Author: John Harch

On this day of giving back, please consider, if you are so inclined, donating to the Mount Shasta Trail Association. We’ve made great progress on construction of the Gateway Trail Expansion, but have about 14 miles left to build. We also have many miles of trail to maintain going forward. Thanks to so many who have worked on our trails and donated. 

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Thank You!

The Mount Shasta Trail Association is participating in Giving Tuesday on December 3rd, and early giving is now open, so you start giving back by visiting here !

This is an opportunity to donate and help the MTSA continue its vital work of stewardship and advocacy for more access to trails, trail building, and work to conserve the natural beauty of our area. Thanks to our community, we’ve been able to achieve so much, and we are excited to continue that work for generations to come. We’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you again to all those who’ve helped us along the way!

Given the recent rain and snow, conditions on Muir’s Ascension from the McBride Trailhead down to Moon Doggie allow us to open the trail. Thanks to those who respected the closure while the tread settled. Entry to the trail is about 50 yards above the McBride Trailhead parking lot where I left some orange tape on either side of the trail, which enters the forest to the left of the thirty-foot dead tree. This now allows a continuous trail route from Ten Gallon to the Gateway Trailhead without traveling on Everitt Memorial Hwy.

Just want to make everyone aware that Dave Mauro of Timberworks donated his heavy equipment operator time to grade, gravel, and finish the trailhead parking lots at Ten Gallon, McBride Springs, and the Nordic Center, thus saving MSTA a load of money. He also leveled out the big piles of gravel at Nordic, thus significantly increasing the size of the lot there. This will make it easier to clear snow and park for the ski season, and also creates a huge lot for summer parking to use the Learning Zone bike paths.

Thank you, Dave (and Timberworks) for jumping in big time to help build Gateway II, which has become a community effort!

Kudos to our steadfast trail crew for braving the cold and snow to install signs on EMH! The morning started out crisp and clear but slowly became stormy. A determined group stood in the road for several hours to divert traffic while the rest of us focused on driving posts and attaching signs.

Many thanks to Chris Marrone, who purchased and retrieved a post driver, fabricated an extension (many hours of work), and spent the whole day loading and unloading equipment and driving steel posts, all to save MSTA money. And thanks to Emma Wilcox, Barbara Paulson, Steve Eddy, Neil Posson, Mark Derby, Steve Larson, Mark Telegin, Jim Wrona, Tony Mills, John Thomson, Rick Cory, and Mike Hupp for dividing up the work.

You can see what happens when you try to drive steel signposts into rocks!

I have a dozen volunteers for tomorrow morning, so we might have it covered. But if you just want to see what we’re doing, and maybe heckle the workers, we’ll be starting the post and sign installation between 9 and 9:30 am about ¼ mile below the McBride Trailhead on Everitt Mem Hwy (you’ll easily see the chaos). And, we can always use extra help.

Even though the weather looks a little iffy, our volunteer contractor apparently has the equipment we need and is ready to work.

We’re going to try driving in the posts, not digging them, so we don’t need quite so many people. What we do need is the traffic control crew of about 6 or7 (at least for the morning work on Everitt Mem Hwy), a small crew to handle the signs themselves, and a small crew to handle the posts. If we dig any holes with an augur, then perhaps we’ll need someone with a pickup to go get some gravel.

Let me know if you can help and I’ll divide up the work. Final announcement will go out tomorrow evening with times and locations. Thank you.

Black Bear Diner is teaming up with North State Giving Tuesday to award prizes to nonprofits. We won $5000 two years ago this way (although I’m not sure of the amount this time).

Go to North State Giving Tuesday and scroll down to “Shout Outs & A’Paws Contest,” and select “This Voting Link.” Then scroll down to Mount Shasta Trail Association (Sisk County nonprofits are listed second and MSTA is about ¾ of the way to the bottom of the list). Select MSTA as your favorite nonprofit. That’s all you have to do.

Thanks.

Farewell to MSTA board member Lynda Hardy

Lynda is taking a new trail and retiring from the MSTA board.  She has been an active member of our board for several years. As our creative director, Lynda was the mastermind of our “community based” Trail Challenge. Her vision was to inspire trail users to challenge themselves and others to participate in healthy outdoor activities by hiking and biking the trails that surrounds us. 

Giving Tuesday was a passion for “Team Captain” Lynda. She developed a variety of promotional materials to get the word out to donate to MSTA. Over the last 5 years many supporters have viewed members of the board participating in humorous Giving Tuesday videos. Those videos were Lynda’s inspiration.

At the urging of Lynda, MSTA now has a beautiful logo that represents both hikers and bikers. This eye-catching logo has had countless compliments from many of our supporters.

Although, the board won’t be seeing Lynda at our meetings, we will see her having fun on the trails biking, hiking and skiing. We send her good wishes on her new adventures.

Thirteen volunteers got together to put posts in concrete for the trailhead signs at McBride and Ten Gallon yesterday. We didn’t leave the big plastic signs in place because I didn’t have the exact right hardware. Thanks to Gail Domanski, Neil Posson, Steve Diaz, Bryson Adams, Mark Derby, Linda Cabitto, Dave Pfurr, Jim Wrona, Steve Eddy, Stace Jankowski, and our USFS colleagues, Colleen Greene and Taylor Forte.

We’ll reschedule the big sign install day when we have the post driver, so stay tuned.