 2nd as a reinforcement effort. Like the end of a race, you want to finish strong and this is our chance. If we all pitch in now, Downieville will have a new trail this summer, adding to the already famous and world class trails which we all know and love. 2009 can be the real debut of the whole New North Yuba trail.