Newbie wants to Help Keep Trails Open

[Trail Maven]

Hi Everyone

I am Chris Horgan, my passion is dirt bike riding but I also love hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, windsurfing and 4x4. I have been fortunate to ride about 20,000 miles in the mountains surrounding Lake Isabella

In 2004 I started a grass roots group called Stewards of the Sequoia to encourage volunteerism and help protect access to our public lands, since then Stewards has grown to over 2000 members

* We are the largest on the ground volunteer organization in the Sequoia National Forest.
* Our motorized volunteers mostly on trail bikes have performed maintenance on over 1400 miles of trail.
* We have adopted 9 trails and work on many others too
* We have been working hard for the past five years during the Sequoia trail planning process to ensure that all roads and trails remain open.
* We stopped the closure of 25% of the trails back in 2005
* We got eight trails which had been closed illegally reopened in 2006
* Our efforts have caused the Sequoia Forest to draft a pro access alternative and choose it

You can see a short video about us at
http://stewardsofthesequoia.org/WhoWeAre.html

You can read more about the Travel Plan which still has two major issues which Stewards of the Sequoia have already filed an appeal on in order to preserve our access
http://www.stewardsofthesequoia.org/

Stewards of the Sequoia have become the lead group working to protect access in the area and we look forward to working with others to help preserve access for all

I will be making a presentation on how you can help stop trail closures at the Billy Goat Offorad meeting this Saturday 2/13/10, 6pm at Papa O's Pizza at White Lane & Gosford in Bakersfield. I hope you will join us and learn how we can help ensure a bright future for off road recreation

Chris Horgan
Executive Director
Stewards of the Sequoia

[Desert Dog]

Ill try hard to make it. Will you be addressing the winter closure of part of the Black Gulch Trail?

Ohh, and thanks for your hard work!

[Dirty LJ]

Thank you for all of your hard work!!!

I am sure I speak for most all of us here in saying that we will all try to help in anyway we can!!! This is going to be a long hard fight to keep out trails open so we can all use them. You are always welcome to one of our meetings as well to meet our group.

Hopefully most of us can show up to the upcoming meeting with Billy Goat Meeting on 2-13.

Be sure to post on this site what your group is doing and anything we can do to help.

[Trail Maven]

Glad to see you guys are interested in working to keep your trails open.

I will be talking about the Seasonal Closure