$5/Foot: Buy a foot of Downieville area trail, win any Santa Cruz bike
The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, with the generous help of Santa Cruz Bicycles, is running another Five Bucks a Foot campaign. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it goes like this: Entrants purchase a nominal “foot” of trail for $5, and each foot purchased provides one chance at winning any single bike currently in the Santa Cruz lineup. There is no limit to how many feet of trail a person can fund, and when they say “any” bike in Santa Cruz’s range, they mean just that – Bantam or V10, murdered out or “it’s not pink” new Nomad, winner gets to choose the bike of his or her dreams. This drawing is also open to participants all around the world; there are no geographic restrictions and the winner does not have to be present to collect his or her prize.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Donate/Enter here and win the Nomad above or any Santa Cruz bike.
But what does Five Bucks a Foot mean? The average cost of trail building in the northern Sierras, where much of the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship’s work is done, is about $27,000 per mile. Or, a little bit more than five bucks a foot. It costs a little less when scraping a line through a meadow, and it costs a whole lot more when blasting granite. A few years ago, when faced with some budget shortages due to grant money drying up, the SBTS came up with the Five Bucks a Foot idea to complete work on upper Butcher Ranch at the top of the legendary Downieville Downhill. Not only did this provide some much needed funding, it proved to be an easy way to draw attention to the real world costs of trail building, while at the same time stoking out someone with an absolutely killer bike.
The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship is based in Plumas County, California, just over the hill from Downieville. For over a decade now, the Stewardship’s paid trail crews, along with an army of volunteers, have been restoring and refining the trails above Downieville and in the Lakes Basin, as well as building world class new singletrack like the acclaimed Mills Peak trail. Community health is a major focus of the Stewardship – the paid crew are all locally employed, the Stewardship is involved in local school curriculae from elementary to the community college level, and the goal is always to showcase the natural grandeur of the local outdoors while maintaining and preserving the health of that environment for generations to come.
The outlook for state and federal funding on trail and recreation projects has been bleak for a few years now, and is not showing signs of improvement in the near future. As such, non-profits everywhere are having to look toward alternative methods of getting the job done. In the case of the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, that means putting on amazing races (www.downievilleclassic.com and lostandfoundbikeride.com), hosting some of the most boisterous volunteer trail days anywhere, and raising money while making someone a very happy new bike owner. Ultimately, the goal is to turn money into singletrack, and anyone who has ridden Sunrise trail above Downieville, or Mills Peak trail, or the Lakes Basin in the past few years can attest, they are doing a kickass job of just that. Money raised from this current fundraiser, which runs until May 31st (winner will be announced June 3rd), will be fed directly into the following projects:
https://sierratrails.org/content/mount_hough_south_park_trail_system_a_reality
https://sierratrails.org/content/boca_loyalton
https://www.sierratrails.org/events/lower_corral_trail_volunteer_workday
If you care about quality singletrack, help SBTS build some more!
Donate/Enter here and win the Nomad above or any Santa Cruz bike.
The post $5/Foot: Buy a foot of Downieville area trail, win any Santa Cruz bike appeared first on Mountain Bike Review.