Mountain Cog
Hosted by an enthusiast and a mountain bike industry expert featuring laughter and passionate guests.
Mountain Cog
087 – Tonto Gravity Riders (TGR) are bringing more gravity trails to the desert southwest. (Chris Johnson, Tonto Gravity Riders)
In this episode Josh & Dane sit down with Chris Johnson who is the CEO & President of the Tonto Gravity Riders (TGR). TGR has built and maintained some amazing gravity focused trails in Arizona including in the Pinal Mountains Trail System and Sunrise Bike Park.
TGR is a large group of dedicated outdoor enthusiasts that share a passion to better the user experience. It is a large core of highly experienced trail volunteers who have worked on many projects throughout Arizona. Many of them have been working together for over a decade now and it shows in their work! Sustainability is #1.
They share a vision for the great recreational possibilities that await all user groups, especially mountain bikers within the Pinal Mountains by providing the resources needed to restore, maintain and help re-develop the Pinal Mountain Trail System.
Tonto Gravity Riders (TGR)
Web: https://www.tontogravityriders.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tontogravityriders/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TontoGravityRiders/
Trails
Pinal Mountain Trail System: https://www.trailforks.com/region/pinal-mountain-trail-system/
NRA Jumps: https://www.trailforks.com/poi/1410/
Sunrise Bike Park: https://www.sunrise.ski/summer/downhill-mountain-biking/
Mt Graham Trail System: https://www.trailforks.com/region/pinaleno-mountains-mt-graham/
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Hey Josh.
Josh:Hey, buddy, I got something to tell you. No, I was going to tell you oh, you're going to go first. Okay, go ahead.
Dane:I decided to start a pro hide and seek league. Oh you, did.
Josh:Okay, you decided to to start. What made you decide to start a pro hide and go seek league?
Dane:well, it failed, it failed, yeah, yeah why did it fail? You're successful uh, good players were so hard to find. Oh, you got the buttons very good. I like it very it. I like it Very good and.
Josh:Chris is not laughing at all and he's like what the hell are these guys talking about?
Dane:So every episode we start with a dad joke. So do you have any good dad jokes?
Chris Johnson:No.
Dane:I do not. I'm normally the worst. I'm reading this off of a sheet.
Josh:So that's the only way I can remember. Yeah, I'm going to stop writing them down for you.
Dane:Yeah, oh, yeah you stole my dad joke. I know I saw. I just I saw you going into it and I just wanted to take it.
Josh:It's the second time. That's the second dad joke interruption you've done in two podcasts, Chris. I got to tell you, brother, you've got a great voice for podcasts.
Josh:All right so we're here with Chris Johnson. He is the CEO and president of the Tonto Gravity Riders, which is a nonprofit organization born with the mission to provide volunteer resources to ease the burden of maintenance of the Pinal Mountain Trail System for the Tonto National Forest, but they also do work in like kind of other places as well. Yeah, chris, how are you doing today? Buddy Doing good, you Doing awesome man. I mean it's much better that I'm drinking whiskey talking to you guys about bikes and trail building than I am working.
Dane:We had like under 100 degrees today.
Josh:That's awesome.
Dane:That was great.
Josh:Gorgeous.
Dane:I know I'm so excited we're starting to go into good weather.
Josh:Chris, where are you at physically in the world?
Chris Johnson:I am in Mesa.
Dane:Oh cool.
Chris Johnson:I'm out by the Haas Trail system and about 10 minutes away from NRA Pit.
Dane:Nice, that's awesome. I love that area man.
Josh:That is awesome. We very much enjoy Haas. The last time I rode it we went up and rode with Brian Mason, the president of Pivot Brian.
Dane:Yeah, he met us out there and brought some bikes and took us, and took us on a tour of the e-bikes. Yes, of course.
Josh:Yeah, uh, not that we're exclusively e-bikers, but um. I'm getting there that day. That day I enjoyed that super expensive pivot e-bike. Yes, oh yeah, um, right on Chris.
Chris Johnson:Well, hey, man, you know, just to start out, maybe tell us in your words a little bit about TGR, its history and like what you think the mission is mountain bikers and basically it started out as a grass, grassroots, no dig, no ride kind of group of people and, uh, when your options are limited, sometimes you tend to take things uh kind of in your own hands.
Chris Johnson:Uh, so probably started around 2010, uh, when nra it which I'm not sure if everybody's aware of, but it was a popular jumping area out at the Haas trail system was under heavy scrutiny and well, it was time to kind of go low key for a while, so kind of disappeared and a lot of people that were involved disappeared with me. A lot of people that were involved disappeared with me and we kind of disappeared into the woods to kind of create a new future and to make a new plan on how to provide a certain type of writing that had limited options in the state and from there it kind of grew and before you knew it, 10 years had passed and we had been encountered by the Forest Service and they had encountered some of these gyms that we may talk about a little bit later, the construction and the work that they actually wanted to develop a working relationship and utilize that amount of effort and uh dedication into actually expanding and taking care of the Pinnell mountain trail system.
Dane:Holy crap, that's amazing. Like usually, it's just you get your hands slapped and fingers wagged at you and stuff, and these guys are like you did a good job. Let's do more of this. You know that's awesome.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, the, the, the goals from the early days and it's. It's one of those things that you'd sit around with your buddies and you joke about it and you'd be like you know we'll do something, but we'll do it so good that when that time comes, that it kind of forces in the direction of where we're at today. And it was kind of an eye opener when it actually was like one of those things where you joke about, you hope dreams will come true and eventually it happens the exact same way that you had envisioned. You know, uh, kind of unfolding when that time arose.
Dane:That's, that's pretty amazing. So we hit the NRA pit long time ago when, with no breaks and, uh, I feel like it, it was around before Hawes, like oh yeah, absolutely Uh yeah, my my first uh shovel full of dirt out there was in 2005.
Dane:Oh, that makes sense, cause that's when we were racing and then, uh, it was huge, like it was. That's where you went. I mean you either found some random lot where kids had built dirt jumps, you know in the middle of the desert, or the nra pit. There was like nothing else in in all of arizona.
Josh:So I want to double click on the nra pit for a second. But before we do that, let's um. So, chris, our, our podcast is kind of all around the world, so I want to orient our international audience and the domestic audience that's not in the desert southwest to the towns and the areas that we're talking about. So Phoenix is the biggest city in Arizona. Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix. That's just east of that. In Mesa there's a couple of great HAWs. There's a couple of great trail systems. We talked about haws. You talked about the NRA pit. We'll, we'll double click on that. If you go a little bit, I think Northeast is it Northeast of of no South Southeast of Phoenix, you'll get to globe.
Dane:Uh yeah, God, is it North or South?
Josh:I can't remember it's East of glow, it's.
Dane:East of.
Josh:Mesa, but I don't know. And then if you go a little south of there, you get to the Pinal Mountain.
Dane:Trail System.
Josh:Pinal Mountains, but that's all in the Tonto National Forest.
Dane:Chris, how did I do with that? Is that about right?
Chris Johnson:I did pretty good. Tonto National Forest is actually I think don't quote me on it like the fourth or fifth largest national forest in the United.
Dane:States. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either, In fact, I had no idea they were the same, like I thought they were now in Tonto. I didn't either.
