From Dirt to Destination: Building Redding’s Trail Legacy with Nathan Knudsen

Redding is a beautiful place. We have national parks in three different directions, two world-class lakes. This is a sportsman's paradise, but it's also full of wonderful people. We have business leaders, community leaders, faith-based leaders, all of them working towards a singular goal, and that's to make this a great place to live. I wanted to showcase these people, give their perception of the place that they call home. This is All Redding.

Hey, Nathan Knudsen, welcome to the All Redding Podcast. Allow me to give you a proper introduction. You, sir, are the Executive Director of the Redding Trail Alliance. The Redding Trail Alliance is a nonprofit organization founded 10 years ago now in 2016, whose mission is to create high quality trail experiences by advocating for, building, and maintaining trails which are progressive, diverse, and promote our community. One of the goals of the All Redding Podcast is to promote the great stuff that we have and enjoy here in Redding, Shasta County, and the North State. So it sounds like in this promotion of some of the great outdoors and the community, we are perfectly aligned in that way. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I really appreciate you having me and Redding Trail Alliance on your podcast. We're stoked to hopefully get our story out to some more people.

Yeah. My running coach, Dusty Robinson, says, hey, you've got to talk to this guy — they're doing super cool work. And I have a background in mountain biking, so it seemed like a great fit. We're really happy to have you here today. But we've got to go back before we go forward. Tell me some history. Somehow a talented graphic designer became the Executive Director of a nonprofit focused on building trails in the North State. How did we get from here to there?

Well, first off, you're wrong about talented graphic designer. That was my profession, but I wouldn't say I was talented. I enjoyed what I did, but I feel like I am talented and I enjoy the trail world a lot more. How did I get into that? A number of different scenarios led down that road. I was working in the graphic design industry. I was employed at Harvest Printing, a local printing company, for upwards of 12 years. I left there to pursue a job at a smaller company doing their marketing for them, and that didn't really work out. It wasn't a good fit for me — found that out after about three months of working for them. So then all of a sudden I was an adult in my early thirties and for the first time in my entire life I was unemployed. So what do you do? You need something. So between applying for jobs, I was riding my mountain bike. And then at the same time, my mountain bike broke. So all of a sudden I didn't have that outlet. I picked up a pick and a shovel, went out, and started building a trail.

Okay. And this, I think, is such a cool part of the story. We had a chance to chat quite a bit before the podcast a couple of weeks ago. This is the punk rock part of building trails — it's part of my childhood. Like we just knew we wanted a trail here, and maybe it was youth or maybe it was disrespect, or some combination of youthful disrespect, but we would just build them where we wanted them. So you picked up a shovel, grabbed a pick, started building a trail — but maybe it wasn't exactly dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Somewhere you went from there to full, lawful trail building for public benefit. Talk more about that.

Absolutely. Before we go to that, I do want to highlight — you bring up a unique point about trails. Public trails are really a public amenity. We just had a trail conference, a local trail summit. Trails are unique in that they are usually driven to being created and maintained by the people that use them. You don't have people doing that for public restrooms or drinking fountains. You don't have a summit that gathers people from statewide to talk about drinking fountains. But trails are a public amenity, like a road or a library. They are something that people who use them want so badly it drives them to create them when that need isn't being fulfilled. So going back to — yeah, as a kid, digging in the dirt, building jumps, maybe having no idea whose property you're on. A lot of that negative connotation maybe comes from ignorance, but it just shows there was a need there. Why did you build the jumps? Because you wanted to jump your bike. What you were doing and what I was doing was trying to fulfill a need that maybe wasn't being fulfilled by an agency or an entity that should be doing it the proper way. So I just wanted to give that little caveat because we're dealing with that all the time. There are people out there that love trails so much that we're trying to wrangle their passion and their energy and direct it in a very productive, fruitful way. That's something that has always existed and will continue to exist. Anyway, backing up — Redding Trail Alliance — I was out digging in the dirt with my dog, and then we got a call or email from an individual, Brian Sent, at the McConnell Foundation. He had been leveraging his role at McConnell, working with land managers — primarily Bureau of Land Management — to use the funding that McConnell has to partner with the Bureau of Land Management to really expand and grow, especially with connectivity, our legal trail system. Prior to him and some other key individuals — Brent Owens is another one, a private funder of local trails, Francis Berg — there have been a number of key players, but Brian Sent really moved that needle forward. I'd say he's probably responsible for over a hundred miles of trails in the Redding area. He was active for about 10 years, and he had hired a contractor with a small trail dozer, just out blazing trails. So he reached out to me and some of my buddies and it was like, hey, I'd love to talk to you about a project I'm doing. I'd like to maybe get you guys on board. So we met with him.

