Otero Canyon News

I ran into Kris McNeil, one of Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s reps, this evening at the Cibola National Forest Travel Management meeting. Kris is supposed to get me a written statement from the Secretary of the Air Force regarding Otero Canyon. His feel for what will be in the letter? That the Secretary is punting this issue right back to Kirtland AFB. Kris thinks the current base commander will be workable. My question is whether the new commander will be able to filter through the BS that will come from Bret Wilson or not. Looks like we may be addressing this issue yet again. 3 years have passed and this is still not resolved.

Cibola National Forest is currently going through a Travel Management process that is also occurring nationwide. I went to one of their planning sessions this evening. The bone head comment of the evening goes to some wilderness guy who was very upset and demanded to know when the Forest Service was going to give ALL of the public a chance to voice its opinion on this issue…uh, duh…what the hell were we all doing tonight sitting in this meeting?!?

So, besides that, news is good and bad, Cedro is going to be motorized, most of it will more than likely be for motorcycles/dirt-bikes in that category. Some trails will more than likely be designated ATV and others for any kind of 4×4 full-sized vehicle. La Madera area will also be affected. Public comment is still being accepted, and there are more planning meetings to come, but this is my gut feel for the end results.

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IMBA Visit

It’s been a whirlwind week, which is why I haven’t posted. It was just supposed to be the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) visit, that’s it! Then Albuquerque decided to put mountain biking advocacy to the test by throwing 2 big doozies on us. One turned out to be minor, the other…pretty big deal.

Minor: We thought we were going to lose a section of the Foothills to new development near the Embudito trailhead. Turns out we won’t lose any trail, but we’ll have a nice wall of homes to ride up against once development is finished.

Major: The establishment of Travel Management Rules in the Sandia Ranger District (this includes Cedro and Otero). About 100 people showed up to this, with about 5 representing mountainbikers. There’s more to come on this.

IMBA Visit

Matt did a good writeup on the IMBA events, so check out his blog for more details.

Nat and Rachel Lopes, our IMBA Trail Care Crew, trained us at the BLM and then we went out to apply what we had learned. Everyone met at the White Mesa trailhead, got some basic directions from Matt and Rachel, then we drove out to the area for some manual labor.

Here’s a pic of the area we planned to fix. I’m at the top, looking down. You can see a faint trail off to the left of the pic. Only the very beginning of that trail would exist after our work today. The rest has “disappeared” into the landscape thanks to creative trail work.

And here’s a pic of the trail that “disappeared” as people hike up with the trail tools. Even Tom, our local Mountain Bike Hall of Famer, couldn’t make it up without a break.

Now THAT is saying something about the loose, steep, well-eroded climb that we removed and replaced with a fun section of trail.

As you can see from the following pics, we had trail designers and then the worker bees. Several stages of worker bees ensued…the ones who just wanted to hack away started at the front, followed by the more anal retentive types who would tamp down and form the nice trail (yes, I was one of “those” types). It was lots of fun and amazing how much we got done in only about 3 hours!

So after a good day of hard trail work, we followed it up on Sunday with a ride in the Sandias. We did a shuttle ride from Ellis all the way down to Faulty. The end of the ride was celebrated at Ribs with excellent barbecue and beer. I hear Nat thought this was an epic trail…one of the best he’s ever ridden in his 3 years as a Trail Care Crew member. That’s saying a lot…he’s been to 46 states in the U.S.! I know we have excellent trails, so I’m not too surprised. I was really happy we were able to get both Rachel and him out there.

There was 1 piece of bad news from the Sunday ride…we had a casualty. Our favorite M&M ride leader, Jim, took a fall on Tree Springs in a knarly,technical, rocky section of trail. A minor concussion and 22 stitches above the left eye and eye lid later, I think he’s gonna either get a full suspension bike or at least a better fork for his existing bike. On the way to the emergency room, Jim was his ever-cheerful self, talking about how much he enjoyed the ride and how he was going to be ready to do it again. Get well soon Jim!

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Painting

So I suck as a painter. It’s quite evident now. It took me all day (well, as long as Matt was out riding in Cedro/Otero) to paint just the upper part of the house from the deck–leaning over the side–and part of the backyard area…and it only looks so-so. I couldn’t choose the correct tool (brush size, roller, whatever) if my life depended upon it!

It was a rest day today. I’m taking Matt’s advice and will take a 3 day consecutive rest to see if I can reduce the hip pain. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’ve got more than enough to do this week, so I shouldn’t go too stir crazy.

Well, another week is about to begin. Having 9/80s is great until I get the short weekend. It seems way too short. Saturday and Sunday. That’s it!! At least I only have 4 days at work this week. 1 day will be shot at a conference being held where I work. I have 2 presentations for that, so I still need to prepare.

I have a meeting with Danny Milo, Senator Bingaman’s Albuquerque Field Representative Monday afternoon. I’m meeting him with Chris and Russ from the club, FooMTB. We’ll be talking to him about trail issues: Wilderness, Save Otero, and a national IMBA issue for RTCA.

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