Cleanup efforts have begun on the Houston Mountain Bike Association (HMBA) trails on Mount Harry Davis in a very innovative way.
The HMBA cleans up and preps the biking trails and some parking areas on Mount Harry Davis every year through out the season. One of the major problems that usually occurs is an abundance of nails on the ground in the parking lots near the biking areas. This year, the use of a magnet made the cleanup much easier.
“The cleaning and and spring prep is all done by volunteers who use our trail system. It is not a new problem to have road users party and burn pallets in the parking areas especially during winter when they take advantage of labours and funds to plow parking for our winter trail users,” said Miake Elliot, HBMA president.
“A small group rallied together the needed equipment, a magnet was the natural tool of choice for such a problem. Once the magnet was secured, two volunteers spent about two hours cleaning up the parking area and making it safe for spring traffic,” she continued.
The group collected a full bin of nails in the process. They posted the cleanup project along with pictures of the collected nails in a Houston community Facebook group, which according to Elliot was an attempt to prevent the problem in the future.
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“The point was to bring awareness about what types of activities lead to damage and that volunteers have to clean up the mess made by a different demographic of road users,” she said.
Directors and trail crew volunteers from the HBMA still has lots of work ahead of them, as they will continue to clean up and prep trails all the way up the mountain as the snow melts. “There is always some damage done to signage or outdoor assets like tables and outhouses. Vandalism is the number one threat to recreation non profit organization’s assets,” said Elliot.
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Eddie Huband
Multimedia Reporter
eddie.huband@ldnews.net
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