Sorba Athens : News Releases

Heritage Park Restrictions Lifted

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Heritage Park Trails are now open to bike and horse riders every day. All signage at the Heritage Park trail intersections have been completed. We will continue working on placement of signs at strategic locations along the trails to remind users which trail they are on and to keep users on the right trails. However, with the intersections complete the Odd/Even Use system has ended. Ride responsibly and enjoy your visit at Heritage Park

March 2010 SORBA Board Meeting

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, you guys! We're trying something a little different this year. We're turning the typical SORBA Board of Directors Meeting into a festival weekend at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, NC! The Board of Directors, the Regional Leadership Advisory Council, the Subaru-IMBA Trail Care Crew, and mountain bikers of all stripes will converge for a weekend of mountain biking, including trail education, riding, a party, and more riding! Here are the details: All are invited to join the IMBA-SORBA Regional Leadership Advisory Committee (RLAC), Board of Directors, staff, and the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew for a weekend of learning, digging, riding, and fun at the Nantahala Outdoor Center March 19-21, 2010. Join your friends, and immerse yourself in the beauty of Western North Carolina’s Nantahala River gorge while learning about advocacy and trail building from the Southeast’s most experienced advocates and the Trail Care Crew. Put your trail-building know-how to work at a hands-on workshop at the Tsali trail system. After the diggin’ is done, we’ll put away our tools and ride our bikes, topping it all off with a party and more riding! Registration for the weekend is $25, and includes admission to the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew events, lunch and dinner on Saturday, group rides, on-site transportation, and the Saturday night party. Online registration http://go.imba.com/site/Calendar/540251748?view=Detail&id=105441 is open, so don’t delay! If you have questions about the event, email Tom Sauret, tom@sorba.org. The Nantahala Outdoor Center is the site host for this mountain biking weekend. NOC offers quiet mountain cabins, simple motel rooms and even "Basecamp," their version of a bunkhouse. Reserve your space now by calling the NOC at 800-232-7238 option 4. You can call Monday through Friday from 9am-5pm EST. Itinerary Friday, March 19 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Registration 8:00 p.m. IMBA-SORBA Executive Board and staff meeting Saturday, March 20 Saturday morning features two activity tracks for participants: Track One is for all attendees, and Track Two is for SORBA Board members and IMBA Regional Advisory Leadership Council members (RLAC) only. Breakfast—You’re on your own for breakfast, but all are invited to dine at NOC’s River’s Edge. Track One: 9:00 a.m. Subaru-IMBA Trail Care Crew presentation in Klienrath Hall Track Two 8:30 a.m. IMBA-SORBA Board of Directors meeting with IMBA RLAC, location TBA Everyone 11:30 a.m. Lunch 12:30 p.m. Transportation to Tsali for TCC afternoon trail class 1:00 p.m. TCC afternoon trail class at Tsali 4:00 p.m. Return to NOC 4:30 p.m. Bike ride at NOC 6:30 p.m. Dinner 8:00 p.m. TCC Club Care presentation and party with fabulous swag. Sunday March 21 Breakfast on your own at the River’s Edge. 8:00 a.m. IMBA-SORBA Board meeting 9:00 a.m. Bike rides at Tsali or Jack Rabbit Mountain

Road Closures At Lake Russell WMA

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

As of December 16, 2009, there are currently several road closures in the Lake Russell WMA which may impact your ability to ride there. Be advised that Frady Branch Road, Red Root Road, and the SE section near Farmers Bottom and Soapstone Mountain are all closed, with several bridges washed out due to recent heavy rains. You can check the status of all Georgia WMA closures at this site. We keep tabs on the situation and try to post updates on Lake Russell WMA status as we get them. If you ride up there, please report back with condition updates.