Josh:And I was looking it up, I was like, why are these guys called the Tonto gravity riders? Yeah, they're taking care of Pennell. And then I was like, oh shit, because it that's awesome. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I was going to ask you where the name came from. All right, so, chris, double click on the NRA jumps a little bit for us. What is that? What was that? How did that come to be? What is it?
Chris Johnson:like. There was no place in the valley at the time outside of a place that was called the Playground, which was a lot that was by an SRP plant off of Pima and Princess, which is in Scottsdale. It had nothing on the east side. And when I was getting back into serious mountain biking I was inspired and caught the bug of free riding and jumping because of Darren Bearclaw and his uh, his videos. So it was like, oh God, we want something like this somewhere. We need to do something. So you know, being kind of young and naive I think I was in my mid twenties at the time and, uh, we're like, oh, you know, let's find a place to, you know, to kind of create something and doing some research and stuff.
Chris Johnson:There had been some old school guys that also had dug out there at the NRA pit, but it had been something that had kind of went to the wayside and become in serious disrepair. But at the time there was like four jumps there on what's still called A-line. But at the time there was like four jumps there on what's still called A-Line. So when me and one of my riding buddies showed up, we started going out there and digging and funny story is, we had built our first feature out there, which was a ladder bridge kind of jump out in the upper reaches of the NRA area out in the upper reaches of the NRA area. It wasn't no more than a week after we built that I had heard from our local bike shop at the time, dna Cycles. Hey, the city of Mesa says there's something going on out here on this side of the mountain. I was like, oh geez, what could that?
Josh:be. Oh, really Interesting.
Chris Johnson:It was like immediate but, you know, nothing ever came of it. And of course we continued to go out there and to build and basically we were building a progression area that we kept adding on to and basically wanted to have a place for ourselves to progress and for others to progress. And the main thing is you can't have a sport or develop a niche of a sport if there aren't other people that are interested in it. So you need to be able to have that level of progression to work. You don't just build something that you want and you want only, but you know you need to build stuff that attracts people out and, you know, gives that ability for people to kind of progress. And uh, that actually started kind of like a downhill free ride kind of boom, because remember cactus bikes at the time they were actually becoming overwhelmed by the amount of all mountain riders that were coming in seeking downhill and free ride rigs because they wanted to go jump and learn how to jump out of the inter-ray pit shout out to fish.
Dane:So yes, yeah yeah, so.
Josh:Okay. So you say darren bearcloth and I just see him jumping off. Like you know, 40 foot cliffs and stuff. I mean like how big is the stuff out there you guys built?
Chris Johnson:uh, there's everything that ranges from you, you know, five, 10 foot gaps up to you know, got some 40 foot gaps that are hidden out there on the sides and some pretty technical kind of uh hits that. Uh, you know you, you have to have some kind of skill to get through the initial part of the run in, just to get into the feature and then out of it.
Chris Johnson:Was, that was that first ladder one, that was that over like a little uh little like a uh, it came off of it, fed off of a rock and actually jumped across a uh, uh, a wash.
Dane:So yeah, yeah, I remember that man it's. Is that still there? I haven't been out there in a while.
Chris Johnson:No, that was a flat bridge uh type uh installation and at one point in time, when the Forest Service was in a very disgruntled mood of headhunting, we had removed it and replaced it with a dirt step-up feature that later on I actually came back and replaced it with a curved ramp and replaced it with a curved ramp. However, curved ramp didn't last as long as the original feature, which had gone like probably eight years.
Chris Johnson:When you say curved ramp, you mean like a shark fin, no kind of like a curved BMX jump. So instead of just having like a bridge that's flat, going across and you carry your speed off of, this was like a ladder bridge that had a curve at the end, so it was like a lip, kind of like a street ramp, but built in midair.
Josh:Yeah, I got you, so is that? Is that system still active today?
Chris Johnson:oh yeah, the the nra pit has actually finally is adopted and a legit area within the haas trail system and has no plans of going anywhere now.
Josh:Wow, I didn't know that was part of how progressive.
Dane:Is it now? Is there like a, can you go slowly build up your skillset, or is it all gaps right away?
Chris Johnson:No, no, there there's plenty of room for building up your skillset from jumps that have natural landings to small tables that are, you know, in different places out there, and just a lot of natural hits that give you the confidence of going further and further, because you can land pretty much anywhere.
Dane:That's pretty amazing, man. So when you did all this like so, initially, you kind of went out and just were like, hey, I'd like to have something, and you kind of made it happen. And it wasn't really supposed to. The land managers weren't like on board and, uh, what, what do you think like? At what point did they just go? Yeah, let's keep this. You know like what? Did you have an advocacy group that helped you, or was it just you and a couple guys, or what?
Chris Johnson:you're talking about nra pin now yeah, yeah yeah, well, there's kind of two sides, uh, two different stages to it. So the nra pit, as trucking along 2008 is, like you know, high heaven times. You go out there. There's 30 mountain bikers out there at any given time, uh, enjoying, and we actually start making headway. And I had made contact with the Forest Service and was developing a relationship with the rec ranger Mesa at the time, and it looked like things were going to be promising. So I initially started was starting a group called East Valley Mountain Bikers Association some long thing in order to be able to work with them in working towards legitimizing NRA. We were moving in a good direction and we had a group of riders that wouldn't stop trying to modify and add new stuff out there when our agreement was, hey, we'll stop everything except for maintenance to make this stuff happen, kind of build the relations and the trust. We did a big NRA cleanup where basically, we raped the whole bottom of the pit, sifted it through sifters, got out the glass, the bowl of casings, you name it, the rest of the garbage, and things were going quite well. However, this other group of mountain bikers didn't heed and didn't have, I guess, the respect for the process that was happening to make that area legitimate. And unfortunately we also had a wreck ranger change and this is one thing that I found with the forest service over the years is, if somebody changes office of position, the new person that comes in may not see eye to eye with what was going on with the previous and can absolutely just crush it and basically it died. They bulldozed the inner a pit. Uh, our guys, we took off, we disappeared, we're like okay, we're done, that's kind of done. And then, uh, that's when, uh, the pinell mountain thing started and ton of gravity writers was born around 2010 in lieu of that, because didn't matter if we were at Hawes or if we were up at the Pinnells, we were still in the Tonto National Forest and we were still basically that was the focus was riding in Tonto areas all the way up until 2020. And that's when, like cause trail Alliance had started getting their getting their footing and started moving with getting the Haas trail system adopted, get new trails and stuff like that. And during that process is when the NRA pit was truly adopted.
Chris Johnson:The revival of NRA pit happened in a bad snow year, I think it was like 2017 or 2018. And I was bored and went back out there to see how bad the damage looked, after they had bulldozed it and honestly, they just kind of didn't really bulldoze it. They dismantled and all the material was still there. So I was like, okay, well, let's start throwing shovels again. Within probably a few weeks I had a majority of the stuff that was, uh, destroyed kind of rebuilt back up, which kind of brought it back into the limelight, which kind of made it a thing that needed to be taken care of or something needed to be figured for the area, because obviously in the Forest Service's eyes it wasn't going anywhere and it had risen from the dead. So, with the help of HTA and some of their gravity riders that were also loosely related to our group, kind of pushed to make things happen, and that was something that they worked hard at and still work hard at keeping it, you know, keeping it as a riding place too.
