uman Powered Trails, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose mission is: “To develop and maintain first class sustainable and environmentally correct, human-powered, shared use trails for the La Crosse, WI region."
The HPT Board of Directors & Committees determine the direction of HPT and make the behind the scenes decisions to help continue "Building Better Trails". All meeting notices & minutes, as well as other news is available here.
WHAT A RIDE!!! If you ever have a chance to ride an IMBA Epic Ride... DO SO!!!
Dan, Aaron and I had a fun day today. O.K. we worked the "networking" thing also, but mostly, we had FUN!!
Morning came early as we had to meet the shuttle at 7:30 am. We all met up at the starting point for bagels, bananas and coffee. An incredible site... a couple of hundred mtn bikes laying around while we fueled up. Then the ride began...
We chose to ride the long route and after a couple of wrong turns, we ended up riding about 30 miles. "Big deal" you say?!! Remember - we are riding at about 9600 feet!! And, we were constantly climbing and descending all day long!! Dan was heard to ask "Why is there more trail going up then coming down?!!?"
After about 24 miles, we were treated to a cookout. IMBA catered a gathering in the middle of a field 1/2 way down the mountain. Nothing better than rolling up and being greeted with a tall cold one!!! A couple of burgers, brats and hot dogs later, we were feeling pretty good. Yep, you guessed it, we decided - "Awe Heck, we don't need to ride the shuttle down, we should just ride the rest of the way down." Bad decision!!! We were told the ride was "all downhill." We were told wrong!! At one point, we looked over the mountain and realized we were HIGHER than where we had left about a 1/2 hour before. So much for all downhill!! We eventually made it back down - a little whipped - and ended our day of riding.
We rode for 5+ hours on all singletrack in warm temperature, bright sunshine, great comraderie, hearing different languages, mixing with the locals, and having a BLAST!!!
Wish all of HPT could have been here. Now, it is our turn to make an EPIC experience. Stay tuned for more BIG and EXCITING NEWS in the near future!!!
Another great day of sessions starting off with Glen Jacobs from Australia talking on "Designing and building World-Class trails". Glen was very inspirational speaker with advice on trail building, design, and examples of professional built trail systems/tracks in Australia as models for sustainable shared use trails.
Next we listened to panel including:
Bob Ratcliffe from the Recreation and Visitor Service Division, Bureau of Land management
Ed Jarger, Manager, Visitor experience, Products and Services, Parks, Canada
Jim Bedwell, Director, Recreation, Heritage and Volunteer Resources, U.S. Forest Service
Karen Taylor, Goodrich, Associate Director for Visitor and Resource Protection, National Park Service
All the above spoke on working with federal land managers building mountain bike trails.
Strengthening IMBA Affiliates and regional leadership
IMBA Ride Centers
Fund Raising Tactics
Reinvigorate Your Club's Marketing
Bike Patrol Workshop
Urban Bike Parks
Excellent speakers and lots of great information for our organization to use for the sustainable future of our trail system.
The sessions ended around 4:30 and the Summit continued with some awesome mountain trail riding during the evening! Followed by the Celebrate Singletrack Film Festival starting with a number of short films and the feature film "Seasons" by The Collective.
Just an update to what we're doing at the IMBA World Summit (plenty of work, but plenty of fun at the same time)...
We arrived on Wednesday afternoon after flying out of La Crosse at 5am.
The Opening Ceremonies kicked off at the Olympic Park with a great speech from Governor Huntsman of Utah. He actually rides mountain bikes at least 5 days a week! We were also treated to a show from the Flying Aces (a ski jump Aerial performance) - featuring Olympians, World Champions, and other top athletes in an amazing aerial show. Thursday started with a keynote presentation from John Burke, the President of Trek Bicycles. He spoke about the 1World2Wheels program that Trek is heading up and partnering with IMBA on.
Mike, Aaron and I then attended a number of sessions about ways we can improve our organization as well as our trails. Including...
Solutions to User Conflict
Linking Downtown to Dirt: The Transportation-Recreation Connection
Risk Management
Reinvigorate Your Organization's Marketing and Recruit New Volunteers
Secrets of Advocacy
Sustainable Trails by Design
Effective Club Leadership
After the sessions we went on an singletrack mountain bike ride on a very small portion of the amazing Park City trail system. (Click the link! You'll be amazed!) We were lucky enough to be lead on the ride by the Trails Coordinator for Park City and learned a lot about how the trails here are designed, developed and integrated into the city.
Even if this ended today, this has been a very worthwhile trip that will pay big dividends for HPT and our local trails community! We're making a lot of connections, sharing ideas and getting ideas from other great trail organizations from around the world.
We'll try and post another update tomorrow. Leave a comment here if there is anything you have questions or comments about. You are all a part of this! Without your support we would not be here, as well as our dream of a great trail system would not be possible. Thank You!!!
On Wednesday, June 25th, 2008, at 10:00 am, Human Powered Trails, Inc. (HPT) will host a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of the Quarry Trail, a connector trail from Hixon Forest to the Blufflands Preservation Area, which is part of the Medary Quarry. We will meet at the Human Powered Trails parking lot on Cty. Hwy FA before cutting the ribbon at the Quarry Trail entrance.
This ceremony will also honor the many dedicated volunteers who, over the past several years, have worked in collaboration with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy, the La Crosse Park and Recreation Department, the La Crosse City Planning Department, and Myrick-Hixon Eco Park, to build and maintain some of the finest shared-use trails in the state.
Thanks to the support of the above organizations, grant-writing assistance from Southwest Badger RC&D, and grants from the Paul Stry Foundation (La Crosse, WI), Bikes Belong (Boulder, CO), and the La Crosse Community Foundation (La Crosse, WI), HPT will also celebrate our increased capacities to utilize mechanized equipment—equipment that could not have been purchased without the granted donations. This will further increase our ability to develop first class, sustainable shared-use trails for the people of the Coulee Region and beyond.
All trail-users, citizens of the greater La Crosse area, and friends of HPT are welcome to attend.
This week HPT will be sending representatives to the IMBA World Summit in Park City Utah. Aaron, Mike and myself will all be attending to learn about building a better trails community, creating a more effective organization, how to best promote our organization, and making connections with others from around the world; all with the goal of making HPT, La Crosse and Western Wisconsin a premier trail destination.
The IMBA Summit...
brings trail advocates, land managers, trailbuilders, park and urban planners, tourism officials and the bike industry together for collaboration, planning, and celebration.
will have the best trail science, strategies, and model trail systems explained during more than 30 seminars, panel discussions and workshops.
For more information about what the World Summit is, go to... www.imba.com/summit/
I'm sure we'll have plenty of updates, new alliances and fresh ideas when we return next week.
uman Powered Trails, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose mission is: “To develop and maintain first class sustainable and environmentally correct, human-powered, shared use trails for the La Crosse, WI region."
Morning came early as we had to meet the shuttle at 7:30 am. We all met up at the starting point for bagels, bananas and coffee. An incredible site... a couple of hundred mtn bikes laying around while we fueled up. Then the ride began... 
Next we listened to panel including:
Just an update to what we're doing at the 
website.
This week HPT will be sending representatives to the IMBA World Summit in Park City Utah. Aaron, Mike and myself will all be attending to learn about building a better trails community, creating a more effective organization, how to best promote our organization, and making connections with others from around the world; all with the goal of making HPT, La Crosse and Western Wisconsin a premier trail destination.