Steve - Aquaholic had 3 minutes last night to speak before the council and the mayor of Poway. He brought is pictures of the damage and handed them out to the officials.

There were other user groups represented as well, but only Steve used his 3 minutes to talk. Apparently it was well received from the city officials. Part of it's good reception was because how Steve handled it.

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I Blame Barcy.

I LEGITIMATELY DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS UNTIL LAST NIGHT...THATS WHY! now that I know about this, my ass is in action. i have sent an email first thing this morning, i will attend the next city meeting, and i will do whatever I CAN as a citizen/land user.
if MTB Locos can become involved in this or help in any way, we will....however SDMBA is a much more established group (in respects to dealing with the City) , therein lies the direction of my questions.

Hey if you can, let people know when the attend-able meeting is, and I for one, will attend too,. Proving I'm not a workin' that a night.

what ever happened to the original post from Rob240z showing the destruction on iron mountain. i'm sure some of you saw it earlier today.

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i give up, do what u want

96

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blog

No worries dude, we're grown men, we can disagree, we can argue, we can M-F each other and in the end as long as we remember we're grown men and we've done so because of a passion, it is all good.

That being said. I'm more than willing to work together with anyone, organization or not. But quite honestly, I'm tired of the backdoor BS. I watched it happen in LPQ when the rep didn't show up for a vote. I've seen it happen in MTRP, where people are working toward a goal and someone decides to fluff their ego, run off downtown and sit and wait to speak to a city council member (when they don't even live in the freaking city!) and I'm sure that someone, somewhere probably had ideas about what was going on here.

I don't need to say any more at this time.

excellent question. money. the problem when cross-posting. this was the original thread big man.

thread: iron mt thursday 5pm
op: gabe keating

from mudd:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/iron-mountain-poway

from evedog:
"Yeah, the destruction is pretty bad up there. They have removed a lot of rock, filled in a lot of sections, and built a lot of unnecessarily large water bars. I rode it with Aqua and Mark on Friday. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that all the work done is sustainable, and it certainly is not adding any to the user experience for any users.

This work started during the winter, and progressed across the bottom traverse and then more recently higher up the mountain. After becoming alarmed at the continued work Aqua got in contact with the Poway city trails guy week before last to discuss the work and voice his concerns.

Originally it was said that the work would be limited to water control on the lower sections where a lot of water crosses the trail. That work had been going on for a few months but had progressed up the hill beyond those erosion controls in the last couple months. It finally got to the point where it was clear they were not stopping, but rather systematically moving up the trail.

In his phone call, Aqua was told that the work was being contracted to prison crews, but that they had been re-assigned and no further work would be done. Between the date of that first call, and our ride on Friday however, the work continued an additional switchback or two. It was pretty disappointing to see, as this is one of my favorite trails. We talked to a bunch of hikers, most of whom did not approve of the work done. Some were indifferent, mainly because they had not hiked Iron in a long time.

We talked about what to do, and rather than an angry call to the trails manager from Steve we decided to email some friends to contact him and voice displeasure. We were hoping to get some hikers and trailrunners to do so as well. It turned out that the trails manager got a huge volume of calls and emails, all of it critical of the work done, and some of them he claimed were of a threatening nature...Aqua talked to him again yesterday. He was not happy with all the negative response but told Steve that he has called the work crew supervisor and halted the work. So, the bottom line is, we have achieved the primary objective of getting our message across and stopping further work.

Some questions still need to be answered regarding who authorized work of this extent, or whether it was simply a matter of inadequate supervision of a prison crew who are not outdoors people and don't give a shit about the trail, or if it was intentional and application of City of SD-style trail guidelines.

Aqua was going to attend Poway City Council meeting last night and speak up during public comments. Word is, it was well received.

We will need to think about how best to deal with this to prevent further work on Iron, yet still be able to work with Poway on trails - there is lots of opportunity there. Do we try to get involved in trail maintenance on Iron? Good question, since the trail should never have needed much work to begin with (except that erosion control lower down). We need to keep an eye on whether the work actually stops. If it doesn't, then further action will be needed.

Discuss...."


before and after pics would be helpful and instructive.

anyone got some???

rob240z?