Dane:whole area has been kind of like green lit to do some really fun stuff and it's not, you know, some wide open, like, you know, tame trail for you know yeah, it's got lots of progression.
Josh:It's a flow trail. They allow e-bikes there's. There's really techie stuff. There's really techie stuff. There's mellow stuff.
Dane:It's got it all yeah, and so it's really cool to see it's. You know, I I know in our area we have a lot of wildcat trails that are have been here forever and we all ride them and and they're starting to get adopted.
Josh:Finally slowly, yeah, especially on mount graham yeah, well, and in mount lemon so yeah, mount lemon and uh.
Dane:So it's kind of, you know, you don't want to encourage people to go out and build trails without permission but at the same time if you have a land manager that realizes that it's a good, viable place for recreation and people like it and they are open to that and they, you know they kind of work, figure out a way to make it happen, that is really encouraging.
Josh:So tell us a little bit, so you know the time that they bulldozed it. And then you guys, effectively, 2010 established TGR and you went out into the Pinal Mountains First of all how far is that from Mesa For me?
Chris Johnson:I am at 7,800 feet, in about an hour and 15 minutes from my doorstep.
Dane:Okay, yeah, so it's not too bad yeah.
Josh:Not too bad, and then so tell us how that went and tell us like what the trails are like out there.
Chris Johnson:The Pinellas Mountains was actually thanks to Ray Cosmic. Ray's book was one of my first areas that I went to.
Dane:I had that book Me too. Yeah.
Chris Johnson:Went to for big mountain descents and, you know, started riding up there, probably in you know 2005 and stuff, and fell in love with it because it was like such a vastness of mountain, like when you're on the mountain in middle, you actually feel like you are in the middle of nowhere and you know, being close to the Valley and, uh, originally I'm from Colorado, so I'm I'm used to the mountains and being out in the desert.
Chris Johnson:I was kind of missing my fix. And well, I found my fix there when we had disappeared in 2010,. Up that direction was basically kind of had a dream that I wanted to take, like all the features that had been built out in array and, instead of having all these different lines everywhere, you squeeze that into one line, one trail, and uh, have, uh, you know something that uh provided an extended uh, uh duration of fun and uh challenge. So basically spent a bunch of time up there and if was going to do it, was going to do it right, which meant there was a lot of time that went into doing my own kind of ecological studies, finding out, making sure that I didn't repeat the mistakes that lots of trail builders in the state of arizona had previously made. Uh, for instance, don't build through an owl pack.
Josh:Yeah yeah, endangered owls, that's. That's a big deal here, because they made they made, I guess in the summertime yep and it causes you, know you.
Dane:The forest service has to respect that yeah and then it causes a lot of problems. You know, either delays or you're not allowed to, or you have certain times when you can go out. So so.
Josh:So, chris, have you been formally trained in trail building, or just figure this out as you were going along?
Chris Johnson:uh, a lot of it was, uh, figuring out, you know, figuring out as you go along. Of course there's lots of books like natural trail surface designs and emBA books of early days, but they give you concepts. What it doesn't give you is a site-to-site basis. So really it comes down to depending on your location. While certain principles work, the method of getting to that outcome is much different in different environments. So a lot of it actually has come from early days out at HAWS and early days at NRA and basically when taking that step was also taking the step to learn quite a bit more. Before you know, just making an ugly scar down the side of the mountain that turns into a two foot deep channel, uh, erosion nightmare.
Josh:Yeah, Once the once the monsoons come.
Dane:Yeah, so you, you gotta have an eye for it, but you gotta follow some basics. It sounds like. So yeah, yeah.
Josh:So so tell us a little bit about the trails out there at Pinal and I had mentioned earlier that you've got four on your website that you've listed Telephone Six Shooter Ice Canyon and Keller. Maybe tell us about those. And then I know you've got some others that you think may get adopted in the master plan in the future.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, most of the trails on the Pinnells. You got your main ones, which is going to be Six Shooter. That is the most renowned one. Everybody's pretty much heard of it.
Chris Johnson:Whether they can put a place to where Six Shooter is is a different story, but they've heard of it.
Chris Johnson:The peak and run to the north end of the mountain and give you a range of anywhere between seven miles and five miles of uh riding to uh get down the mountain. And we're talking. You start, start up at 7 800 feet and you finish off down around like 4 500 feet in the 4,000 range and you go through quite a few different life zones on each one of these trails, from anything from you see aspens at the top and you're kicking cactus at the bottom, which is really cool to go through all those different life zones as you go, as you ride a trail, just because it provides quite a unique experience in each one of those life zones and varying uh trail characteristics. Six Shooter is by far the most popular due to its length and its notoriety. It's been the trail that's seen probably the most amount of trail maintenance over the years and even previous to our involvement, which meant it was always the one that you know you had the best chance of getting down without crawling over a ton of trees.
Josh:So, um, you know, tell us, like like if, uh, if, you're a prospective rider coming up from Tucson, like tell me about the trails, like what are the difficulty of the trails? What would I experience on six? Or what would I experience on on ice house, what would I experience on Kelner? I know that I can see on trail forks that I think I think six shooter and ice house, at least in the trail house, in the trail fork system, they've they've graded as black, and then Kelner they've graded as blue.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, so I also do the the trail forks, maintenance, so some of that is uh, has been on me. At one point in time they had six shooters, double black, and ice house is double black and counter is black. But uh and and honestly, uh, you know, uh, ratings on the trails and the panels actually are more, I want to say, speed related than they are a lot of times technical related. We've ridden, you know, in the early days I've ridden a hard tail down six shooter and I would have called it a double black back then.
Chris Johnson:At this day and age I would definitely consider like six shooter is a solid block and the reason why it's black is there are areas where there's a lot of off camber, skinny single track that meanders on, uh, on the hillsides, the rocky technical features that are short-lived within certain areas, depending if they're steps, check dams or just uh erosion kind of features. Uh, I would expect, you know, if it's first time riding six-shooter, you know it'd probably take you an hour, hour and a half to get down. If you didn't have any mechanicals or anything like that, I would say that anybody could ride them, just a matter of how fast or how much of the technical features that you choose to walk or to navigate around.
Josh:So, chris, we joke that like there's Arizona blacks and then there's blacks everywhere else in the country and our blacks in Arizona are more like double blacks in other parts of the country.
Dane:Yeah, I feel like you're maybe one of the first people we've talked to that actually has rated trails, so like do you? Do you have like a way that like, do they give you guidelines? Like, if you're maintaining the trail forks, for that do they say okay, you have to have. I heard once that if it's a feature, like if it's a drop above like 12 inches, you have to go to a different rating or something. Is there some guidelines they give you?
Chris Johnson:Well, not really, you know giving guidelines. You kind of choose whether you want to use, like, an EMBA type system to rate trails or if you want to use a system that's based on the area so yeah, so like uh, how did you, how did you come up with that like uh, do you have like criteria?
Dane:uh, that like it. So I guess, I, I guess what I want to ask is can you have one feature in the trail that will make it a black? But if that feature wasn't there, would it be a blue kind of deal or no?
