MEET THE BOARD

Anne Clark | PresidentIn early summer 2007, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go mountain biking. I went out and bought a

bike off the rack, we headed to the Mammoth trail and I’ve been hooked ever since. I got involved with the MORC Board in late 2014 and was voted in as President in January 2016. Mountain biking has been a passion of mine since that first ride and I’m honored to serve on the MORC Board, to help trails in the Twin Cities

metro area. I live in NE Minneapolis with my husband, and we love to take road trips all over the county. I am a certified yoga teacher and I enjoy gardening, cooking & baking. If you see me on the trail, give me a shout!

Sam Pond | Vice PresidentI joined the MORC Board of Directors in January 2016 and have enjoyed serving the organization in the roles of Secretary and Vice President, as well as participating

in the Finance, Fundraising, and Governance Committees. I currently live in Burnsville and frequent trails in southwest metro. Cycling has taken me to wonderful places all over the country and connected me with new people. Serving MORC through significant organizational change has been a rewarding experience;

the separation from IMBA, transition from paid staff back to a 100% volunteer non-profit and planning for future trail projects.

Knobby News April, 2019

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Hello, fellow MORC-ers!

Welcome to our newly revised, quarterly newsletter. We’ve changed the format to be more engaging and transparent with you, our community. In the newsletters, you can look forward to Trail Focus arti-cles, biographies about the MORC Direc-tors, calendar events, trail projects and information.

We’ve made the change in part because this is our 25th year as a non-profit or-ganization. It’s time to celebrate! We’ll keep you updated as we plan events for this calendar year to celebrate the nu-merous accomplishments that have been made in the wide world of singletrack since 1994.

If you aren’t already, I’d like to encourage you to consider becoming a MORC mem-ber. Thanks for being a part of the MORC community and see you on the trails!

Sincerely,

Anne Clark MORC President

TRAIL FOCUS: Elm Creek

WINTER GROOMING: FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGSBy: CJ Smith | Elm Creek Dirt Boss

In the winter of 2011, none of my friends nor myself had fatbikes. Elm Creek Sin-gletrack had recently been completed and we wanted to keep riding through the season. At the beginning of the win-ter, we would go out with shovels and anything we could find to flatten out the snow. We’d drag tire rims, a chunk of flat concrete, other random bike bits or anything heavy. Later in the season, I developed the first “Cheese Grater” that would smooth out the trail, and the V-Plow to move the snow off the trail to create a riding path.

All these tools and techniques were hand driven, it was a lot of work. Then the snow got deeper and heavier, as it will. Dave Hoglund volunteered his Ho-gie scoop to remove the deep snow, which helped our efforts tremendously. The Hogie continues to be used, even in the 2018-2019 season.

As the Elm Creek Singletrack became more established, we were given permission from Three Rivers Park District to use mechanized equipment to groom. John Smith bought us a Yamaha Bigwheel and a Yamaha Bravo to drag the grooming pieces around. To date, we have 2 Bigwheels, 3 Bravo snowmobiles (one just for parts), and 8 different pieces of grooming equipment that we use for packing, chewing up ice, pulling & moving snow off the trail- all hand built by yours truly.

We’re passionate about riding and put a lot of time and effort into maintaining the trail we love. We hope you love it, too.

Elm Creek’s Yamaha Bigwheel gets the work done

MORC KNOBBY NEWS | APRIL, 2019

LEFT:V-Plow behind one of the Bravo snowmobiles RIGHT: John with a Snow Scoop

SPOTLIGHT: The Importance of Membership Membership donations are crucial to maintain the 100+ miles of singletrack in the Twin Cities metro area.

Membership dollars correlate directly to trails maintenance and together with our partners, MORC has raised over $700,000 for trails since 2016. While the trails are complimentary to use, they are far from being “free”. Please consider becoming a MORC member today. You get sweet swag, and you directly support MORC trails. Together, #WeAreMORC.

Become a Member today: www.morcmtb.org/join

Show Your2019 MORCMembershipProudly!

SPRING TRAIL REMINDERSSpring might be the worst time of the year for a mountain biker. Nobody likes a closed trail. The soil types in Minnesota along with the narrow corridors that make up our trails complicate spring re-opening. Rest assured, the trail workers are well trained on “Spring Cleaning” and strive to get the trails open for riding ASAP.

Thank you for respecting closed trails - it drastically reduces the amount of work that must be done before the trails open for the Spring season. And- if you see trail workers, give them a “thank you”. They work hard to keep the trails up and running for use all year long.

MORC KNOBBY NEWS | APRIL, 2019

Titanium Partner

Carbon Partner

Aluminum Partners

Interested in becoming a MORC Partner?Check out: www.morcmtb.org/partners

DO NOT ride wet trails. Thanks!