Eagle's Nest Trail Builders
A social volunteer group for the purpose of building and maintaining trails in the Eagle's Nest neighborhood in Banner Elk, NC

Click Here To Login

April 2017
?We'll start firing up the trail work weekends, so keep an eye out for the work day emails, and be sure to tell any new neighbors to get signed up.  Remember that you can search for other Builders after you are logged into the website.

January 2017 to March 2017
?WOW!!!  The Dizzy Beaver Playground, Beaver Slide Hill, and the first stage of the Beaver Valley descent trails are almost complete....we still need to clear some small stumps and do some clean up.  An absolutely beautiful hiking trail starts from Lot 109-110 entrance point, and goes all the way down to Buckeye Lake along the Beaver Falls creek...this is a Most-Difficult 1.6 Mile hike with a vertical drop of 785 feet!  What goes down, must come up, so be sure to know your limits to get back up and bring a few bottles of water.

October 2016 to January 2017
Although the log here has been empty, we've been CRAZY BUSY plowing through tons of new trails over the past few months.  The Dizzy Beaver Playground loop is complete outside of some final grading and signage.  This is a one-way counter-clockwise loop (left turns) and we'll continue to add additional obstacles for training and some jumps and bumps for air-time!  This will serve as as the perfect training ground for riders of all ages and skill levels.

We recently started working our way down the valley on the red and orange trails which are going to offer a higher degree of difficulty with some pretty steep hills and obstacles.  Working on these trails in the winter-time rocks!  Not only is it cooler, but there are zero weeds, bugs and overgrowth to deal with...especially those horrific thorny green briar weeds.

Saturday, September 25, 2016
Cleared out a very neglected old section of the "Beaver Pond Track" which is a loop that will run around the outside border and around the swampy areas of the actual pond.  This track will be a super-fun learning course featuring all types of terrain for teaching new riders, or for experienced riders to get some air-time!  Lots of great things to come on this section as it is the key launch pad for an epic day of riding down Beaver Valley.

Today, we had a great turnout of 11 people, 4 were older kids who had a great time helping!  We completely cleared an old logging road trail that runs parallel with the existing Boulder Pass trail, but sits inside the woods which is much better because there are no weeds and there is better visibility with head-on traffic.  This trail will continue down into the new 83 acres that will be our next project.  The 2pm time seemed to work out much better and we were all back in time for the dinner event.

 

Hand-dug the new Beaver Pond hillclimb workaround since we didn't have a machine.  That was a lot of work by hand.  We still need to do a little bit of grading there to level it out a bit on the side hill.  Raked and removed all of the stumps and cleared the top entrance to get ready to cross the main trail to start the next segment that will run parallel up the hill. 

Also, walked and flagged the first section of the new 83 acre area that runs down stream from the water flow from Beaver Pond.  This will be a beautiful main artery run down to the giant waterfall down there!

 

I spoke to Will last week about a Bobcat with tracks that he was getting repaired.  He said we might be able to use that machine for trailwork, and Derek may also have another machine available.  We'll try to squeeze in a bunch of workdays this Sept and October before it gets too cold.  It is actually easier to cut trails after the trees loose their leaves, so we'll keep on keeping on all year long unless the snow or blistering temperatures hold us back.  In the event that I cannot make that 2nd Saturday, I'll coordinate with another backup person to head up that project, or everyone can just to basic clean-up maintenance.

 

We cut out a new workaround trail to get around the steep Beaver Pond gravel hill climb.  When you are facing uphill, the trail goes off to the right then switches back to the left to reconnect to the main trail.  We still need to do some grading work with a tractor and remove some small stumps and it should be ready to go.

Next project is to cross the main trail and circle around the left edge to get further past the additional rough area that is washed out.  So, we'll have a new easy Green/Blue trail that will snake back and forth all the way up to the ending.
 

Hello Neighbors!  (all neighbors are BCC’d)

I am one of your new neighbors (lots F-1 and 96) and I have a non-committal, volunteer-based, neighbor-bonding idea to run by everyone. 