Chris Johnson:not necessarily no uh, one feature isn't gonna dictate the entire trails uh rating. You know if, if you have a trail that is the majority of it is is green, except for it's got three blue bits, and out of those three blue bits it's like three percent bits and out of those three blue bits it's like 3% of the trail. Those are just those typical areas, that where you would have that variation. But the goal is the overall feel of the trail from top to bottom.
Dane:That's that. That is, I find that super fascinating Cause. Again, like Josh said, we, you know, uh, you know, I raced downhill and we go from here to other places and the Arizona riders always do well, because, except when there's roots in water, but we always dirt, yeah, yeah, and actual dirt.
Chris Johnson:Yeah.
Dane:So, um, because we're so used to this roughness that we're on and then you go to a black somewhere else, like a. Even some of the stuff in San Diego we ride is not not super hard compared to here. So it's kinda. It's kinda cool to hear how people figure out what makes a trail a podcast.
Josh:You know, uh, fan but uh, there's a podcast called trail effect and it's spelled a E, F, F, E, C, T. I don't know why he spells it that way, but it does the trail effect. And uh, a great podcast for trail builders, uh, trail advocacy groups, anyone interested in, like, in, in, in kind of the art and science and and and work around trails. Uh, I think Josh Blum is the um, is the podcast host there, but he's got a great episode on a on a group of guys I want to say they're from Norway, maybe from Sweden but the European.
Josh:European and they've developed something they call the ITRS the international trail rating system, and they've got like a. They rated on four different grades and they're trying to get it. Like you know, adopted pretty interesting podcast and they talk a lot about trail rating and how it goes, and one of the things that they talk about is this scenario where every municipality wants to show that they have diversity of their trails, so they want to have green, blues, blacks, double blacks, they want to have everything, and so in some areas, if the topography or the land features or the trails themselves just don't lend it to it, sometimes they'll have something marked like black.
Josh:And it's like we would be like that's a green trail.
Dane:Like what are you doing?
Josh:Because they want to show like they want to show that they've got diversity in their area and so that can really impact how trails are great or how rated. And it's so hard to go to tell, you know, city to city, state to state, country to country, like what you're actually in for yeah, it's definitely.
Dane:it's always confusing. Whenever we go somewhere, it's always a question of is this a real black or is this?
Josh:like a blue, yeah for sure.
Dane:So we used to ride Six Shooter, probably 2005. I don't know if you were out there then, but I had a buddy who lived in Globe and I don't think he built that trail, but he definitely wrote it he's the one that showed me and uh, so, and then I wrote it recently and it's so much different. You can tell the amount of work that's been put into it that I'm sure you guys are doing. Chris.
Josh:So so what about the other trails, chris? What about? What about, uh, ice house and kilner?
Chris Johnson:So, yeah, yeah, out of uh all those trails, uh, ice house, that is a downhiller's favorite. That is down, pure down. There is no climbing within. Uh the ice house trail itself, it is steep, it has some sharp switchbacks that have been kind of worked over the years to be a little bit more bike-renewable and it's great. I mean, it's in a dark canyon, there's aspens, the whole top is aspens, like this time of year right now. Ice House and Six Shooter are just showing the colors and coming in to probably peak colors within probably the next week and a half or two weeks up there, especially with this moisture system and this cold front that's getting ready to push through.
Dane:finally, yeah, yeah. How long do you think we have till that thing's got snow on it?
Chris Johnson:Well, it varies year to year. A long time ago we used to abandon the mountain in the middle of June because of heat and we wouldn't come back until about September If we were lucky and it was still warm, and then around December, january we would see snow up there and a lot of times people would actually stop riding it up there around mid-November and not come back till March. I have found personally being on the mountain a ton for the last 14 years is it's really hit or miss. If snow flies, most of the time it's only a few weeks before you're able to get back in again. It is unless we get some really heavy cold fronts and snow years that actually gets locked out until about March when it thaws back out. But we've been pretty lucky over the last five years and I think out of those maybe not been able to ride up there a total of like four or five weeks out of those years combined it's arizona still, but we do get some we get some bad weather sometimes.
Josh:Yeah, yeah, up in the high elevation yeah sure so what about keldner chris?
Chris Johnson:keldner canyon that one is is probably the more mellow, tame trail on the mountain. Its grade's more favorable. It has a little bit of pedaling in it, but nothing like the famous six-shooter hike-a-bike, so it provides more saddle time for a lot of riders. After the Telegraph fire a lot of the manzanita has been burned off so it's quite exposed. So it has quite a different character than, say, six-year where you're going from Right in the woods and in open areas in Manzanita. Kellner Canyon Trail is pretty exposed from probably a mile down all the way down to the bottom. But it's a wide trail, wide open, fast. It has some rocky bits and technical. The most technical portion of Kelner is just the top half mile that traverses through a drainage that had gotten beat up by post-fire floods pretty heavily. But we rebuilt that about a year ago and it's actually by Trail Forks. It's been getting more use than Six-Year has. That's cool.
Josh:Oh, wow interesting.
Dane:Yeah, are these marked or easy to find, or Trail Forks? Is really the way to go, or is there any signage?
Chris Johnson:There's signage and a lot of the signage has been replaced on the mountain and some of the inaccuracies with mileage and junctions have been also fixed. But Trail Forks is pretty spot on too Cool, that's awesome. That's awesome.
Josh:So I noticed that TGR won a 2013 USDS Forest Service Southwest Region Service Award for Citizen Stewardship and Partnerships. Was that for your work in Pinal? That definitely is Well, tell us about that process. How did that come, did they?
Chris Johnson:just contact you and let you know, or did you guys have to submit something, or how did that work? No, I was contacted, probably about four months ago, in preparation for this, that they had planned on awarding us that award.
Josh:Oh, that's pretty awesome.
Dane:Yeah, that is really awesome. I mean, I got to tell you like it's like a Cinderella story, you've got going on there. Like you know, you just started like kind of making stuff cause people wanted it, and then all of a sudden land managers recognized not only the the need and the want but the talent, and then now you're winning awards. That's pretty amazing, man. So that's really impressive.
Josh:We haven't shot, we haven't talked about this in the podcast, but I just want to give a quick shout out to Nathan Gordon as well, from STMB, who also won one of these awards for his work down on Mount Graham have you been to Mount Graham yet, Chris. Yeah.
Dane:I saw James down there. I was going to say I know James is a fan and he's done a lot of work there, so I didn't know if he'd drug you down there yet. So it's a pretty cool trail.
Chris Johnson:Oh yeah, no, that's a big mountain as well and has a bit more of the big mountain field than, say, pinnell does, mainly because it has the old growth and kind of has that older character to it, right, yeah?
Dane:Now I want to talk to him about my favorite, which is sunrise. All right, go for it because, because you took all of these skills that you learned in these relationships and you, I. How did you bring them to sunrise? How did you get involved working at sunrise ski resort up in in the white mountains?
Chris Johnson:oh hi, I had been trying for so long to get into Sunrise back before the majority of mountain bikers had kind of rode off the place. Torise got the perfect management in place that has been able to make things happen. And I had been disheartened in the past because I had approached them and say, hey, I do have all this experience, do have all these supporters and these people, let us help you. And they weren't taking any of the bait at any point in time and when they finally did, they weren't willing to support that. So it ended up not happening. And it was when Brian and Todd both came on board and a lot of it goes to Brian Zonker up there.
