SANTA FE, NM (BRAIN) — IMBA had no trouble finding 150 riders for its final bomb down the Winsor Trail in the Santa Fe National Forest on Saturday, the last day of the association’s World Summit here. While the balmy 80-degree temperatures earlier in the week did not hold until the weekend, autumn's nip did not dampen enthusiasm.
“The Winsor ride was truly epic and a fantastic way to end the summit. We filled the 150 spots that the Forest Service approved for our group, and there were a few crashes, but the ride earned rave reviews from delegates and IMBA's staff alike,” said Mark Eller, IMBA’s communications director.
Attendees will take away renewed motivation for trail creation and preservation, while the city of Santa Fe is left with a vastly improved physical trails infrastructure.
IMBA may not have matched the millions of dollars the city of Santa Fe spent improving La Tierra Trails park, but it did devote weeks of time by staff members Tammy Donahugh and Ryan Schutz. Each helped consulting on trail development and in the design of two new jump parks. And the local IMBA chapter, Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, devoted countless hours as well.
The summit celebrated how integral mountain biking is to open space plans by city, county and federal agencies, and highlighted the growth of urban trails. And a recent new rule allowing National Park superintendents the ability to open their dirt roads to cyclists if they choose means hundreds of miles currently closed to cyclists in the nation's parks could be opened in the future.
But an IMBAx TED-like presentation by Mike McCormack of Wilderness B reminded attendees how close they were to losing access to hundreds of miles of mountain bike trails around Colorado’s Summit County last year. The incompatibility of bikes with Wilderness incorporated in the land use proposal was very reminiscent of the Sierra Club’s proposal to prohibit bikes from public lands 25 years ago — the major motivation for the creation of IMBA.
