School is back in session and a few rides have ended in the waning light of late summer so that's when us trail builders start thinking about skipping a ride or run and picking up the hoe and playing in the dirt instead. I have put together a tentative schedule of workdays for this fall.

These workdays will mostly focus on the build out of the West Dam Singletrack Trails extending from the Shelter 14 area. I will most likely  host other workdays with less notice posted up on our  Facebook group a few days before the work to be preformed those workdays will be more focused on existing trail maintenance and improvements.

Our first workday will be: the MORE POWERRRRR WORKDAY!!!

Sunday September 7th 

Meet @ Shelter 14

Work: 9am-noon

Goal: Full clearing of Foundation trail corridor.

Tasks: Deadfall clearing, Brush cutting, Weed eating, destobing, vine removal, honeysuckle thinning.

Tools: Chainsaws, Weed eaters, Brush Blades, machetes, axes, hatchets, anything with a loud motor or a sharp edge.

Safety gear: safety glasses, long pants, long sleeves, gloves, hearing protection, bug spray, hard hats (optional), Face  shields (optional), Brain Not optional!

Who: This workday is Adults only!!!  99% of our workdays are family friendly and we want to see the next generation of trail lover out and involved however this workday is very heavy on horror movie props and there are just to many ways you can get hurt.  Our next workday in honor of National Public Lands Day, September 27^th will be perfect for you to bring out the entire family. 

Our second workday of the season and we need a large turnout for this one is for: 

National Public Lands Day. 

Saturday September 27th

Meet @ Shelter 14

Work: 9am-noon

Goal: benching from west dam trail to the foundation.

Tasks: benching , destobing, raking, Brush removal, Vine and tree trimming, trash pick up.

Tools: Grub hoes, Cutter mattocks, Pulaskies, McClouds, Tampers, Spring Rakes, Bow Rakes, Loppers.

Safety gear: safety glasses, long pants, long sleeves, gloves,  bug spray, hard hats (optional), Face shields (optional), Brain Not optional!

Who: Everyone this is family friendly workday we have work for everyone and every skill level. Volunteers under 18 require a responsible adult present assisted children will be feed to the raccoons.

After Work: I hope to have some food and refreshments available for some after workday relaxation and recovery details to follow closer to the workday.

I will fill in info for the remaining workdays as the season progresses our hope is to have Foundation trail, The Point Trail and Lake View trails completed and in use by summer 2015. 

P.S. If you come up with better trail names feel free to tell me I used what seemed obvious when I was putting the project planning map together.

See you on the Trail...

Cliff

 

This summer has been extremely busy on and off the trail. This year we have logged over 500 volunteer hours both building and maintaining the trails at Wyandotte County lake. This includes a wonderful joint effort between Trail Masons Association Volunteers and  The Trail Nerds Association Volunteers trimming every last inch of Wyco at least once this year, yes some sections need it again.  But when you do the math you have 11.5 miles of East Dam Singletrack + 3 miles of West Dam Singletrack + 10 miles of Bridal trail = 24.5 miles of trail x 2 sides to each trail and you end up with 49 miles of trimming  that was accomplished all with volunteer labor and equipment.

Our Wyco Wednesday night mountain bike group rides continue to attract new trail lovers. With most Wednesdays having 10+ cars in the lot and on one Wednesday, that was also a Preride for The Masons Midsummer Meltdown Fundraising cross country mountain bike race we had over 50 riders go out on the 6:00 group ride not bad for a trail system that didn't exist only a short few years ago. This summer has been though on the core Wyco mountain biking group as we have been slowly passing around the injured in action torch with injury's ranging from broken ribs, deep knee cuts, huge softball size bumps on the arm, and I even tried to rip my ear off.

Speaking of the The Masons Midsummer Meltdown Fundraising cross country mountain bike race we had 115 racers this year from 6 states and even a racer dropped down from Canada and our old friend Burnsey of Oddity Cycles in Colorado made a surprise appearance and had his race debut of his new race whip on our fine trails. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we look forward to hosting it again next year. On the Fundraising side of the race it went well and should keep our trail building efforts stable for a while.

As the kids start back to school on Monday we start looking at what the next build season at Wyco has in store for us. Our big push this build season will be on the shelter 14 side AKA West Dam Singletrack trails.