Chris Johnson:James had always had a foot in the door, was well-known up there because he's been going up there for half a decade or so more than I have, half a decade or so more than I have. And he, uh, he came to me, approached me at work one day and said, hey, ryan says, uh, they're not going to turn down any, uh, any, free, uh, free, help on the mountain. And I was like, hmm, I was like, well, I guess we'll try this again. And I decided, well, it's kind of one of those things, either you go big or you go home, kind of deal. I told James. I was like, well, relay to Brian. I was like tell him I will design, build and fund them a green flow trail, and that's what turned into Yage right.
Chris Johnson:Yep, that's what turned into Yage, and the reason for my proposal of not saying hey, let's build the gnarliest black trail with the coolest jumps and the raddest features is Sunrise, as an area was lacking.
Josh:Was lacking. That was lacking more accessible trail for riders with less skill.
Dane:Yeah, it's always been a hard, hard mountain.
Chris Johnson:Exactly so. You know, the story with most people is people take their friends there. The friends ride that Sunrise. The first time they get their butts handed to them, they have a rough time. They get eaten up by the mountain, they get eaten up by fall line trails and they never come back yeah, yeah, that's true don't never even mountain bike again, because yes, it's traumatic so the idea was is need to build something at sunrise that draws in riders, riders that provide fun and give that ability for people that come to have a place to progress on.
Chris Johnson:They could start off on this trail, get used to the mountain, get used to the dirt, the marbles, the dust, whatever it may be, and would bring them back. I've taken both my kids to Sunrise in the past and would bring them back. I've taken both my kids to sunrise in the past and we're talking like the years 2008, 2009, 10. No-transcript child rider trying to enjoy themselves at sunrise wasn't really going to happen?
Dane:no, there's no way. I mean, I'm, I'm taking my kids now and if it weren't for yage, I I wouldn't take them. They would not be on that mountain but that trail is. But they loved it, they did and they're getting so into it because of the, you know, the, the um accessibility to an entry-level rider, you know, and it's still fun, like you know I had a great time.
Josh:You got a lot of features and stuff off the sides that we rode so. So, chris, we did a family trip where dane's family, my family and then two other nick and eddie and all those people brought their kids and their. Their age range from like nine to what's jilly like 13 years old and man. They just absolutely loved it, man.
Dane:Yeah, it was, it was great and that's you know. We we talked a little bit before this podcast started recording and I had mentioned to you that at first. You know, as somebody who's been going to sunrise for decades, you know. Oh, by the way, I wanted to shout out to James we we've talked, mentioned his name a couple of times James Van Horst. He's, um, been kind of a fixture at sunrise for almost as long as I've been going up there and, um, he's been helping you. He's, uh, what is it? He is a trail volunteer crew leader and director and director, uh, for TRG.
Josh:Yeah, how'd you get hooked up? How'd you get hooked up? How'd you get hooked up with james chris?
Chris Johnson:yeah, oh, I, I met james a long time ago and mainly it was through the, you know the, through the short bus, yeah, so the short bus, yeah, that's his that's his nickname, so short bus, james.
Dane:So okay, so a little little background on. James is, uh, one of the the only places we could practice downhill in Arizona, uh, was South mountain and James had this rickety he still has it rickety old uh airport bus that he's converted.
Josh:He's got a short bus. He's got a short bus. Yeah, I thought there was another reason. You guys were calling him short bus. James, I was like he's so normal to me and he has been like this guy.
Dane:I mean, he is, you know, he he's pretty much a mountain bike saint in my eyes. He has been driving that bus with a trailer and shuttling people in South Mountain for I mean I always say decades, but it's no joke at least 20 years, if not more.
Josh:Wow.
Dane:I can't believe. The bus is still going.
Josh:So you met him through catching a ride on his bus.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, yep, yeah, actually, yeah, one. So you met him through, through catching a ride on his bus. Yeah, yep, yeah, actually yeah, and I probably met him or it's probably like 2006 or something like that uh, of course, uh, you know searching for places, right, it's like, oh, you got south mountain, you can ride there, and there's this guy that drives this bus up. You give him a donation and, you know, get a ride up to the top and go down and uh, uh, that's kind of where I met him. I've driven that bus, uh, multiple times in order for him to get his runs into yeah, which is cool, that's.
Dane:That's one of the things that's cool about james is he's always doing this for other people and then he gets one or two runs in and somebody will drive, you know that's cool um, yeah, I think my first contact high was from that bus. Uh, so cause you get hot box like crazy.
Josh:So tell us more about sunrise. I want to keep double clicking.
Dane:Oh yeah, so what else did you guys shout out? But then we were talking about Yage which is amazing.
Josh:So so what else have you guys done up there?
Chris Johnson:Um, well, yeah, it's actually. We're finished up with a year three now and done tons. We built Jage, which was quite an undertaking and actually the first machine build that I had been involved in, because I've always built things by hand. My building curriculum to include machines, because that's all plays part in a ton of gravity, writers, master plan and stuff which we can get into a little bit later.
Dane:Well you, you went out and bought the machine right, Like you didn't just borrow it or rent it, Didn't you buy one?
Chris Johnson:Well, the the first year I did a go fund me to cover the costs that were coming out of my pocket for the machine rental.
Dane:Yeah.
Chris Johnson:And we actually did pretty good. The GoFundMe was able to get enough that actually paid for the machine rental Nice, which was really cool, and we had a lot of mountain bike support. Sunrise, uh had put in 1500 towards the GoFundMe for that year, which was the biggest input of uh anybody that had put in. And it wasn't until the second year at sunrise that uh, I went out and decided okay, this is definitely what I want to do and I definitely want to be able to use a machine up in the Pinell Mountains. So I kind of even though not financially off, I decided I would take the hit on buying an excavator. I was lucky and I found a good low hour excavator that I was able to pick up with the trailer.
Chris Johnson:However, sometimes some things are too good to be true. Uh-oh, that was one of those instances. Come to find out after the end of the sunrise year that that excavator was stolen oh, no way, oh wow, it was stolen. Oh no way, oh wow. It was a guy had rented it from Home Depot and he had immediately sold it, and the guy that I bought it off of, which lived in a million dollar home and had a yard full of construction equipment, sold it to me, and then it wasn't until a month after it was due back from rental that Home Depot finally reported it stolen. And long story short, they came and collected it from me and, based on everything that went on, I basically had no recourse.
Dane:Oh, man, that is wow. I had no idea I was. I was so like envious that you got this machine and you're out there and just living the dream. And what a sucky situation, man, I'm sorry to hear that.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, that was a painful lesson there. So I didn't let that sway me and we were coming up on this season, which was season three of Sunrise, and I didn't want to rent a machine and I still want to do my pinell mountain stuff. So I bit the bullet and bought a brand new machine directly from the dealership. Wow, so that way? Uh, well, there's no, there's no questions.
Dane:Yeah, you know, it's not. That's crazy, because it's not like you register those things or whatever. They don't need a license plate.
Chris Johnson:You're not driving them on the street, so yeah right, they are just a piece of construction equipment. Buying a shovel like nobody's like you know.
Dane:So that is crazy man, uh.
