SORBA Caring For White County Bike Trail

The Upper Cumberland Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association will start doing routine maintenance work for White County’s Snake Ridge Trail.

Board Member David Burstedt said the trail is currently managed by local cyclists, but riders from the area asked UC SORBA to recognize the trail and use their resources to aid in its maintenance. Burstedt said they have put an agreement together with the White County Parks and Rec Committee to make their plan official.

“It’s just more of like a, kind of like a legal handshake that says that, ‘hey, we’re willing to come out and work on the trail without any, without any expectations of, you know, pay or anything like that,’ so it’s all volunteer,” Burstedt said. “And so we’ve, that’s just something that’s kind of developed over the past probably two or three months.”

Burstedt said Snake Ridge Trail is at the White County Recreational Complex and was built by a group of local mountain bikers at least ten years ago. He said that although the agreement has not been officially approved by the county they have already begun to care for the trail.

“There is one of our members that lives in Sparta that spends quite a bit of time there riding already, and he has gone and there was a couple of trees that had fallen recently due to storms that were crossing over the trail and he went and cut those trees out and opened the trail,” Burstedt said.

Burstedt said the parks and rec committee approved the agreement for UC SORBA to care for the trail back in May.

“It’s just the UC SORBA president, whose name is Heather Call, it’ll be kind of between her and the White County Parks and Recreation Director to get that officially signed,” Burstedt said.

He said it is important to support the cycling community because of all the different benefits the activity provides.

“As much fun as we have riding bikes, it’s the camaraderie and having a group of people together and either – whether it’s working together building trails or maintaining trails, it’s the camaraderie we enjoy as much as anything,” Burstedt said. “And we just like to be outside, and so riding bikes is the way that we get out and we burn stress and we get some exercise and we get to hang out with fun people.”