And so it begins! That’s a good thing, and sadly… a bad thing. But the best thing, is the Crested Butte Conservation Corps is back and on the ground 6 days a week. On their first day, they already pulled another recliner from our beloved backyard and the rubber gloves were employed to get after backcountry human waste. It’s a leather one this time, the recliner part still works, and there’s minimal damage to the fabric for a relatively nice piece of backcountry furniture! So if you want it – let us know.
We can’t tell if it spent the winter out there or if it was brought in for an early season camping escapade, but either way it’s more reason the CBCC is needed out there as soon as we can get them on the ground each season. With the low snow year, the crews are further in need as trails and our backcountry are popping out from winter quite early. And despite that low snow, the trails wintered poorly in some cases. Perhaps due to the snowpack not really filling in or the warmer than usual winter temperatures, water and erosion still made their presence known and the crews have plenty of work to do to keep ahead of the impending use. Fallen trees are hardly equivalent to the amounts we witnessed down last spring, but the chainsaw gang is indeed back at it and we’re clearing trails as they emerge.
We’re grateful to be in our 2nd season with the CBCC, but we have a lot of work to do. Not just on the ground, but to ensure the future of this much needed addition to our backcountry revival is intact. Currently we have realized 40% of the proposed budget for the 2018 season. We have 5 part time employees/crew members (still looking for one more), and 1 full time Supervisor (Matt Steinwand) currently employed. We have an extended season (mid-May – October) because we know it’s needed and the program could have run longer last year. We’ve rehired Nick Catmur and Ryan Maddux as crew leaders. We’ve hired Alex Banas, Ryan Sullivan, and our first female crew member, Heather Bradford to fulfill the mission of the CBCC and do the beautiful, but dirty and hard work.
We’re grateful for the Town of CB for supporting the CBCC at $15,000 (last Fall – good looking out), and to the Town of Mt. CB for not only truly fanning the early embers of the CBCC in it’s infancy, but coming back this year to do the same at $20,000. Our partners RMBL, the CB Land Trust, and Mountain Express have come back with early support and we have more work to do with our partners to realize our full potential. We’re grateful for the 11 CBCC Founders who have stepped up with their support ahead of the crews this year. We’re grateful for our biggest partner at the US Forest Service – Gunnison Ranger District, and our friends at the BLM.
Like I said, we have work to do. But we at CBMBA have never been so dedicated to a cause. We are so proud to include conservation and stewardship as pillars of our organization. After years of contemplating how we can do more, and how we can be ever more present than just a ‘mountain bike club’, we have never been more proud of the CBCC and the community that rallies behind it. Please help us! Help spread the word, help promote the efforts and the actions of the CBCC. Help us with observations on the ground and what impacts you are witnessing via your guests and visitors along with your own time in our backyard. Which is of course, why so many of us live here. More so, help us raise the funds necessary to make this happen well into the future.
This email goes out to those who have supported us and the efforts of CBMBA and the CBCC. It goes out to those who have asked how they can help, and to be kept abreast of what we’re doing and what we’re seeing out there. Please let me know if you don’t want to receive these emails. Please also let me know who else needs to be on these emails. We’ll not burden you with them, but our aim is to inform you of the POSITIVE impacts the CBCC is making. Here’s to a stellar season ahead, and of course, we’ll always follow with the pretty pictures below so you can take pleasure in the efforts of the CBCC crews without having to put the rubber gloves on yourself!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! – Dave Ochs, the CBMBA Board of Directors, and our beloved CBCC crew.