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Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. ~Milan Kundera

Yeah, I have the pics and original email that Steve sent out. At the request of somebody, I removed my post because enough emails had been sent to Bob Hahn, and people were already working with the Poway officials to halt the work. As for the pictures, i'm going to leave it up to the person who took them to post them up. He requested the opportunity to do so, and i'm going to respect his request.

Edit: I don't have before pics, only shitty quality after pics. Hopefully, the owner of the originals posts some better quality originals so everyone can see the damage.

Barcy you are making this out to be a big conspiracy, and seem to be insinuating that people withheld info on purpose which allowed the trail to be destroyed. I can assure you that is not the case, and I quite resent that implied accusation when you obviously do not know all the facts.

I have already posted a summary of what happened in Gabe's thread, which jsatch reposted above (thanks!)

Steve, Mark and I rode Iron late Friday. It is true we decided not to post up a report of the damage we saw on any forums. Instead we decided to send an email out to friends, people whom we know ride Iron and who we could trust to write good emails to the City expressing displeasure over the work done. We did not want to post it on a forum yet because of the shit storm it would be bound to create (basically, this thread). This thread is exactly what we don't need, a bunch of keyboard commandos who only have half the facts writing enraged emails to the City based on second hand, incomplete information. We did not have all the facts yet, on Monday. If some emails to the City were not successful, then we could take it further to a bigger audience. The trail damage was already done at this point, we were simply trying to stop it.

By Tuesday Morning Aqua had talked to the City guy again. The emails from friends had worked. The City guy had gotten the message that users did not like the work done. He was pissed that the MTB community was ganging up on him but told Aqua he was halting the work on Iron. Since our immediate objective of stopping the work was achieved, further call to arms was not needed. In fact, Aqua sent out another email to the original list asking people to stop emailing and calling, since the City had gotten the message. There was nothing further to gain by pissing this guy off more. Since he is the trails manager, we will need to work with him in the future.


Sometime on Tuesday, someone forwarded to Rob240z a copy of Aqua's original email, the one written to friends asking them to email the city that included contact info. Around 5pm Tuesday, he posted it up on DT. I happened to see it right then, and asked him to take it down. Yes, asking him to take it down was intentional. The reason? It contained day and a half old info asking people to contact the City, which was no longer necessary since the work had now been stopped. A lot of events had happened since that email was originally sent out including the halting of work and Aqua's request to stop emailing the City. A continued barrage of emails to the City based on outdated information could now do more harm than good.

RHS reminded us earlier what it says on our jerseys: Information. Does this include incomplete information? Outdated information? Or is it more responsible to wait a couple days to gather as much information as possible before letting the community know, so that they can take action knowing as much of the facts as possible. Knowing how people tend to react on forums, we thought it would be irresponsible to post up until we had better information. I tried explaining this to Pete, but he did not want to wait for all the info. Seeing how this train-wreck of a thread has gone, is that still your view?

Regarding additional information, Aqua found out Tuesday afternoon that there was a Poway City Council meeting that night, and he was going to attend to get some answers or at least be heard. I also thought it worthwhile bringing this issue up at the SDMBA meeting Wednesday (tonite) to see if they had any suggestions, before posting up on any forum. At least then we would have more information and some suggestions - with that, we could post up "here's what happened", "here is what has been done about it so far" and "here is what everyone can do now" rather than an inflammatory "OMG the sky is falling!" such as Italo's original post.

Before we can gather that info and talk to SDMBA, we instead get a thread full of inflammatory comments, blind accusations, and finger pointing. I should not have expected anything less from Italo. Sorry dude, but as I said before this thread, a bunch of new attention, notoriety, additional traffic and lookey-loos is the last thing Iron Mountain needs but is exactly what you're gonna get on the forums.

So, now that everyone knows what happened and what's been done about it, what can everyone do now?

For starters, we need people who actually ride Iron to check and make sure the City keeps its word that work has stopped. By all means, anyone can go to the next Council Meeting and speak up during public comments. We think its important that the City be heard by hikers too, so if you hike Iron or know people that do, please ask them to speak up as well. The City needs to hear from all user groups. Please be polite and courteous (Italo's email was good) but let them know how important this trail is to you. At this point the City trails manager has gotten the message, so we DO NOT need any more emails to him. If we find that the work has not stopped, then it will be City Council and the Mayor whom we need to start contacting rather than the trails guy. But we should wait and see before doing that.

