FVDRA SUMMER UPDATE
Welcome to the summer of 2022 and hopefully the good weather does arrive at some point in the near future! We want to provide a mid-year update to our FVDRA membership in case our members are not all on the Facebook Group or Instagram.
Membership Update
We have sold 122 memberships (single + family) up to May 30th, and approximately half of those are to new members. Welcome to those of you that are new to our club! We are so happy to have you join us! You are the future of our club.
Overall, sales are down approximately 25% over last year at this time, we believe mostly due to the poor weather and the easing of pandemic travel restrictions. I do hope that our historical member base starts renewing their memberships soon.
Maintenance Update
Have you heard the hum of the chainsaw in the forests and the clickety clack of pruning shears? What about the aroma of club barbecues at the new communal fire pit at the end of each maintenance day?
We have certainly been busy and to date, we have reopened Bridge Trail, Going Postal, Too Tight and Spodes, after many years of closure. There is significant restoration work ongoing on I Am Canadian 1, Bear Sh*t Boulevard and Matterhorn.
There has been some trail signage work done as well, but that work has just begun. We do encourage our members to come out to our next trail maintenance days (July 16th and August 13th, 10am, meet at kiosk in the new campground). There is work for everyone of all ages and abilities and we have a lot of equipment that we bring up including chainsaws, pickaxes, shovels and pruning shears. We would love to reopen Fern Crescent and Mildly Amusing this year if we can get some help. Last maintenance day, we only had 6 people show up. Please join in!
Learner’s Loop and Campsite update
The three grants FVDRA received this year are largely spent and the work completed thanks to 23 volunteers that worked tirelessly over the weekend of May 27th and to the few that stayed for the additional week to finish up. We had 16 dump trucks of material come up that famously steep FSR of ours, 2 skid steers, 2 dump trailers, a compactor that we could have sold tickets to ride, an excavator the weekend before, and we moved almost 300 yards of material that Barrick Gold donated to us. And tada, we have a kid’s learner loop and much improved campsites, re-stained outhouses with mouse & water proof toilet paper storage (please close them up after use to be effective!), new signage, a relocated staging area back to where it was for so many years, new and refreshed picnic tables, a communal fire area with benches… We don’t have a camp host, so please bring some toilet paper if you are a day-user or a tenter and donate to the outhouse supply.
Keeping up with the action at Nickelmine
We have begun posting our executive meeting minutes on our website, www.fvdra.com. If you are curious about what we are up to, take a look at those.
Keeping up with the action at Nickelmine
The executive has just begun planning for 2023 so that we can determine what funding we may need to achieve our goals. There are lots of ideas on the table so we will have a rich discussion in July at our next meeting. We are limited as to what we can do within our trail system as we don’t have a Section 57 or 56 which we need to do anything but maintain what we have from a safety and environmental perspective. If you have any specific ideas regarding 2023 or future vision, pop us an email at fraservalleydirtriders@gmail.com.
Now, on behalf of the executives of the club, please enjoy this riding season and take a moment to jot our maintenance days down in your calendar and plan to work some charitable dirt biking labour into your vacation or weekend plans!
Kirsten Peck
FVDRA President