Wait a minute. Did anybody feel like it was potentially a sting operation?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Brian Schubert, one of the founding members of Redding Trail Alliance, told me later that he thought it was a potential sting because he's like, why are they trying to get all of us in the same room together? I had no anticipation of that, but that was where his brain went. He's conspiratorial. But everybody likes Brian — if you meet him, you would love him. So Brian reaches out and he's like, meet with us. I think we met at the old Millhouse Deli. Yeah, that was still in existence. He just explained that he was kind of going into his last project with McConnell because he was looking to retire. He had been building trails for 10-plus years and typically the hand crew he worked with were out-of-season or seasonal, like landscapers — people hired through an employment agency. They had no passion for trails. They weren't trail users. They didn't bring the excitement, so to speak. And he's like, I have this project and I would love to bring you guys on board. You can help create it, help shape this trail into what you want it to be, and we can have a lot of fun doing it. A number of those people said yeah. It worked out for me because I was unemployed. There was a broad group of people — some semi-retired, some self-employed — and it allowed us to come together. Not necessarily all working full time, but all of us came together as a greater group and worked with Brian to complete what is now Trail 58 and the French Fry Trail.

Where can you find Trail 58 and the French Fry Trail?

Trail 58 is located just off of 299 as you're heading into Old Shasta, where the transfer station is out there. There's a trailhead for Trail 58 right there, and it connects down to Iron Mountain Road, right behind Station 58 at the Cal Fire station — and that's why it's called Trail 58, in honor of that station. Then French Fry starts right there at the transfer station, goes up over the hill, drops down to the Rock Creek drainage, follows Rock Creek down, and comes out on Iron Mountain Road near the large Crystal Creek aggregate quarry back there.

Okay. And is that what you were talking about earlier when you used the phrase connectivity — the idea of getting all these trails to ultimately connect?

Yes. Those would be good examples of connectivity. Part of French Fry already existed — it was a user-created trail that had been around for maybe four years. It was just kind of over there by itself along Rock Creek. It was an old mining trail, and a mountain biker went in and cut a bunch of manzanita, did a little bit of dirt work, and people started riding it again. Brian was like, how can we connect existing trails over here to this trail, bring it onto the legal trail catalog, the trail network? So yeah, all of that could be considered connectivity — connecting trails or trail experiences together.

So Trail 58, the name makes sense. What about French Fry? How did you get that?

That one was kind of my doing. Backing up a little bit — when that one individual originally opened the old mining trail, you had to access it back off of Granite, a little road that takes you out from behind Old Shasta down to Rock Creek. You'd access it back on a power line road. When you drop down near Rock Creek, kind of to the start of the trail, when we first started riding it, somebody had taken a Carl's Jr. fresh cut French fry sign — you know, where their French fries had the skins on them still — and stuck it in the ground right there. So we just started calling it the French Fry Trail. And it stuck. When we connected to it, I was like, this is already what we're calling this trail, so I think this whole trail should be the French Fry. That's how it got that. There were some people who advocated against it, but we won.

All right. So then you're cutting your teeth in every aspect of lawful trail building — you're actually out there building the trail. But then are you also picking up the knowledge about how to add a trail to the catalog? Talk more about that.

The knowledge we picked up was that you can have a dialogue and a discussion and work with your land manager to build trails that you want to build. There's always going to be a give and take. Prior to that, we thought they were always against anything we wanted. We thought if you build a berm, they're just going to tear it down. What we realized — and a big part of this had to do with the relationship Brian Sent had developed with the Bureau of Land Management, the recreation officer, the local field manager — was that just being able to step into that already-developed relationship and already-developed trust showed us that you can work with them to create fun, unique trails that we wanted to create. It takes time. It takes a lot of money. But you can work with the government to create those experiences.

So then once a trail gets built — like Trail 58 or French Fry — whose trail is it? I know it's a public asset, but is it owned by the public through the BLM?

It becomes part of their inventory of what they own and have to manage. Every mile, half mile, every foot of trail that we build — that land manager owns that trail and it becomes technically their responsibility. That's why having the experience and the dedication to not only build a good trail but keep maintaining it goes a long ways when you ask to do something, because if you're adding maintenance to their catalog and they are already struggling, why would they say yes? Except if you can show that yes, I will work with you to continue to maintain it as well.