We will be starting with foundation trail which was marked and about 3/4 cleared late this spring. Foundation trail promises to be a fun meander through some very dense forest  with a nice old foundation to pass by and a little bridge to cross a gully. should be a fun trail.

Another goal we have for the upcoming build season is to convince the parks department to allow us to donate and build a nice kiosk at the main trail head of the East Dam Singletrack system. You wouldn't think this would be to hard but we will see what red tape we have in store.

Other happenings are that I have added downloadable trail maps on the blog sidebar so everyone always has access to the most up to date maps we have available.

Last and definitely not least I went to thank Ben Holmes and The Trail Nerds Association for their continued support of our efforts at Wyandotte county lake. Both with Trail Nerd volunteer time and with a additional monetary donation that they presented us recently. As I'm getting better at this blog thing you will now see them listed right at the top of the list in our links section to the right side of the screen.

Summer is upon us and that means it is time again for our 2nd annual Masons Midsummer Meltdown mountain bike race and fundraiser.  This race is our primary source of funding for the year paying for little things like liability insurance, tools, gas and anything else that the trail needs.  If you're a rider even if you've never thought about racing before this can be an amazingly fun introduction into racing. If your not a rider and have never seen  a mountain bike race this is your chance to see quite the spectacle. If you would like to help out we are looking for volunteers to help out in all aspects of the race from setting things up and taking things down to helping with registration and scoring if your interested in lending a hand
Send me an E-Mail @ TrailMasonCliff@GMail.com
 
More information on the race itself can be found on the blogg @
 http://masonsmidsummermeltdown.blogspot.com

I visited Ben Holmes and the Trail Nerds this morning at their Summer trail run intro race.  It was fun to see so many smiling faces enjoying themselves on the trails.  To top off the visit The Trail Masons Association would like to say THANK YOU! To Ben Holmes and the Trail Nerds http://www.psychowyco.com for making a very nice donation to The Trail Masons Association. We will put these funds to good use maintaining and expanding the trails at Wyandotte county lake. Including expanding the trails today's race was held on and doing some rerouts of the existing trails to increase sustainability so people can continue to enjoy them for years to come.

Due to the rain and soft muddy trails out NTD workday will be canceled for now. We always have  opertunitys   for you to help the trails so keep an eye on our facebook page for our small workdays and trail trimming party's. And always feel free to contact me directly at TrailMasonCliff@Gmail.com we  have many volunteer tasks that can be accomplished at your own schedule so send me a note we have work for you!

The Trail Masons will be hosting a workday from 9am till noon on Saturday June 7th for National Trails Day at shelter 14 of Wyandotte County Lake. We will be working on clearing new trail and completing tasks such as brush removal, destobing and pruning. All skill levels are welcome. We will be working in undeveloped forest (aka you will get to learn what poison ivy looks like) so long pants, long sleeves and bug repellent is recommended also bring some form of hydration for yourself. Trail Masons will provide all needed tools but if you have your own feel free to bring them out.

Hello all This blog has been neglected for a long time as the Trail Masons moved most of our online activity to Facebook (see link on side of page).  We hope this blog will allow those that do not use Facebook an easy conduit to our activity's and also allow a less fluid and hopefully easier to reference site for important information workdays and events.  

So whats new with the Trail Masons Association. First off We have a new board of directors Comprising of 
Jim Megerson - President, Cliff Jones (Me)- Vice President, Shane Jones - Quartermaster/Master builder, Scott Lathrom - Treasurer, Bob Fortier - Secretary, , Corey Lutters - Bridal Trail Scout and Hogan Matson - MTB Technical Features. With some fresh blood we hope to be able to continue our mission of creating and maintaining sustainable single track at Wyandotte county lake.  

So far our progress at Wyandotte county Lake has brought into existence The East Dam Trail System.That comprises of over 11 miles of sustainable singletrack designed for Mountain Biking, Trail Running and Hiking .

With the East Dam system finished we have moved our focus on to improving and expanding the West Dam Trail System which will include about 4 Miles of sustainable singletack also designed for Mountain Biking, Trail Running and Hiking.

Even know building is the fun part of what we do, we don't just build trails we also maintain them. We spend hundreds of hours a year not only maintaining the East and West Dam Trail systems that we have created but also maintaining the Bridal trail that has been in existence for many years and is heavily used by the equestrians and trail runners and even a few hardy Mountain Bikers.

Hope to See you on the Trails

Cliff