Volunteer group looking for help expanding bike trail systems in Dixon

DIXON — A volunteer group of bike enthusiasts is looking for volunteers to help expand and maintain bike trail systems in Dixon.

For years, the Rock River Valley Bike Club, with permission from the Dixon Park District, has been expanding and maintaining bike trail systems throughout the city’s parks. The park district allows the bike club to use their land to create and map bike trail systems and in return, the group does all the building, maintenance and upkeep of the trails.

According to RRVBC member Shane Miller, the group’s work started around 2014 with a small section in Lowell Park.

“Ever since then we’ve been gradually expanding it one section at a time,” Miller said. “Our relationship with the park district has been great. In fact, they just pitched in and helped us out with some new signage just this past year.”

RRVBC President Ryan Elmendorf said that relationship has expanded the park district’s trail systems to 13 miles of single-track mountain bike and hiking trails.

“You almost have to go up into the middle of Wisconsin to find that large of a trail system around here in the Midwest,” Elmendorf said. “The crazy thing is, we’ve had up to 10 miles of track for the last 15 years, and there’s people in the Sauk Valley area that didn’t know about it.”

Park District Director Duane Long said that without the RRVBC partnership, the park district couldn’t maintain the trails and they would eventually close.

“We just couldn’t afford it financially,” Long said. “The communication with them is outstanding. They ask permission on any trail they want to develop, and when they say they’re going to do something, they do it. If our maintenance department director calls them and says, ‘Hey, you got a tree down on your Extreme Trail,’ their volunteers go out and take care of it.”

Long said the park district works with the group when plotting a course for new trails to avoid disturbing things like endangered or unique animal and plant life.

“Our naturalist walks with them to help identify these things,” Long said. “They identify things and flag it. They wrap ribbons around trees and mark where they want to move things. These trails are just platted and plotted on GPS. It’s quite the process.”

Both RRVCB and the park district would like to see new trails developed in the future but they must first consider the long-term feasibility of maintaining them.

“Much of it depends on our volunteer base,” Miller said. “The more we add on, the harder it is to maintain and keep up with it. Sometimes we have lots of volunteers and sometimes we have very few. It’s getting close to the end of what resources we have right now. Unless we get more volunteers, it really can’t expand.”

Elmendorf said the club is always looking for new volunteers and holds meetings that are open to the public every second Tuesday of the month to coordinate maintenance efforts.

“We discuss who’s been out on the trails and what they’re looking like,” Elmendorf said. “We also look at the conditions of all the different sections of the trails, and decide where to focus maintenance for the month.”

Then, the group meets the following Tuesday at the Park 4 Paws dog park in Meadows Park at 1605 Washington Ave. to start working.

“We tell everyone to bring whatever lawn equipment they can and then we split up and start working on different sections until it gets dark,” Elmendorf said. “It’s nothing crazy or complicated, but when you’re trying to cover 13 miles of a trail system with all volunteers, it can get overwhelming really quick. It’s an all-hands-on-deck type of situation.”

To view Dixon’s and other community’s trail systems, visit Trailforks.com or download the app.

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Rock River Valley Bike Club members Brian Seagren (left), Scott Fenwick and son Leo and Ryan Elmendorf on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, talk about the work the group puts in to maintain the trails in Dixon. (Alex T. Paschal)