I bought a house in Banner Elk a few years ago and when driving my Harley through the super-fun windy 194 road, I kept seeing these “Land Sale” signs.  After many, many rides past the entrance, I had no choice but to go into the office and find out what the deal was there.  The first thing I see, other than DJ, is “ATV Park” written on the map.  Days later, I’m a lot owner!  Several months later I pick up some ATVs from Sid at the Polaris dealership for me and my 11-year old daughter Lindsay. Now, I’m out riding almost every weekend and meeting TONS of great people on the mountain and having a blast out in the woods!  I’m also a huge gravity addict and have been riding mountain bikes, mini-bikes, motorcycles, ATVs (even the deadly 3-wheelers) and Harley’s since birth I think.

I live in Charlotte (on the weekdays) and have done a lot of work here on the local mountain bike trails with the TrailBlazers.com and many solo projects with a shovel, rake, some limb cutters, and a chainsaw on my back.  So, I came up with an idea of creating a voluntary group of off-road enthusiasts to meet monthly to gang-tackle our trails for maintenance and cutting in new ATV/Horse/Biking/Walking trails throughout, and maybe even around, Eagle’s Nest.

The vision is that the 2st Saturday of EVERY month at Sportman’s Lodge and we gang-tackle either a new, or existing, trail that we’d plan out well in advance.  There are potentially 80-ish available acres that we can cut new trails into, and we can also look at expanding and reconfiguring some of the existing trails with the supervision and participation of the Eagle’s Nest staff.  Ideally, we could have a group of five to fifty people show up with rakes, shovels, chain saws, etc. and we’d follow a Bobcat and small excavator into the woods and have a new, or improved, trail by the end of the day.  It’s amazing how fast it goes with a lot of helpers, and it’s UNBELIEVABLY gratifying riding on your own trails that you helped build. 

My other vision is safety for the kids (or rookie riders) by simply creating easy workarounds for any of the tough/dangerous trail sections such as the hill climbs by Beaver Pond.  We would post excellent signage for one-way traffic, green circles for easy, blue squares for intermediate, and of course black diamonds for the hard stuff.  This way, I can comfortably tell my daughter and her riding group to stay on the greens and have a good time even unattended. 

Next, I’d love to have a beaconing system of some sort where beacons could potentially be rented at the front desk, or purchased, for the purpose of riders being able to check-in and ride solo knowing that someone else knows your exact location in case you’d break down or have an accident.  While riding solo, I’ve seen three different black bears already in two different areas which freaked me out a bit, especially with the 400-450 lb. one which I assume is the mother.  So, it would be great if I could come check in at the main office, grab a beacon transmitter, and at least know that someone could find me if I don’t check back out.  My cell phone reception is unreliable in many areas so using a phone app isn’t a great solution, plus you lose a lot of battery running a GPS app.  These beacons and app could be used by parents to watch the dots of where their kids are currently riding.  It’s also great proof that they diverted from the greens! :o)  There are many web-based fleet-management tools out there now that I can look into later.

Finally, trails for everyone!  We need lots of new horse trails, mountain biking trails, walking and ATV/4-wheeler/Side-By-Side/Jeep trails so an idea might be to share them on different days such as horses on Sundays and motors on Saturdays on certain sections.  These, and other great ideas, will all come about further once we get a big group of enthusiasts.

I know that it is last minute notice, but Greg Cox and I and maybe a few others are going to meet tomorrow to start hashing out some ideas, then go for a fun recon ride to GPS map out the trails outside of the main ones and to walk the 80 acres to see what’s out there.  If you can make it, great, I’ll try to bring a case of beer with me!

Much more to come on this so stay tuned.  Please reply back if there is no interest or you don’t live near here to be involved.

___________________________

Marc Mataya

(704) 523-1212 Office

(704) 491-1213 Cell

(704) 631-4758 FAX