So then how does that process work? You build this trail, it's pristine when you get it finished — you get French Fry open, you get Trail 58 open, they accept it as part of their catalog — but the continuing maintenance requirement, how does that component work with Redding Trail Alliance?

That's a struggle. Maintenance is a very unique component of any trail stewardship organization. Obviously when we read our mission statement at the start, we weren't thinking we'd be out maintaining 150 to 200 miles of trail. The reality is that's a need our community has, and it's a need that we've stepped up to try and address as well as possible. We can't do it perfectly. We have three employees. But what we do is we've created an advocacy organization where we engage as many people as we can, train them on how to properly do maintenance, we've implemented an adopt-a-trail program which has been very successful, and then we also raise money and pay for a lot of maintenance ourselves — a lot. We aren't doing a hundred percent. There needs to be more. There's always a backlog of maintenance that needs to be done, but we're doing our best.

I get that. It's like the Golden Gate Bridge — I don't know if this is true, but it's been said enough that I think of it this way. They paint it and it takes whatever, seven years to paint it from one end to the next, and they just turn around, go back to the beginning, and start again because it needs to be painted again because it lives in the salt air. The trails are like that. We live on rural property and I'll work all spring to deal with fire, limb up all the oaks I already limbed up last year, take out dead ones, move the fire line back, weed whack — and it's ready to be done again. Things just grow.

I've used that analogy so many times. The Golden Gate Bridge — yeah, it's exactly what it's like, especially now. The fire has compounded that issue because we've had fire come through and burn up all of our canopy in certain areas. Now we have the regrowth — live oaks and black oaks, those things don't die. They just grow back from the roots, and they grow back insanely quick because they already have these root systems grabbing all these nutrients. So you could trim a trail and the next year you have to start trimming it again. It's never ending and it can get overwhelming. I'm not a botanist, but what I imagine is you've had this oak tree that's 18 to 20 inches in diameter, it's burnt, so it's coming back from the roots — the roots didn't die. And those roots are big enough to support a 20-inch oak. So the growth of these trees, especially at first, is so quick. We have some of these oaks that are probably pushing 20 feet tall now. But even then you trim it up to just one or two leaders, I think they call them, and that helps them turn into a tree versus a bush. But even then you're always having little ones pop out at the bottom. Maybe another 10 years they'll stop doing that. The trimming of brush is a nightmare.

You mentioned adopt-a-trail — it sounds like the community of users of these trails is pretty good about trying to help out and maintain them, to an extent.

We're always advocating for that and trying to promote it. We have a very large community of people who love our trails. But the actual people who go out and do regular maintenance is a very small percentage — very small. A lot of people are enjoying the trails thanks to a few people's hard efforts.

Makes sense. There are statistics about that — in volunteer organizations, something like 10% of the users do like 90% of the work. That checks out. So tell me — we've arrived at the backstory of Redding Trail Alliance and your transition to it. What's happened as you've grown from French Fry and Trail 58 over the last 10 years?

Working with Brian Sent was really the catalyst for getting Redding Trail Alliance going. He was like, yes, you should form a nonprofit, yes, McConnell Foundation will help you. So we had a three-year grant cycle from McConnell Foundation that really helped kickstart our projects. We came out of the door with a pretty ambitious one — it was the conversion of an old mining road out at Swasey into a pretty legit, bike-park-style jump line. The Bureau of Land Management let us move forward with it and was able to fast-track that project because it was within the scope of already disturbed land — the old road. As long as we stayed within that, they didn't have to do an environmental review or a NEPA. So it really kept costs down and fast-tracked the project. That first winter — so 2016, early 2017, probably January or February — we started building the Enticer Trail. It's almost a mile long. The reason it's called the Enticer is that because it's such a fun, unique trail and there weren't a lot of experiences like that in Northern California, we had hoped it would entice people to Redding — and it did. Red Bull athletes have come here to ride it. People stop in Redding just to lap that trail. What that did was put Redding Trail Alliance on the map. With that, it garnered a lot of community support. We continued to have McConnell funding for those first three years. We built the Enticer, rebuilt the Snail Trail — taking another trail and turning it into a pretty legit flow trail. That's probably now one of our most popular trails. Just did a major rebuild on it again this year. Then we did a couple of little reroutes, built Owens Run — named after my dog — to get people to the top of the Enticer quicker and easier. Fast forward to 10 years later, I think we have 26 miles of new trails that we've built under our belt.

