I know these trails aren't new anymore, but I've meaning to give a shoutout to the guys/gals that were involved with the trail work down by kitchen lane and up in houstan medows. These new trails are really amazing and look like they will weather the test of time.
A lot of people reap the benefits of the hardwork of a few. You know who you are, and I want you to know that there a lot of gratefull people out there for all the work you do.
thanks so much for the effort you put in.
Is there any cross over between PMBA and FOW? I thought there were some people on this forum that are also involved with FOW, yes?
I don't really know the connections between all these groups...obviously.
I know some PMBA people do a lot of work, and I doubt they get appreciated much. I'm trying to spread some appreciation, that's all.
On another recent thread, a couple people were talking about the new rittenhousetown trail. I think this is different from Kitchen's mentioned above, but I cannot picture where this new one starts. When I ride that side, I start by climbing up the driveway to the currently-under-contruction parking lot, through the access gate, then up to an area where there are like 4 trailheads, including one that is currently under construction and has orange netting across it. I have always taken the trail to the immediate left of this one (the one that leads to the gravelly climb up to parkline drive right before the new kitchen's section). The leftmost trail(closest to creek) is not for bikers. Yesterday, I just noticed another trailhead to the right of the under construction one. It was signed as the detour. Is this the new Rittenhouse town trail?
@RollinRox
Yes that is the new trail. It was built last November and it deadends into the Bluebell Meadow parking lot. In the future, this trail may continue across the parking lot and back into the woods. Hard to say if and when this will happen.
Dan
ah thanks Dan. So this is part of projects 10 and 11 on the FOW.org projects map.
it deadends into the parking lot, but then you can cut left through the lot and pick up a trail head on the right. This trail decends back to the main trail and links up right before the little rocky schicane bridge a little before the bridge avalanche and the gravel climb. You don't miss much of the main trail and it tacks on some milage. It's a nice option.
you could also short cut the trail a little. instead of entering the parking area and going left, you can go right, out to the road. Stay right at the circle and re-enter at the top of the gravel climb. There is another thread about this route.....
here it is. this thread has the details on that ride around:
http://www.phillymtb.org/forum/general-discussion/wissahickon-retaining-wall-collapse
thanks Jay. I know exactly where you are describing. I'll have to try that route.
Sorry for the lengthy post… being in the middle of the active season I wanted to provide background explanation for any new members.
The meadows & kitchen’s lane trail work was spearheaded by FOW. PMBA has an organization entity was not part of these projects. PMBA did announce their workdays on our website & encourage our members to help – which some did. We will continue to promote FOW trail days on our website. Also something to note: this summer a large portion of the meadows was open up to riders this was in part due w/ riders in the cycling community assisting with this projects (both PMBA members & non-PMBA members) and is a reason why we encourage members who ride in the Wiss & want to trail build to help the FOW (for the record I am not a huge fan of doing trail work so I do not do much; the above is my interpretation of the new trail).
PMBA Trail work (in general) over the last year:
Also if you have a chance please read out Vision & Plan to get a better idea of where we as an organization are moving towards.
And thank you for the recognition of the trail efforts that have been done by volunteers; we encourage diverse volunteers to address the different riding needs of our members.
Fow responsiple for the "Meadows" and "Kitchens La "re-route" with limited (but advertised) ask for help from other groups. Can't be spun into anything but exactly that.
There are two types of trail days that appear on the PMBA site.
1) Work conducted at parks by other organizations which are announced so that our members are informed and are given the oppurtunity to contribute to the trails they ride. PMBA only provides only advertising for these events.
2) Once a month we have an official PMBA trail work day. Kelly has outlined the projects that are advertised as PMBA trail work days. PMBA trail days are supported with PMBA tools, tents, and usually lunch for ALL volunteers. The Next TMD is on Aug 28 at Marsh Creek in collaboration with PATH.