Bike, horse riders agree to share paths at Oconee's Heritage park

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

WATKINSVILLE - For Linda Kundell - and her horses, too - there's nothing quite like a ride through the woods. "It's a very therapeutic thing for a horse to be out in the woods, instead of just riding around in a circle," said the Oconee County resident. "You can only ride around the pasture so many times." Now that the county government has approved new equestrian trails at Heritage Park in Farmington, Kundell and dozens of other local recreational horse owners will have a place to trail ride very close to home. Kundell, along with what she hopes will be a small army of volunteers, this summer will help clear more than 4 miles of trails at the 364-acre rural park. She already has a list of 100 local horse riders interested in riding there, she said. "We're trying to make it a group that that's what we'll do, work on (the trails) and keep them in good condition," she said. But the horse enthusiasts who volunteered Saturday to begin clearing trails - just a few days after commissioners gave the green light - weren't blazing a new path, so to speak. They're joining a steady flow of mountain bikers who regularly ride nearly 10 miles of off-road bicycle trails already meandering through the park's thick woods. Back in 1999, members of a local mountain biking group tamed the Heritage Park wilderness. They carved through the brush, filled potholes in some old roadbeds and bridged small streams to get the paths in shape. County government officials said then the members of the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association saved taxpayers $10,000 by working on their own to build the trails. SORBA members bristled a few months ago when some Oconee residents and parks department officials suggested people should be able to ride horses on the bike trails. The members were worried about safety and what the horses and their hooves might do to the trails they had worked hard to build and maintain. "The issue just really came down to the preservation of the trail, the destruction, the wear and tear of the trail and who was going to maintain that," said Howie Davis, manager of Sunshine Cycles in Watkinsville, a SORBA sponsor. Although bikes and horses successfully share multi-use trails elsewhere, those trails usually were built wide and with both uses in mind, Davis said. "Unfortunately, Heritage Park was built for cyclists, so they're very narrow trails." However, any controversy that flared up mostly died down over the next few months, as the two groups worked out a compromise with the parks department and a citizen recreation committee. SORBA members agreed to abandon or reroute parts of their trails to make room for the horse paths. The horse owners agreed to stay off the bike trails except for two wide, shared sections. "Hopefully it'll be a great shared venue for everybody to enjoy themselves out there," said Todd Horsley, an Oconee resident who bikes the Heritage trails a couple times a week. Like Kundell, Horsley loves having the trails nearby, and he said the two groups will have to respect each other for this to work. "But if everybody's willing to recognize that and maintain it as such, I think we'll be fine." Davis agrees. "It'll be great - the more people devoted to the park system the better. It just didn't need to be on the same trail," he said. Parks department officials are pleased with the compromise. The department will pay for trail signs that clearly mark which mode of transportation belongs on which section of trail, acting parks Director Lisa Davol told commissioners at a meeting last week. To build their trails, the horse folks don't have as much work to do as the bike crew. Once they knock down a rough path, the horses will take care of the rest, and riders can cut higher branches while riding through the woods, Kundell said. Another local horse rider, Jack White, laid out the horse trails and marked them, she said. Both have taken classes on trail building and know how to look at the lay of the land to find the best path. "This is a very, very good start, and Jack and I have worked very hard with the bike people to make sure they have what they need and we have what we need," Kundell said. Meanwhile, it likely will take SORBA about three or four months to reroute their trails, depending on how many volunteers they get, according to Davol. Once everything is done, it'll likely be up to the riders - horse and bike - to keep peace. "There are certain etiquettes between the bikes and the horses," Davol said. Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Monday, June 08, 2009

Horses to Gain Limited Access at Heritage

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Representatives from SORBA Athens met with the equestrian group at Heritage Park last week to determine the best way to add a horse loop to the existing loop. It was determined that a core loop composed primarily of the old roadbed doubletrack could in fact be opened to horse traffic without much disruption to bike traffic, and that new MTB singletrack would be built to ensure that mountain bikes are kept primarily off the new horse loop. The decision was based primarily on an attempt to prevent the potential for a tangled mess of trails and in order to facilitate a short timeline for opening the park to horse access. The plan is still pending approval from the Oconee County BOC, but both user groups feel it the best way to proceed. Certain short sections of trail, such as the river frontage, will be shared-use, but for the most part bikes and horses will be kept on separate trails. We will strongly encourage the county to install a good signage system keep everyone clear on what they can and can't do. As we will be building quite a bit of new singletrack in order to facilitate the integration, volunteers will be much needed in the coming months. For more information on the subject, contact chapter President Dave Conway at sorba.athens@sorba.org, and be sure to come to the chapter meeting on April 14.

Two Bridges Re-Route Upper Section

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Final details of the upper Two Bridges re-rout are slated to be finished this weekend 02/22/09. Come on out and help if you can. We'll meet in the parking lot at 1:00 PM. Dirty Spokes has a race schedlued there in mid March so we want it completed by then. Nothing like a good race to pack down some fresh singletrack!!

Forums Disabled

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The SORBA Athens forums on this site have been taken down due to resource limitations. We apologize for any inconvenience and are working on a replacement.