Chris Johnson:So that brought us to year three and, of course, the machine I had up there this year was a brand new machine that I got a beat up on, and over the last three years at Sunrise we built a Jog. A Identity Crisis followed.
Josh:the next year Also a great trail.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, really enjoyed that had enough time left in the season that uh decided to do a complete rebuild of pinedale and turned it into pinedale flow trail, which it is now.
Dane:Yeah, make it more fun, more green that's the trail that turner always calls to base, because it used to have a sign that said to base so going to the base of the thing, after you're coming out and you go back down, yeah, it's the switchbacks and the little big little jumps yeah that's cool, yeah, so that's actually called pinedale. They changed the signage so I just went up there this last sunday so it says pinedale now yeah, and so the signage is getting better.
Dane:And I think we talked to colby. We talked to colby, who's doing uh colby, you know colby land?
Josh:yeah, absolutely.
Dane:Yeah, and so he was saying they were working on their signage and they are. You can see a bunch of new signs up and uh. But my son has called Pinedale to base forever, cause that's what it used to say. You know, it's interesting, chris.
Josh:So, like we got turned on to Colby through Instagram cause he's pretty prolific in his in his posting up there, and then we went we actually were up there when we took the family trip and we reached out to Colby and we said, hey, we're up here, can we? You know, we'd love to do a podcast with you. And so we recorded one with Colby and put that out two, two or three episodes ago. And he turned us on to you guys and said, hey, you got to talk to tunnel gravity guys. They're like doing a lot of stuff up here. You, yeah, it's cool how you guys have divided and conquered that mountain.
Dane:He's doing his thing. He's building lips and jumps and kind of these sculpted features, and you guys are actually going into the forest and creating actual trails and new, actual trails and he's then adding on to those.
Chris Johnson:It's really cool trails and he's then, you know, adding on to those. It's really cool. So, yeah, eventually, uh, hopefully someday that we'll actually work together on the same types of trail and have two different machines, uh, you know, building something like a I'd love a hungry hippo style trail. Oh, yeah, oh that would be fun.
Josh:You know what that hungry hippo so that Fire.
Dane:Yeah, you've been to Angel Fire, I'm guessing.
Chris Johnson:Oh yeah, that was that when, back when uh, most uh mountain bikers had basically rode off sunrise for quite some time, Angel Fire became my second home and I basically was making weekend drive trips. I was doing seven day week stays. I think, uh, in the 10 years I was going to angel fire, uh, on average I would get about 60 days oh my gosh, that's like my dream is to spend 60 days at angel fire.
Josh:I know I've had years where I've spent maybe a dozen days and not even that maybe 10 days there, but I've never done more than that, yeah just one trip this year, unfortunately yeah, at one point in time I felt like a local there because I rode there so much.
Chris Johnson:Oh, wow, that's crazy.
Dane:So, um, I, you built a new trail that I rode. Um, it's really new, it's called squirrel catcher and it it took us. Um, I'm trying to think so we go past yage and then we basically get onto squirrel catcher and it took us over and kind of intersected to Loma Zona, if I remember correctly, it spits out at the Geronimo lift down, so you can take Batro or Loma Zona.
Dane:Yay, yeah, and that was my first time on that mountain. So basically Sunrise has two peaks with two big high speed quads during the winter, but during the mountain bike season they only run one high speed quad. This year, this year, and then Colby was telling us that there we were pretty sure that they're planning on next year trying to open the second mountain.
Josh:Is that? Is that your understanding?
Dane:as well, yeah.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, absolutely. There was talks early in the season of possibly opening up a lift or something up to Apache Peak so that way riders can access the raw trails that Brian and his crew cut in. And during that the gears started turning in my head and was like, okay, you know, outside of what we're already doing, what other things can we do in the future? And you know, looking at the big picture and kind of like the overall plan for the mountain, and when it was mentioned that they possibly wanted to run that lift, it became kind of logistics, okay, do they run the lift from cyclone base to geronimo and the geronimo up to the top, or find a way to be able to get riders to the geronimo lift? And that's kind of where it uh came to mind to uh replace boccio.
Chris Johnson:Uh, boccio, upper boccio had already been taken off of the sunrise map map because it basically was a maintenance nightmare, erased off the mountain due to erosion and out in the open. So the idea was to be able to replace Bacho while providing an option that would actually take mountain bikers to this lift in order for them to ride up. So the plan is, as far as I know, and it still seems to be in place and it's more of a sunrise thing is that you'll be able to ride up the sunrise peak. You'll be able to ride down and if you take squirrel catcher and reason why I called it squirrel catcher is wanted it to give you a taste of what the raws were like before you got there. So if you don't get down squirrel catcher clean, you feel uneasy because it's off camber, it's loamy, it's not built up like park standard style flow trail, then Patchy Mountain might not be the place for you to continue exploring the loma zona that we did the lower part where squirrel catcher comes in, and it was beautiful.
Dane:It's along a creek and it's definitely different.
Dane:I know, uh, colby had mentioned how it's different, different riding yeah and uh, it's definitely different over there and you know, on sunrise mount side it's, you know, a lot of uh, drainage, a lot of. If you go onto the blacks and stuff, it's pretty eroded and it's nasty to tell you the truth. And then you have, you know, like Yage and Identity, which are built and really great trails for getting people into it, and then you go over there and it's very different. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard and but the trail was just totally different.
Josh:So, chris, you mentioned that you guys had named this trail squirrel catcher and that's actually a common tour, a common term that we've come across which he just yeah, he just said that the trail builders use.
Dane:Did you just say that?
Josh:Well, so what he said was that it's he they named a squirrel catcher, because it gets you ready for the type of writing that you're going to be doing so oftentimes, and maybe, chris, I'll have you like, like, have you instead of me, have you, because our listeners keep telling us to shut the F up and let the guest talk.
Dane:We wouldn't do this if we didn't talk a lot.
Josh:Right, what's in general like what is the concept of a squirrel catcher and how do trail builders use it on trails?
Chris Johnson:So the concept of a squirrel catcher comes from basically a lot of trail builders. You would get people going down trails where they don't belong. So the idea of a squirrel catcher is actually a feature that would be the gateway to said trail. So you would put your hardest feature on a lot of trails would be your first feature. If you can't get past it, there ain't no business in riding the rest of the trail. So basically it's. You know the squirrel catcher is the way to knock off unneeded riders.
Dane:Uh, that don't belong that way uh, or just tell them, tell them what's coming, you know. So they're like if, if you're walking the first feature, like when we did portal trail and we're on um in moab, uh, when we were on gold rim trail there was a, a feature, just like he's saying, and if it says right on the sign, if you walk this feature, you probably shouldn't ride this trail.
Josh:Well, hey, like if those are squirrel catchers, I am the squirrel.
Chris Johnson:Thanks for catching me and keeping me from dying man, yeah so that was kind of the idea of why that trail got called that, because it actually the trail acts like the entire trail acts as the catcher for the apache mountain so is apache?
Josh:is apache like rougher than oh yeah, just more technical, or what do you think it's?
Chris Johnson:definitely more technical, it's steeper, it's, uh, you know, old school kind of trail, built in a new school attitude. Uh, they use those trails for the bme courses oh, did they the big mountain enduro.