The work at the Meadows and Kitchens Lane re-route falls under the first category. Those projects are funded and organized by FOW. Most PMBA members ride at Wiss, thus the BoD encourages all members to support the trails projects at the parks they ride. As you can tell, FOW is doing some significant, positive changes to the multi-use trails to make them more sustainable. All mountian bikers (PMBA member or not) should support these efforts.
Prior to 2011, PMBA had official work days at Wiss in partnership with the FOW. Like many offical PMBA TMDs ~10-30 PMBA members attended these work days. PMBA no longer has partnership standing with FOW and no offical PMBA TMDs at Wiss have been granted. Thus, FOW TMDs have only gotten a few PMBA members. As you might expect, FOW is disappointed that our members are not taking more of an active role in their TMDs.
PMBA is IMBA regional chapter. So for the past few years, PMBA has started to focus on riding areas other than the Wiss. This expansion started with two projects: Blue Mountain Ski Resort (which sadly is no longer running its lifts for MTBing) and Nockamixon (which required several years of planning and approval before breaking ground in late 2010). So while the loss of partnership status with FOW is a set back for the organization, we are plowing ahead with our regional trail work, as well as, working on projects in Philadelphia outside of Wiss. As you might expect, these projects have kept many of our volunteer trail crews quite busy!
We hope that over time, and after many positively-recieved projects outside of Wiss, that the FOW will re-evaluate our partnership and PMBA TMDs at Wiss can be restored.
I'm a newbie so the explanations are appreciated. I agree that FOW has done some great work around Kitchen Lane. I'm hoping to get out to a TMD soon.
The FOW TMD scheduling is somewhat confusing. On the PMBA calendar, all that I see listed is repair work on Thursdays at 11:30 a.m. Given the oddball time, it is not surprising to me that there has been little PMBA turnout.
But on the FOW website (link) there are more regular workdays (weekend as well as weekday) listed (and a different start time for the Thursday TMD). I can't really tell from the FOW website descriptions whether some, or all, of those workdays focus on trail maintenance vs. other worthwhile forms of park work that may contribute less directly to MTB riding.
I'm interested in helping with FOW TMDs when I can. To me, the most appealing option would be weekend TMDs that focused on trail work and which drew some other PMBA people also. An informal PMBA day helping FOW, even if its not a formal PMBA-FOW TMD. I think getting a critical mass of PMBA people would make our contribution more visible to FOW and probably more fun for us.
Does something like what I'm talking about already exist? Tried and failed? Any reason I should not contact folks at FOW to sound them out about this? Anyone else interested in this too?
From what I've heard, you can attend but are in no way to mention that you are affiliated with PMBA, so that makes it pretty hard to have an informal PMBA day. It would be nice to help out but I'm obviously not welcome by FOW from that stance, which has kept me away. Why go work with people who think down on you and can't even let you say "Hey, I like biking in the park."
Moving on, there are other parks in the area and other places to contribute. As Jacalyn pointed out, we're moving in a more regional direction as one of IMBA's charters and in the long run, will be better off. I like what FOW is doing and wish we could be more involved, but that's not likely as of now. As much as I don't like how much power they have, they have basically run the park for 80+ years and we're not in their good graces right now so it is what it is. As stated before, you can always go help them but there are other places for me to do trail work and I feel more welcomed at those places.
I was not spinning the trail work on Kitchens or the Meadows in anyway. FOW is responsible for that trail work (as well as for all or most of the trail work) in the Wiss.
However, IMO it is also short-sided to only acknowledge Wiss trail work. PMBA has done trail work in many different regions & IMO those hours still count & still falls in the category of “a lot of people reap the benefits of a few” and should be counted & appreciated as well.
To clarify on what Dustin wrote; PMBA’S work in the Wissahickon has been suspended. Our members can support FOW work days, sign in as PMBA members, wear PMBA shirts but PMBA as an organization can not hang our banner, put up our tent, use our tools at these days (FOW supplies the tools), or supply foods.
This has been tough for many members as many members wants to do trail work under the PMBA banner & proactively use the day to reach out to users of the park.
The next part is where it gets tricky as there is much perception around it.
