Art Park Trail:  This is no longer welcome to cycling.  I was initially very unhappy about it, as I’ve spent many years having great fun, especially in the fall riding this little route up to the Stone Hill Quarry Art Park.  Apparently, though, it was never open for mountain biking, they just hadn’t gotten around to letting people know.  The CNY president of the NCTA is a former mountain biker himself, and “gets it”  about what makes a fun mountain bike trail, but he told me that it’s in the NCTA's national charter that they are for foot traffic only.  He pointed out that they are the ones who actually cut and created the trails, and they are truly not safe for cyclists to come bombing down hills and come up on hikers.  He also related of an unpleasant pair of male cyclists who rode on a very wet day, returning to the lot covered in mud and presumably having trashed the trial - when two elderly volunteers working on the trail told them it was off limits to cycling, they told the couple to F-off, which certainly doesn’t help the image of mountain biking…

This is the only section of the Link Trail that one can’t ride on.

Fairchild Hill/ Burlingame woods:  after a large group rode from the new Empire Brewery a month or so ago, these trails have seen a lot more use.  The CPF is open to mountain biking, but they do ask that we try to not keep widening the trail when it’s wet and instead of going around the puddles either “carry the bike” or go through, and to also, on climbs try to not all ride in one spot so a rut forms.  They may ask for us to help put in water bars where the runoff after heavy rains damages the trails even more.

I don’t know how many of you on this list are really affected, but I told them I’d pass the word on.

Kate Stewart