NCBCH News September 2022

Hey there Nature Coast Back Country Horsemen.

As the summer winds down and we start to prepare for the riding season I wanted to let you know what we have been doing behind the scenes. First and foremost we had to change banks, and long story short Lorri Kindburg facilitated a total transfer of all our banking to Regions and we completed the process a couple weeks ago Big thanks to her for getting this all put together and executing the transition.

We are looking forward to having our first fall meeting in late October, more info to come. We are looking at meeting venues and will communicate the date and location when we get it ironed out.

Reminder that the Croom Enduro is this weekend Sept 24th so be aware that there will be dirt bikes all through the forest. Loud, fast dirt bikes! Please be safe if you choose to go out this weekend.

Trail conditions:

I have personally scouted about half of the forest over the last couple weeks. I cleared the tree off the Tucker Hill Trail connector to Spirit Mt. Trail, moved a bunch of deadfall off various trails and reestablished original routes. There has been a lot of work along the power lines as they have been doing their 5 year side cutting and clearing projects. It’s a bloody mess out there and the equipment has made the power line pretty hacked up. it’s passable but just be careful as there is a lot of debris on the ground. I have received a couple reports of garbage dumps. I went out, validated and reported the locations to forestry. They are spread thin and warned me it may be a bit before they can dispatch a crew to go clean up. They are aware and will get to it all as soon as possible.

I also want to mention that I cleaned up Spirit Mountain Trail a little bit. There were a few places where folks had started to avoid the step ups and roots and made side trails. Please don’t do this. If there is a trip hazard please report it and I’ll go out and address it. I cut out the roots that would trip up a horse for now and we will see how it goes, I also piled up branches on the side trails to discourage shortcuts. It was done purposely and should be obvious when you see it. Spirit Mountain requires a level technical ability that may not be suitable for every horse and that’s okay, but we don’t want to change the route unless we have to for erosion or safety issues. Same goes for downed trees, if there is a tree in the trail that forces you to go around it please let me know so we can remove it. Thank you for protecting our existing trails and our privilege to be in the State Forest!!