Now, I grew up when the OHV area, which is now almost exclusively off-road vehicles out at Shasta Dam, was still a mountain bike area. And then all the trails around Whiskeytown — John Schumann's book was published when I was riding a bunch, around '95, '96. A lot of those trails got burned, got destroyed. How has Redding Trail Alliance come alongside the existing trails that used to be those old school trails that I enjoyed growing up?

We work with the land managers to the extent that we have the capacity to and that they will allow it. Whiskeytown has definitely changed their tune as far as engagement with us and the public to help keep their trails open. They shut down all the trails on the Brandy Creek and Shasta Bally drainage — Kanaka, Rich Gulch, Brandy Creek, Boulder Creek, Mill Creek — all those trails were shut down for three years after the Car Fire due to a decision made somewhere down in LA. I don't think it was the right decision. So because of that, trails were neglected for three years, and going back in to try to reopen them was almost as difficult as creating a new trail. We were able to get a grant and reopen one of the more popular mountain bike trails out there called the Chimney. It was the most popular mountain bike trail back in the day and it's still one of the locals' favorites. We were able to work with the park, go in and clear it out. It took us better part of a month and about $15,000. We got our little trail dozer in there, regraded the trail, built a lot of water features to get water off the trail and make it sustainable. That was our first big project working with Whiskeytown, and they still have a lot to go. Hopefully they're going to implement a partnership agreement with us where they can help us do the work that they need done. Unlike a contract where a contractor would go out to bid and be making money, with a partnership agreement we bring our resources — our equipment, our knowledge, our community engagement and volunteers. And they could maybe offset the cost of our labor and payroll. Hopefully the park is able to do that because I feel like there are a couple of projects out there where we could really do some good.

Just dirt trails, not paved surface trails — how many miles of dirt trails would you say exist within the Shasta County area?

I don't even want to say — let me narrow it down to between 150 and 200. Actually, the City of Redding has partnered, or I should say the Redding Parks and Trails Foundation is paying for a very comprehensive future trail planning document called the Future of Redding Trails. They hired a consultant to work with all the different people who have their hands in this — all the different land managers — to develop a guiding document that would show one, the deficit of where we're lacking in trail infrastructure, whether that's connectivity or experiences, and then potential solutions for those issues. The consultant actually took inventory and I think it was actually higher than most people say — maybe 225 miles or thereabouts of natural surface trails.

So talk to me — we don't want to freak out our listeners. Some of these trails that you've talked about, with Red Bull riders coming to ride them, are probably not something you'd take your new mountain biker down. But I know there's a wide variety of trails in the area, and you use the phrase "experiences" — I think that means different trails for different levels, and everybody can get out there and enjoy them.

Look at our mission statement — we want diversity. That helps build a really robust, thriving trail community. Prior to what I'll call the Brian Sent era, most of our trail experiences were really rugged, steep trails because of Whiskeytown. All those trails were just old roads, old steep mining or resource extraction roads. People just opened them back up and start riding them — they're rutted out, just a really challenging experience. That's fun. But if you go back to when I started riding in '99, if you wanted to show somebody what mountain biking is, the only trail we really had to do that was Oak Bottom — a two-mile trail, four and a half miles out and back. That was the only trail we had for beginners. Brian came along and I felt like the needle swung a little too far the other way, because a lot of what they were building was more in that beginner level — really wide trails, very mellow and meandering, everything out by Keswick Reservoir. The Fern Blossom Trail, Sac Ditch Trail, the Hornbeck Trail — those are great opportunities to get people on mountain bikes. But you're talking 25 miles of trails that kind of feel the same. And so that made me want to swing it back the other way, because I wanted challenging experiences. That's what motivated me to start building a trail — and that's why the other guys I met were out building trails too. They were building jumps. When Redding Trail Alliance formed, the pendulum kind of swung far back toward challenging experience. Now, as we've matured, we see the need for all experiences and really highlighting the quality of the trail, whether that is beginner, intermediate, or advanced. We want everyone that we build to have a reason for being there. That reason, sometimes, is just connectivity — but typically trail development we're doing is more about the experience. Is it taking them through rugged terrain? Are they seeing waterfalls? Is it really fun and flowy? Is it fast? We want to highlight the experience of the trail, and that makes sense from a good long-range planning standpoint.