IMO the FOW is not against Mountain Bikers as the user. They are looking for PMBA as an organization to become more solidify. The PMBA Board has discussed this in great depths;our present stance is that as a mountain biking advocacy group we need to continue pushing for mountain bike trails & features in the region. In years past we were very Wissahickon centric which was awesome for volunteer hours within the Wiss but as an organization we failed to look outside the Wissahickon & lost possible opportunities; plus but too many eggs in one basket.
The Board Trail Work agenda is to continue supporting trail maintenance in the region w/ monthly trail work days (which we have done) as well as advertise the FOW trail days (that advocates mountain biking on our website). PMBA is still a new organization & will continue solidify our (IMBA) core values (speak, build, respect, ride) within the region to build the advocacy organization stronger & our hope is one day FOW & PMBA will re-partner.
embudo,
Kevin Groves at groves@fow.org or Dan (I look for his contact info) can give you more information about what they will be doing at these Trail days. Unfortunately Chuck and Dmitri who do regular work for FOW and are no longer PMBA BoD memebers, so the BoD is no longer getting updates on the FOW work plans.
So far we have requested only PMBA work days; which have not been granted. We have not organized a PMBA-support day for FOW.
Would you be interested in taking on the role of FOW/ Wiss - PMBA Trail liason? You don't have to be a BoD member. Last year we divided the Trail committee into parks; with Wiss being one park. Chuck was basically the head of our Wiss Trail comittee until he stepped down a couple of months ago. I would contact our president, Paul Harris, who is the overall Trail Committe Chair and talk with him. I think their would be a few PMBA member interested in doing trail work with FOW if someone organized it.
As far as the calendar... Kelly and I try to keep it updated. We are also have to manage how many non-PMBA events should be listed on our calendar. I will bring this issue up at the next BoD meeting. i.e. ground rules for posting non-PMBA events on our calendar.
Embudo, thanks for your posting. That is a great idea if you would like to lead a non-official PMBA workday within the Wissahickon. We can post the announcement on our forms & will provide all participants w/ a PMBA t-shirt (as per my previous post our banner, tools & not permitted). Please do not hesitate to reach out w/ your ideas/suggestions & as an organization we will help w/ as much as we can!
Also to all our members please remember that we are a volunteer organization and as such we are only as strong as our members who want to volunteer & execute projects! We have the resources to help spearhead projects but need members to donate time.
Thanks for clarifying that Kelly. I was under the impression that we couldn't even say we were affiliated with PMBA, which is too much of a road block for me. I still feel more comfortable working other places under less scrutiny, but if someone took a lead on this, I'd def. show up to build some trails.
Great ideas and suggestions, to reiterate, you don't have to be a BoD member to get things done, if your willing to out and give the effort in a positive direction, we can give you support.
There is plenty to do, most of the work done as it is now is done by familiar faces which is good, but if you are new and have some ideas you'd like to get implemented we are ready and willing to help you as long as it's for the greater good. You can send request to bod@phillymtb.org.
I also agree that the trails at Kitchens lane and Huston meadow are great work and deserve some praise, They don't get made by themselves.
That happens when PMBA current and past BOD's build trails without land manager's approval. We are "MTBrs" - yes - on the 'edge' - but still adults with ramifications.
Thanks for everyone's helpful responses. I'm excited about moving forward with this idea, at least to the extent of talking further with a few of you far less clueless than I about the current status of things. Stay tuned. In the meantime, if anyone wants to get in touch with me about this, just post here or shoot me a private message if you prefer.
matt
Matt,
I would be happy to talk to you "off-line".
My contact information is jacalyn.clawson@gmail.com.
Jacalyn
Matt;
I am also available to meet face to face & discuss. My contact information is KMBK30@gmail.com and will be happy to discuss offline (or online). You may also use the email address in my profile as a way to contact me (different email address)
We have a BOD meeting this coming Monday... so if you are able to chat before then Jacayln or I can relay the conversation to the BOD & get everyone on board.
Thanks,
Kelly
FOW