Josh:Oh, no way that's awesome.
Chris Johnson:So that kind of already gives you an idea that, uh, these aren't your, you know run-of-the-mill blacks. Uh, and double blacks coming down that side of the, the mountain I've been putting it off because I didn't want to climb.
Josh:You know I didn't want to climb up to the top and then go down.
Dane:I did, I actually didn't write it no, I ended up hurting my hand because I was going to last two runs. I was going to do that mountain and uh ended up hurting my hand and like ruining that. But uh, but now I gotta get. I. I only have like one more weekend before they're closed. Uh, this year right is it really?
Josh:is it just this?
Dane:weekend, uh, this weekend, and maybe maybe two, maybe two yeah, uh, saturday october 26th is the last day. They're not going to be open. On the 27th sunday they are not going to be open on the sunday following that.
Josh:Wow, that's crazy shit so I'll go up this weekend you should.
Dane:There's a bunch of people going up I wish I could, but I can't.
Chris Johnson:So that's your warm weather, dear.
Josh:Yeah, yeah, I got no problem with that man, I'm like I'm still wearing shorts and, like you know, a bikini, bikini down here in Tucson right now.
Dane:Jesus.
Josh:So so, chris, we've kind of we haven't talked, talked in any detail about about Tonto, gravity and the other people that are in that organization and how that organization is is working. So maybe you could like double click on that a little bit.
Chris Johnson:Tell us a little bit more about Tonto Gravity, your other members and like, and how it works. Uh, our, uh our main core consists of uh people that have been around with us for a long time. So James is uh within, uh within our core. Uh. Another buddy, daniel Kim Kimmy. He's in with our Corps. He's been actually building with me since 2005. So he's been around for a very long time and the majority of our people are volunteers A lot of people that we've just made friends with and uh continue to come back, and a lot of people that are multi-faceted, uh, either riders or people that are just uh hikers. Uh, is?
Josh:is matt shannon still involved?
Chris Johnson:yep, maddie boy, maddie boy and kristel Kristen yeah. She's a relative newcomer that's kind of joined us in the last couple years and has found a nice outlet for getting up on the mountain and being able to give back while expanding her riding horizons. She's mainly from a next next sea kind of racing background and she's getting into the, the rougher stuff yep, getting into the the rougher stuff and that the gravity side of things yeah, that's what I'm doing too.
Josh:Dane keeps pushing me, like you can do this. I'm like no, I can't. Yeah, he's like you can do this.
Dane:We got to do a whole podcast no, I can't progression I'm getting better, though I think I'm getting better. Well, you said you walk most of bugs, so that's good, that's a start. Is that a good? Is that good?
Josh:yeah, at least you were up there. That's scary, that trail's fucking scary. Have you ever ridden? Bug springs in tucson, chris oh, yeah, yeah yeah, it's, it's awesome, is it? Scary, or am I just a squirrel?
Dane:no, it's awesome yeah, I, I, I think. I think it's a rough trail and the fact that you even went up there and attempted, attempted it means you've made big progress.
Josh:I probably rode more than I'm letting on, but I didn't, but but you know the guys from homegrown are like a lot of people talk about riding bugs but they don't actually ride it. Yeah, so I didn't want to represent that. I was riding it. I'm like listen, I walked a ton of shit. I gotta look at the lines and figure it out.
Dane:Yep, yeah, that's how you do it, though that's how you get better.
Josh:So and lacy goes, blasting down the waterfall, taking like the hardest line you know?
Dane:yeah, I still need to work on that, it's yeah chris, my life sucks.
Josh:My wife is better than me on a mountain bike that's actually amazing.
Dane:It is awesome, it is. You are lucky.
Josh:It is awesome yeah, uh because I have no problem with my confidence. So that's a good thing If a lesser man could not be married to her.
Dane:Yeah, Well it's kind of nice cause you've got a somebody who understands your stuff. My wife was asking me questions the other day about biking in a way that showed real interest and I I can't tell you like my, you ever watched the Grinch where his heart grows at the end of the movie. That's how mine did like my heart got bigger like five times bigger.
Josh:Whatever, all you have to do to make his heart bigger, because I was like to ask him questions about biking.
Dane:Yeah, and I was like oh my god, she actually cares it was like it was. It was the most heartwarming thing.
Josh:It was awesome so, hey, chris, what's next for for tgr, what do you guys?
Chris Johnson:recommend. When we started off, we started off strong. We had our adopted trails running like the best they'd ever run. They were beautiful. And then, come 2021, we had the Telegraph fire come through and literally kick the mountains, mountains. But I've seen a lot of fires on the mountain but none, none did the amount of damage that the telegraph fire did to the mountain, and you're talking about pinell at this point.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, pinell mountain. So we've spent the last three years doing restoration work. I can say that the end is in sight as far as restoration work goes, which means a lot of our focus and energy can go into basic maintenance of the trails and keep them running good. But it allows us to focus and to turn our attention to our Pinell Mountain master plan, which is big stuff for Pinell Mountain because the current system mileage on the mountain is about 35 miles of trails. However, out of those 35 miles, 17 of those which about half is in bad shape, disrepair or just unused. Within our master plan, 17 miles of trail is going to be decommissioned on the mountain. I know a lot of people are like oh god, losing trail. But the idea is, in lieu of losing trail that doesn't get used and, as we all know, trails don't get used. They don't get maintained. Usage is maintenance as well.
Josh:Yeah, can you? Can you double click on that for a minute? What does that mean, chris Well usage is maintenance, usage is maintenance.
Chris Johnson:So by trail scene traffic, vegetation is being held back at bay because it's getting foot traffic and bike traffic. The actual surface tread of the trail is in better shape with trails that are being used versus non-used. So when it comes to storms and stuff like that, they have less effect on the trails due to the trails being used. Trails that don't get used get overgrown, get cluttered with rocks that roll off the mountainside, get cluttered with downfall and eventually just disappear entirely. So there's a reason why some of these trails are in those types of conditions outside of the fire, and that's due to either the location or they're just not desirable to either the location or they're just not desirable. So the plan is to remove undesirable, unused trails and turn those resources, whether it's ours or the Forest Services, and have it go towards trails that people want to use.
Josh:And I'd imagine you got some social trails up there or wildcat trails up there that are going to be adopted as part of this. You want to get adopted as part of the master plan, is that true?
Chris Johnson:Oh, absolutely. Some of TGR's first loves are up there. Can't really divulge on locations or anything like that because we're in agreement not to really publicize and generate the hype that's going to come behind these. But I can say, and from most people's comments, these are the type of trails that Arizona has been waiting for and been on the hunt for.
Josh:So where are you guys at with the Forest Service and the master plan process? What phase of that process are you in? Bureaucracy is quite slow. With the Forest Service and the master plan process, what phase of that process are you in?
Chris Johnson:Bureaucracy is quite slow with the Forest Service, as anybody knows.
Josh:Not just the Forest Service, but any government agency. Right, oh yeah, For sure.
Chris Johnson:But we've made actually a lot of progress and, if all goes well, not only will we have adoption of the social trails, we will have clearance to start construction of a new trail on the top of the Pinell Mountains about this time next year.
Josh:Oh, wow. So you've got to be then past like the public comment phase, or you guys are not in that yet.
