SMT 2020 Accomplishments and Thanks!

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Throughout this incredibly difficult and challenging year, Salida Mountain Trails has been so fortunate to have a great group of volunteers, members, business sponsors – as well as our city, county, BLM, and Forest Service partners who have made possible some awesome new projects, continued trail maintenance, and successful fundraising efforts!  With all the year’s adversity, we’ve had strong support from the community and have accomplished a great deal.

Speaking of fundraising, we have more trails to build and maintain in 2021 and beyond per below, and continue to need your ongoing support.  IDEA:  If you are looking for an end of the year worthy donation cause – we make it really easy now or anytime during the coming year!  We can take your donations online at: www.salidamountaintrails.org/make-a-donation/

2020 Accomplishments:

  • Pot-O-Gold Trail – This awesome new 3.2-mile bi-directional trail that starts at the western end of Double Rainbow and extends up to the Rainbow.  It will officially open in the spring and provides fantastic new access and looping options up to the Rainbow trail. 
  • Gutz Trail – Refurbished to make more sustainable and amp up the fun!  
  • Rainbow Trail (CR108 to Pot-O-Gold) – Refurbished to address erosion and make more sustainable. 
  • Pano Trail – This new 1-mile hiking only trail from the southern end of North Backbone goes up to an amazing pano-rama view of Salida and the valley.
  • New CR108 parking lot – This new infrastructure allows for better and safer access to the heart of the Methodist Mountain Trail system and was a great collaborative effort between SMT, BLM and our very supportive county commissioners and their staff.  
  • Trail Maintenance – We were not able to hold any monthly ShinDig trail work days, but our trail steward program thrived and much work was done by individual and small groups.  In addition, we hired hours from local trail building professionals to handle more significant maintenance needs.  
  • Porta potties installed at 3 trail heads.  

2021 Plans:

  • Construct 2 short connector trails on the Ark Hills System to increase connectivity in the upper portions to that system.
  • Collaborate with the City of Salida to plan and construct a trail on City property that connects up to Dream On Trail to provide good climbable biking/hiking access to the system and to more effectively disperse use and entry into the system. This will take pressure off the highly used Frontside Trail.  
  • Continue to work with BLM, Forest Service, and the City/County to enhance our trail systems with select high value trail proposals that add quality, disperse users, and help manage increased use.   

Major Funding:  

  • Our 7th annual spring membership party was cancelled, but we did receive many online memberships and/or renewals – of which we are extremely grateful!   With the economic hardships of the pandemic, we did not feel good in pushing for donations, but did have many folks and businesses step up on their own which has been awesome as we are building our funds for the trails mentioned for 2021 and beyond. We donated 30% of membership donations received between January 1st and May 31st to the Chaffee County Community Foundation.  
  • Our Sustaining Sponsor program expanded in this difficult year, which is very gratifying.  Sustaining Sponsors provide either a 1% program and/or $2500 minimum in yearly funding.  This is a game changer for us.  New trail costs $30K per mile and often more!  

Thanks to our 2020 Business Sponsors (for more info and details on sponsorship levels, see our website https://salidamountaintrails.org/2020-business-sponsors/ )

Sustaining Sponsors: 

  • Absolute Bikes, Inc.
  • Boathouse Cantina
  • Arlie Dale’s Jug Liquors
  • Brady’s West
  • Diesslin Structures, Inc.
  • High Country Bank
  • PeakView Mortgage Inc.
  • Salida Mountain Sports
  • Subculture Cyclery
  • 7,000 Feet Running Company

Gold Sponsors:

  • Pinon Real Estate Group
  • Scot’s Bicycle Service 

Silver Sponsors:

  • Central Colorado Dermatology
  • Fish Builders
  • Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center
  • Moonhill Woodworks (Scott Geisler)
  • Su Casa! Furniture and Sleep Shop

City/County:
We also received some Conservation Trust Funds (CTF) from the city and county and use these as matches for grants and for direct trail construction costs and are grateful for this ongoing support.  

Continued Funding Needs: 
We have some exciting future plans and, as always, we need your continued and ongoing financial support.  Our goal is to contract experienced, professional trail builders to build our new trails, which averages $6 or more a linear foot, or over $30K per mile which quickly mounts up!  We also may contract some professional trail builders to do more substantial maintenance work as we are not currently able to hold group trail work days. 

Happy Trails in 2021!
We all look forward to a better coming year and the ability to get together for trail work, fun events, and comradery.  Until then, we can be super grateful for the great trails and community we do have!  We do hope the trails provided some solace and joy during this strange year.  Again, thanks everyone, and Happy Trails in 2021!

SMT