One of the things we'll talk about is some of the events that Redding Trail Alliance is going to put on. My wife is training for one of those events and her training block just started. One of the ways we're going to keep the family together while training is my son and I will take our bikes, hit a bunch of the trails that are part of that. He's our baby — he'll be nine years old when we're doing the trail riding. We'll ride a few miles, refill our water bottles, and go hit the paddleboards. You need that for your beginner rider. Today's beginner rider is tomorrow's intermediate rider and the advanced trail builder in another 10 years when he's big enough to swing a shovel all day long.

Going forward, we do see a need where there's actually a big deficit in what we would call, in regards to just mountain biking, the green and blue beginner trails — specifically green, highly fun green experiences. We have a lot of green experiences, but what we want is that green experience that's pretty easily accessible, where you can get your nine-year-old out on it and when they ride that trail they're like, I love mountain biking. Versus just kind of riding along, which is a lot of fun in its own right. That's where our catalog of trails is lacking. We just built a trail last year called Kahul, and it's bordering on blue — kind of a greenish blue trail and it's super fun. It's out at Swasey on the west side of Mill Ridge.

What are the month-to-month activities of Redding Trail Alliance? I know you're meeting with land managers, there's actual trail building, you mentioned a trail dozer — can you explain what that is? There's getting funding. How does the organization work at a nuts and bolts level over a six-month snapshot?

I wish I could tell you what I did yesterday. We have a list on our board of a backlog of stuff that we need to do. Right now, something that's sitting on my list — I have to create our annual report. Just like running any legitimate company or organization, there's just the nuts and bolts of day-to-day operations. Camille, our Operations Director, is just scanning receipts and cataloging and allocating, because we have to track everything so we can hopefully apply it towards a specific funding project if we have a grant. But it's just important that we catalog and track all of our expenses anyway so that we can look at where that money's going. She can spend a good portion of a week just going through payroll and making sure all the hours are allocated to whatever it is that person is doing — and making sure it goes to the right grant funding.

I asked you too big of a question. Let's break it down. I'm a huge fan — my family uses the trails. You're putting on an event that is going to be kind of a keystone event in my wife's life. How does Redding Trail Alliance get funding and how can listeners get involved?

We aren't just trail builders and advocates. We've realized that in order to do that, we've taken on the other role as event promoters. One of those events is the Lemurian Classic, which is right around the corner. It's a mountain bike race that we inherited — it started in 1987, and a number of different organizations or people ran that race throughout the years. It started out at the dam at Chappie, made its way to French Gulch a couple of years, then Whiskeytown for quite a few years. After the fire, we took it over in 2019 and brought it to start at Swasey Recreation Area. It still utilizes some Whiskeytown trails. We're getting close to 350 participants, and that's our cap currently. We're hoping to maybe bump that up to 400. Then we have the Jackalope Lope. I'm sure that's the event you're talking about. We worked with some local trail runners — James Wang and Christine Luwampo — who came on board and helped us get that event going. We have that — it's a fantastic trail running race out of Whiskeytown. It's a nine-mile, just over 20-mile, and a 32-mile race.

I've been sent with some questions from my wife on this one. Let's start with the Lemurian — I've raced the Lemurian a number of times. My bigger son has raced it too. He's 19 now — we raced out there when he was a youth rider. The Lemurian's got a race course for everybody, right? It does, especially this year.

It really does. We have a race course for everybody this year. Historically the Lemurian did not have a race course for beginners because out at the dam or even out at Whiskeytown, creating a beginner course was impossible. So they always had what was called the short course — not necessarily a very long course, but it definitely had challenging aspects. Steep climbs, rugged downhills. Now that it's at Swasey, we have a true beginner course. I think it's right about five miles, really mellow. We have very young kids signing up for that. We have a short sport course which is just over nine miles, and a sport course which sits at about 17 miles. And then we have the pro-expert course, which this year is pushing 32 miles and close to 4,000 feet of climbing. It's a big day for sure. Something for everybody. It's a true grassroots race — rugged trails, a lot of community engagement. We try and keep the costs down, even though the cost of the race keeps creeping up. But when we look around at what we're providing our participants and look at the cost of other races, we still feel like it's a very good bang for your buck.

Any corporate sponsors on board with the Lemurian now that it's out at Swasey?

