What are the big trail opportunities coming our way in the next decade? 

If you were a mountain biker in Boulder County in 1995, what did your riding opportunities look like? 

No Heil Valley Ranch, no Hall Ranch, nothing in the Marshall Mesa area except the Community Ditch Road (yeah, they call it a trail, but we know better).   

Mountain bikers have had a good decade; we got the County to create sustainable and fun trail experiences, we got the Dirty Bismarck on the south side of town, and the Forest Service knows and acts like they know that mountain bikers are the stewards of the future.  Our open space programs have bought most of the big parcels and only small, expensive pieces remain.  We won't be getting any more Heil Valley Ranches coming online because two-thirds of Boulder County is in public ownership already.   
The policy wonks at BMA have been hammering home the point to elected officials that no land agency that creates a management plan ever looks beyond their fence lines.  We have islands of recreation throughout the mountains of Boulder County.  Increased user pressure on these island destinations are on the rise and no agency is willing to double their trail miles to accommodate.  We believe the solution to this problem is creating a regional trail system in western Boulder County that links this islands of recreation with each other and the places where we live. 

After almost two years of lobbying, we are happy to report that the leaders of US Forest Service, Boulder County Parks and Open Space, the Boulder County Transportation Department, the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, Eldorado Canyon State Park, and even the City of Longmont Water Department are meeting to discuss this topic and develop a framework for a public process that will work through the details of a regional trail network for Western Boulder County.  They have met twice, and the next meeting is scheduled for November 9.  We've been told that a public process will be announced by the end of this year and public meetings will commence in early 2013. 

We can expect a long drawn out process, as getting all these agencies to just get into a room together has been like herding cats.  This process will hopefully produce intergovernmental agreements that will identify corridors between destinations and who the players are for that those linkages.  We expect each agency's planning processes will be the place where the details of those linkages are ironed out; the IGAs will serve as a goal for those plans, but it won't be the primary goal. 

We believe a regional trail system in western Boulder County is how we disperse use so no one agency bears the brunt of increasing demand for quality trail experiences, create longer, more epic adventures, and gets people out of their cars.  It adds another level of complexity to these management plan processes, but the final result will be worth the time spent.   

This is where we think BMA can be a positive catalyst for change in Boulder County.  This is where we will be building more trail in Boulder County in the next decade.