"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."J. Paul Getty
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Foot Gear For A Winter Enthusiast
Winter is a spectacular time of the year. From dog sledding to snowshoeing and cross-country skiing to snowmobiling, or just camping out in the woods, it’s a time when you can experience the hushed, serene world of white. However before planning any trip ...
Get a Hobby
According to Dictionary.com, a hobby is "an activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure" (Dictionary.com). Merriam-Webster defines a hobby as "a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in ...
Night Vision Devices -- The Ultimate in BackCountry Toys
Many nights in the backcountry are far from dark. A bright moon and a sky full of stars can throw off enough light to allow for reading a book, but add cloud cover, mountains or trees and it gets dark awfully fast. When you need to see in the dark, ...
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With hair slightly unkempt, earnest eyes and a potentially roguish grin, Mike Kelsey has an air of unmistakable grit about him. An avid cyclist for close to 18 years and a lifetime outdoor enthusiast, he is no stranger to the danger of mountain bike racing, the thrill of competing and the triumph of winning. Although now a self-proclaimed “weekend warrior,” he still rides with his BOB trailer of tools in tow, and his unflagging devotion to trail building, repair and maintenance in the Ouachita Mountains is widely apparent.
“I love to build hiking and mountain biking trails,” confessed the 2003 Arkansas Trail Volunteer of the Year. “It is a good way to spend some hours in the woods, get some fresh air and exercise while creating something to be enjoyed by all.” Kelsey, who spends between 100 and 200 volunteer hours each year on trails statewide, has worked on the following routes: Womble Trail in Oden, Camp Pioneer Trails in Hatfield, Earthquake Ridge Trail in Mena, Little Missouri Trail, Wolf Pen Gap ATV Trails, Charlton Trail and Attila the Hun Trail.
“You just go out and identify problem areas, whether it’s a problem of erosion or just an area that needs maintenance,” he remarked. “Whether it be hiking or biking, continued use of a trail sometimes translates into some degradation. It’s easy to construct a trail from point A to point B, but you have to deal with creeks, ridges, mountains and gullies as well as all the things concerned with protecting the trail from erosion. A well-designed trail, however, can take a lot of traffic without degradation.”
In addition to his trail work, Kelsey maintains several web sites relating to cycling tours, mountain bike and road races and trail opportunities. The Bike Arkansas
Directory (www.bikearkansas.com) serves mainly as a collection of resources, including bike shops, teams, clubs or events in The Natural State. He also updates the web site for the Arkansas Mountain Bike Championship Series (www.ambcs.com), keeping an active calendar, presenting race results, tracking series results and posting team challenge results.
Other related web sites include the following:
? Ouachita Mountain Bike Adventures (www.ouachitaadventures.com)
? Cycling Arkansas (www.cyclingarkansas.com)
? Ozark Off-Road Cyclists (www.ozarkoffroadcyclists.com)
? International Mountain Bicycling Association (www.imba.com)
Furthermore, Kelsey is a supporter of the Arkansas Pay Dirt Program, which links mountain bike racing to trail advocacy. To participate in Pay Dirt, racers commit themselves to a certain number of hours of trail maintenance. In turn, racers receive points to apply to this year’s racing totals. For example, if a racer puts in 8 hours on an official Pay Dirt work trip, then he or she is granted the equivalent of a first-place win.
With approximately 600 miles of trails, the Ouachitas have the largest ratio of trails to local users than in probably any state. “There are very few people to work, so it takes some very dedicated individuals,” Kelsey declared. “It’s important to encourage members of the racing community to become stewards of the trail.”
About the Author
Copywriter/editor Jeannette Balleza is Co-Owner of Vulcan Creative (http://www.vulcancreative.com), a creative agency specializing professional graphic design and web development services. She also owns Scribe Marketing, Inc., which offers content development and refinement. jeannette@vulcancreative.com
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