At this point, there is not a lot else that can be done. The damage to the trail has been done, but further damage has hopefully been averted. In the long term, we need to have people keeping eyes and ears out there (and not just Iron, everywhere). SDMBA was not able to stop this because they did not have eyes and ears out there. As someone mentioned, they are not all-seeing, all-hearing. They need someone to volunteer to fill that role. Having a liaison out there to work with the City will go a long way to preventing something like this from happening again. Is anyone willing to step up?

Without its own liaison SDMBA will have to rely on people like Aqua to either take a stand on their own, or bring it to SDMBA's attention. SDMBA is planning to work with the City at places like TW and Poway trails, but this is something that is just beginning, and it will take time to develop a working relationship. Through that relationship they would hope to get City staff to buy into IMBA trail standards.

Hopefully this sheds light on why we did not want this going to forums right away. There is really nothing extra that would have been gained by posting on forums Monday rather than today.

I hate it when people destroy the tale with facts and common sense.

A summary of the time line (as I understand it)

Friday, May 13 - Iron Mountain trail damage was discovered.

Between then and Monday, May 16 - The emails to the city began.

Tuesday, May 17 - Contact with the city is established and the trail work is stopped.

Wedensday, May 18 - The world finds out about it and is outraged. We want to burn somebody, anybody at the stake.

Ongoing - Monitor the work stoppage to ensure the city keeps its word.

Thank you Steve, Evan, et al for addressing and hopefully resolving this. I appreciate you stepping up to the plate and doing the leg work on our behalf.

I think the take away here is an angry mob may not be the best approach to get things done. Sometimes civility and diplomacy goes a lot further, especially when we are just guests.

Matt

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The world does not revolve around you but your actions impact us all!

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"My favorite part of riding a bike is when I get off the bike." - Jim Gaffigan

I ask two simple questions and it gets turned into 'blind accusations' , 'finger pointing' and inevitably a 'train-wreck' of a thread.

1- did SDMBA know about the ongoing trail work?
2- what are they planning to do about it from here on out?

is it really that hard to answer that?
please go back through all MY posts and please show me where I deviate from my point;
(did sdmba know, what is their position, and what are they doing about it). Sure, I gave my opinion about what I thought they should do...but never once accused them of anything.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHY IRON MT IS GONE...BECAUSE IT TAKES 6 PAGES OF THREAD TO PRODUCE ANSWERS TO TWO SIMPLE FUCKIN QUESTIONS....
Good job Evan, you are an absolute hero, you posted a nice warm and cozy explanation to the whole situation and also managed to make it out like I started a witch hunt....that was very 'politician' of you.


did anyone else read this between Evan's lines?

"we kept you in the dark for your own good"

...what the fuck are you 'guys' now...the government? that shit doesnt float with me.....

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'the notorious North County Sancho'

Iron Mountain Pics taken last 4/1/2011:

http://s1088.photobucket.com/albums/i340/ciscolangot/Iron%20Mountain/

-endo

"Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night."

-Terri Guillemets

Using caps and making words bigger gets your point across, but opens your comments up for interpretation. You probably see it as getting your point across but to others (myself included) it makes you look like your trying hard to be a dick about it. Plain and simple.

Using caps and making words bigger gets YOUR point across, but opens YOUR comments up for interpretation. You probably see it as getting YOUR point across but to others (myself included) it makes YOU look like your trying hard to be a DICK about it. Plain and simple.

Try and tell me that doing it this way doesnt make it seem like I am coming at you in a more accusational way.

Your reaching hard saying Evans post reads that he said "keep us in the dark for our own good" If thats how you want to interpet it than thats your deal. Please explain what the difference would have been knowing 3 or 4 days sooner being that the work was already done. After reading the reasoning I 100% agree that finding out all the info and facts is necessary before dishing out the goods.

OK i kinda get what you are saying but i just like being a DICK, sorry



now can I have the 2 answers to my 2 questions....?

pretty please

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'the notorious North County Sancho'