2012 Volunteer Appreciation Party Recap

GORC hosted the Volunteer Appreciation Party at Greensfelder Park in St. Louis county. Over 40+ people showed up to celebrate each other's hard work in 2012. With many more miles cumulatively built all around the region, each year mountain bikers have better and longer singletrack options.

This year featured a stellar raflle with prizes provided by REI, E-Trailer, Maplewood Bicycle, Mesa Cycles and by a fellow who donated a $25 Quicktrip gas card to the booty pile. Dogfish donated a large portion of our brand new Trail Builder T-shirts which he handed out all day!

Join us on the trail to make our region the best place to get that magical singletrack fix. Here's how the day went down told through images.

 

All great parties involve cake, right? GORC doesn't skimp on cake and we ended up with a custom-built full sheet from Federhofer's Bakery.

 

To kick the day off right, a 10am poker run got everyone on the trails and guessing where the next obstacle course / deck card would appear. 

 

Matt and Lisa's poker run station involved consuming insulation biscuits that double as food stuffs. We are using the leftovers to fashion key ring floaters and selling them at Osage Beach.

 

Again, no proper GORC gathering can be without fire. The Glassberg shelter at Greensfelder offered a great outdoor fireplace.

 

Bad poker run hand? Step on up and earn your bonus card the fun, er, hard way...

 

The pogo stick was a hit.

 

JohnF brought his jump bike which was used successfully at times. Other times it sorta just made grinding noises sliding on its side.

 

Raffle winner taking the prize

 

Meats on the grill (and circular pressed vegetables) for the hard-working trail volunteers who have made a difference in 2012 by attending our numerous trail building days.

 

Kirby keeping the hungry crowd satisfied.

 

Raffle callouts lasted about a half hour with an intermission thrown in.

 

Ron accepting his swag

 

Tom won the Mesa Cycles Rockshox Recon 29er fork. Sweet! This photo highlights the inverted fork design.

 

GORC fed the fire well into the evening

 

JimB brought a bean bag game that was a crowd hit. Of course, he schooled us all! 

 

No caption needed

 

A great event that wound down in front of the fire. GORC cannot say it enough:

THANK YOU VOLUNTEERS FOR ALL THAT YOU DO! 

Volunteer Appreciation Party Info! Saturday!

Volunteer Appreciation Party Info

Annual GORC Appreciation Party

Get ready for the annual GORC Volunteer Appreciation party on October 30th! This year it will be held at Cliff Cave park following a much-needed workday. Cliff Cave offers a wealth of geological curiosities and oddities throughout the park that can be explored while on your mountain bike. Sinkholes, caves, bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, haunted demon hollows and car wreckage. All can be found in this twisty trail-laden park.

This edition of the volunteer appreciation party will feature a poker run. Yep. We are holding the party earlier this year instead of the traditional GORC birthday of December 12th when we typically freeze to death. We're hoping for great weather and a large turnout so we better see you October 30th. Bring candy, too, Matt says so.

Look for more details on the GORC website either on the message board or home page as the date nears. We would like to get a head count so be sure to post up on the board.

DON'T FORGET YOUR COSTUME -- it's halloween weekend after all!

Greensfelder Workday and Volunteer Appreciation Party

Saturday, December 12th from 9am-1pm we'll be working on rerouting the section around the creek crossing below the rock garden. This is a fall-line section that's unable to be maintained. After this, there will be only a few other sections on both DeClue and Dogwood which are fall-line, and should help extend the time that Greensfelder is rideable throughout the year. We're also going to be doing a short reroute on the DeClue extension, and if we have enough people, there are a lot of other little projects we can work on.

Afterwards, there will be a party with refreshments for GORC volunteers to thank them for the hard work they've put in over the year to build new trails, and make the ones we have better. More info and sign-up are here.

November/December Happenings

A little slow reporting things lately. Some items of note:

The Nov. 14th workday at Creve Coeur Park saw the completion of the latest segment of the Bootlegger's Run trail. There's now nearly 3 miles of singletrack there with more to come! The map has been updated to show all of the trail in the upper section of the park.

Mike Dunston, Craig and the St. Charles County crew have been busy continuing work on an extension at Indian Camp Creek, new trail at Matson, and some short reroutes at Bangert Island.

Wednesday, December 2nd at 7pm will have the regular monthly meeting at the Tap Room.

Friday, December 4th at 7pm is the last of St. Charles County Parks Moonlight Ride series for the year. This one is at Bangert Island. Meet at the Lewis & Clark Boathouse near Frontier Park, ride, and then have some post-ride refreshments at the Trailhead Brewery. More details are here.

Saturday,December 5th at 9am there will be the last workday of the season for Lost Valley. With a good turnout, we will be able to complete a new 1.5 mile section of singletrack that will replace the muddy stretch through the meadow along the fenceline. It wasn't too long ago that Lost Valley had almost no singletrack at all, and with the latest addition, it should put it up close to 5 miles, with the total length of the loop at around 11.5 miles. Please come out and help if you can. As usual, there will be food provided, and the weather looks good for a ride afterward. More info and sign-up is here.

Saturday, December 12th at 9am will be the start of a Greensfelder workday, followed by the GORC Volunteer Appreciation Party. We will be constructing a reroute around the fall-line section of the DeClue trail below the rock garden. We can use all of the help we can get here, since there's a lot of maintenance that can be done, as well as tweaking some sections of the DeClue extension. More details on the party as they become available.