Donate to the Trail Association as You Cyber-Shop This Holiday Season

For those of you that shop online at the Amazon website, here’s a way to make a portion of your purchase a donation to the Mount Shasta Trail Association.  What a deal!

Instead of logging on the the regular Amazon website, log on to the smile.amazon.com site and register the Mount Shasta Trail Association as your chosen charity and bookmark the smile page.  Then as you shop, 0.5% of your purchases will go towards trails in the Mount Shasta area.

Fine print: this is not an endorsement of Amazon by MSTA, but simply an opportunity worth sharing.

Dreaming of snow this Christmas

Giving Tuesday — Less Than A Week Away!

What a great time of the year to gather with friends and family, as the holiday season begins with Thanksgiving.

The Trail Association wants to remind you of accomplishments — past, present and future as we conduct our only fundraiser of the year. Looking back, the list is long and includes the Cabin Creek Trail, Lake Siskiyou Trail, and the Springhill Trail. Currently, we are focused on expanding the Gateway Trail network by 46 miles! And looking forward, we think we’ll partner with the Forest Service on trail opportunities in the South Sacramento River watershed.

To help us continue this work, please consider making a donation this Giving Tuesday, November 29th; although early donations have already opened up. Here’s the link: click

Otherwise, below are some photos to remind us of the work we do.

North Shore – Lake Siskiyou Trail
Heart Lake Trail Improvement
Box Canyon Trail Work
Boy Scouts Springhill Cleanup
Cabin Creek Trail Workday
Gateway Phase Two Construction

Giving Tuesday — Once Again! — November 29, 2022

Once again, the Mount Shasta Trail Association has created a new Giving Tuesday movie, entitled “The Trail Crew Gets a Call”.  This award winning movie is out performing MSTA’s previous winners: “Santa on the Trails”, “Do you Love Us” and “Oh Yeah”.  This engaging iMovie was created with the hopes of inspiring donations to the MSTA for Giving Tuesday which is on November 29th, from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm this year. Early giving begins November 15th. Please share with other trail lovers — whether they are hikers, mountain bikers, runners or equestrians.

For more information and to donate, click here.

Armoring Muir’s Ascension in Cascade Gulch Yesterday

Fourteen MSTA volunteers met yesterday morning to fix the washed-out drainage in Cascade Gulch. We were joined by Carolyn Napper (USFS District Ranger) and Forrest Coots (the new trail coordinator for the USFS)!!

In less than two hours, our ant colony hauled rocks and boulders to the drainage site, dug them in place, and prepared the gully for the deluge we are all hoping for. Carolyn, Rick Chitwood, and Scott Anderson acted as engineers for the rock placement (along with others). This should stabilize the trail crossing for a while. Thanks to all who helped.

Before
Jessica harvesting rocks, Mark and Neil carrying with rock slings
Not the biggest one we moved
The engineers
Busy, busy, busy.
Upper gully
Lower gully after

Trail Work Day this Saturday, Oct. 29 at 9 am

REMINDER:

We’re meeting at 9 am this Saturday just across from McBride Springs Campground on Everitt Memorial Hwy to repair the drainage in Cascade Gulch before more rain comes. It will be like creating a big rock puzzle just below the culvert, and will stabilize the Muir’s Ascension Trail.

Also, for those who don’t want to move or place rocks, Mike Hupp will be leading a group of bicyclists from the McBride meeting site up to the Ten Gallon Trailhead where you can park your car, jump on your bike, and ride down the Bear Springs Trail to cover slash piles with new plastic. You’ll get a workout and do some important trail work.

Don’t miss the fun!

Gateway Trail Construction Updates

We’ve posted the first in a series of updates describing Gateway Trail construction. The first blog can be found on the dedicated Gateway website, here. Maps of which trails have been completed will follow, and you can find a high-resolution map of all the planned trails with names on the site.

Trail Day to Fix Drainage in Cascade Gulch on Sat. Oct. 29

OK. The date is chosen. Let’s meet to fix the eroded crossing of Muir’s Ascension in Cascade Gulch just above McBride Springs on Saturday, Oct. 29. This is the segment of trail between McBride Springs and Ten Gallon that got partially washed out about 6 weeks ago.

We’ll need to fetch rocks and boulders nearby (there are lot of them, fortunately) and fit them into the drainage like a puzzle. It will be a fun project, and we’ll actually have people with knowledge to guide us on technique.

Let’s meet on Everitt Memorial Hwy just across from McBride Springs Campground at 9 am. If we pull the cars forward about 100 yards, we’ll be about 50 ft. from the worksite.

We hope to make this a group effort between MSTA, BikeShasta, and SORA. See you there!