Chris Johnson:Public comment has been done on one portion of it already and it looks like it's going to go again. For just because, since this plan was initially proposed to them plan was initially proposed to them, some changes have been made to the overall view of the plan and kind of what manner that it wants to be attacked in. A lot of times when you propose trails.
Josh:It's on a trail by trail kind of basis yep, absolutely.
Chris Johnson:Luckily, because of the fire, we're able to lump a whole bunch of stuff in under a bigger agreement and a bigger EA, which basically it knocks a lot of time off of the entire plan. So, whether everything comes to fruit or not, it's being covered from the get-go.
Josh:So, chris, do you know neck nathan gordon from stmb? I do okay and we'll talk a little bit off the off air, but, um, he's done some interesting things down there. I want to make sure you know what he's done down there to help get more support and make sure I got a question for for you.
Dane:Uh, so we've been talking to a lot of people about trail builds. Uh, we've done a lot of podcasts on trails because, without trails you can't ride bikes.
Dane:And advocacy and such so it, and we asked this of torca, and I think we asked this at sdmb and um, so I'll ask you the same torca, are the guys that are working up on mount lemon? Mount lemon, yep, yeah, and so, and sdmb does lower, uh, tucson area? And then you talked to sdmba in san diego and we've talked to a lot of groups and one of the things that I just I want to know, because a lot of people all over the world are listening to this podcast and maybe, maybe they're out there doing wildcat trails and they want to make them legit, or maybe they're trying to advocate, or maybe they're trying to build trails or what have you. What's the best advice that you could give somebody who wants to make a difference, wants to to see trails in their area? What, what is something that that you feel like really made a difference? Uh, there you go. Is that a good question?
Josh:That's a good question. I'm giving you a clap.
Dane:Chris can't hear the music, but you didn't hear the cheering, so but yeah, so like if you, if you were going to tell somebody one thing that really made the biggest difference for you, that that wants to do what you've done and accomplish stuff, what would you? What would you say is the best?
Chris Johnson:Like the amount of work that has gone in to get us to this point, to our relationship with the Forest Service. A lot of I've been involved in is to leave something and provide for, provide for other people. So it's never been like it's never been goals but never really about what I want. It's more about developing community and having people work together towards the same goal. And if you have a passionate, dedicated group of people, it doesn't matter. I think what situation that you're in, you can make that into a very big positive with your local agencies, land managers and stuff like that, your local agencies, land managers and stuff like that. If you were to go at it with an attitude of me, me, me, I built this for me and just me and my buddies kind of deal and didn't really have that outlook of how it benefits others or benefits the sport, then it's really not going to go anywhere.
Josh:So bring the passion and make sure you're taking all users into consideration when you're advocating.
Dane:Yeah, is that kind of what you're saying? Absolutely, and it's a lot of work.
Josh:Yeah, Chris, do you have like? Do you have a day job? Jesus?
Chris Johnson:Luckily, I have a good day job that appreciates my passion for improving recreation for users and allows me to take the time off needed to fulfill my own goals and my own passions.
Josh:On behalf of like every rider in Arizona I can tell you, and really in the Southwest and maybe in the US, like I just want to say like a big thank you for the work that you've done. I saw the smiles. So I've ridden some of the trails at Sunrise that you've worked on personally and they're amazing. And I saw the smile. You talk about like the next generation. I saw the smiles and the drive and the stoke and the flow and everything on my 11, 11 year old son and on all the buddies that he had out there with him. They were just loving it and, uh, like that day at sunrise turned him into someone who was like casually interested in mountain biking, to someone who's like, hey, this is badass, let's go do that again. And and you did that man.
Chris Johnson:No, that gives goosebumps, because that's exactly what it's about. I mean, I'm getting up there in age. I can't do this forever. There needs to be people that pick up the torch and there needs to be writers that continue the tradition of writing. You know, basically, you know, and the more people that get in the sport, stay in the sport, bring their kids in the sport, the more the sport grows and it just continues the movement. So that's that's really what it comes boils down to. Yeah, like the hoots and hollers are payment enough when it comes to, you know, everybody enjoying anything.
Dane:that's, uh, that I've built and if you don't have the the time to to spearhead something like this, just giving one day a year in trail maintenance and volunteering, and they can go to your uh website and and volunteer, or how do you? If somebody wants to help you guys out, is there a channel for them to do that?
Chris Johnson:Oh, absolutely. Uh, on the website we have a volunteer tab uh, which will have a calendar and a link that uh brings you to our Facebook volunteer page. Uh, we have a our standard Facebook business phone or page for tunnel gravity writers, but we have a page called uh tunnel gravity writers volunteer page. That's where all of our trail dates and events go into and kind of where people are able to to stay more up to date than, say, a website that's updated uh bi-weekly or monthly or something like that so we'll put links to all this in the show notes, but just so to give place people an entrance like what's your website?
Josh:They can get to your Facebook from there. What's your website, chris.
Chris Johnson:Tonogravityridersorg. Awesome man Well.
Josh:Chris dude, we just want to thank you for spending an hour or so with us here. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?
Chris Johnson:Well, get excited, because the plans and the amount of trails that we have in store for the Pinell Mountains is quite impressive. The very first project that we're starting on will be an upper lollipop loop. Basically, this lollipop loop is going to keep you at 7,000 feet for the entire duration of the trail and provide a connection to all the other system trails. So we talked about six shooter, counter and ice house, yeah, and social trails. This trail will be able to connect to all those. Give you a way to get from the campgrounds, give you a way to get from the campgrounds all around the top, and the reason why it's such a big deal is because right now, there's currently nothing on the mountain that keeps you on the mountain.
Chris Johnson:There's trails that take you down the mountain, but then that actually has any right, and so if you camp up top, you don't have any place to really hike around. You have these short little quarter mile old logging roads in between campsites and stuff like that. This will provide six and a half miles of undulating terrain that keeps you at 7000 feet. So when it comes to summertime, there'll actually be something, somewhere where you can ride in the pines for the entire day, or you can hike or you can ride your horse or whatever it may be, but it's uh, that multi-use trail. That's gonna really kind of be the kicking point of uh opening up pinell mountain along with the social trails. And who doesn't love 1700 feet of elevation loss in two miles? That's awesome.
Josh:That's sweet.
Dane:We need that. We need more of these sky islands that we have out here to have more places to get out of the heat and yeah, for sure that's awesome, and that's a lot closer than some of the other ones.
Chris Johnson:So and overall we have just under 40 miles of proposed new trail to add to Pinell Mountain Jesus I know, wow, yeah.
Dane:So if you're interested, get to that website, hit that volunteer. Go help these guys the sooner that they get built.
Josh:Yeah, and I think you've got donation for funds as well, right? So folks are not able to donate time. They can donate money to you guys, is that right?
Chris Johnson:Yeah, absolutely. We have a PayPal links on our website and then, if you see us in person, we generally have a QR codes. Uh handy for people to be able to make donations.
Josh:Oh, that's awesome man.
Chris Johnson:Chris.
Josh:I mean, I can't say thank you, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you Absolutely. We so appreciate everything you can put on. I'm going to go off here. You can stay on with us though. Okay, buddy.
Chris Johnson:Yeah, that's fine.
Josh:Thanks, buddy.