The Lemurian is our biggest fundraiser. On a good year, we'll probably make about $5,000 on participant fees. It costs us $25,000 to put that event on. People don't realize that. The race entry fee started at $90 early bird, went up to $100, and now the final jump is $110. Until we hit about 200 participants — which we aren't even there yet this year — we aren't making any money on those race fees. What happens is the Lemurian, for a number of reasons — I don't know why, I think because it is such an ingrained thing in our community, people know it and love it — every year we have about $30,000 worth of sponsorships from local companies. Dentists, construction companies, physical therapists, financial companies. I encourage you to go to the website and look at our sponsors. Our community steps up when it comes to sponsoring the Lemurian. The racers cover the cost of the race and make us a little bit of money, but our sponsors are killing it. And I also have to give a huge shout-out to our sponsorship coordinator for the Lemurian, Janae Everly. She kills it. She has no shame in asking for money for Redding Trail Alliance.

The Lemurian has been part of our community since I was a kid. My brother, who lives in the mid-state, heard about this race and said, hey, that's my hometown, we've got to go there — and that was when it was still at Chappie. My kids grew up racing it, I've raced it, my buddies have raced it. There's a chain gang, there are great old trophies for the Lemurian. It's baked in around here.

As far as bike company involvement, that's been a struggle. I was ready to throw up my hands and walk away from wanting to have anything to do with the bike industry because it was frustrating. I understand they're not raking in the bucks. But my frustration was also that what we're doing directly benefits them. You don't have to take two steps to figure it out — creating an amazing place to ride bikes means they sell bikes. I think the two industries that we directly benefit are the bike industry, whether that's local bike shops or bike companies, and the medical industry — because we definitely have sent a lot of people to the ER. When you see the physical therapist response — come on, man, are you baiting your clients?

A bunch of the guys that I run with are physical therapists and they always take good care of us. Okay, when is the Lemurian?

It is May 9th. So just about a month away. Still time to sign up. It'll probably sell out, but people in Redding like to wait to the last minute to sign up for stuff. Our registration right now has Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Roseville, a lot of Reno, some from up north — Oregon, Bend, Medford, Ashland — some from the coast. We're getting a lot of out-of-towners. There are quite a few people locally that have signed up, but we're going to get a huge influx of locals toward the end. It just always happens. I get stressed out every year thinking we're just going to have nobody come out and race, and then towards the end we get a lot of people.

Let's talk about the Jackalope Lope. That's the one I've been sent with questions about. Describe the race and the race courses. Maybe there's somebody listening who's a new trail runner, or maybe somebody who wants to do something harder than the marathons she's already done — not naming names but she might be married to me — who wants to do that 32-mile course. She has already signed up, or will. She wanted an early bird discount.

Registration is live — she can sign up right now if she hasn't already. The Jackalope doesn't have a course for everybody, but it does have a challenging course for somebody even if they're new to trail running. You train a little bit and you can get out and do the nine-mile course — it will be a challenge, but there are people who aren't trail runners that have trained for it and come out and done it. It's very inspiring to see. We had, not this past year but the year before, an 83-year-old lady from the East Coast. She was spicy. She came over with her daughter, did the short course, and had a great time. Then last year we introduced the 32-mile or 50K. It's a very challenging course. I was blown away with how many people registered for that and finished. It's got 6,000 feet of elevation and it's straight up — every one of the climbs is very steep. And the downhills aren't easy either. It's not like a road where you can just run. Almost every one of the downhills is pretty technical trail.

How many of your runners do you see using trekking poles?

Not that many, actually. And the aid stations — we have some very well-stocked aid stations. We're going to make a few slight adjustments from last year, especially boosting up the final big aid station for the long course, adding more cold soda — people love Coke out there — and pickle juice. People kept asking for pickle juice. But the aid stations are very well stocked with chips, salty things, gels, and standard running food and hydration mix and water. The long course hits one, two, three, four stations and then hits the third one a fifth time. Plenty of chances to replenish fuel out there.

For the uninitiated — the pickle juice is salty, so that's your electrolytes, and the Coke has a lot of easy-to-grab sugar calories. I've been on 50 to 60-mile mountain bike rides where I cracked open a cold Coke at mile 50 and it was the best thing ever. How many years is the Jackalope Lope going?

Last year was its third year. This year we really hoped for a big balloon in numbers because we changed our registration over to UltraSignup. People who do ultras go there to look for races — that's the standard. We moved it on there but really didn't see huge growth. One of the reasons we thought was we didn't get it on there soon enough, because people typically plan out their year well ahead of time. So this year it's been up since almost December for an October race. How many runners are we hoping to expect across all the courses this year? I would love to get up to 200. Last year we had 120. It also makes us some money — not a bunch on participants, but we get pretty good sponsors. The Jackalope made us about $8,000 last year, which makes it worth putting on for sure.

So let's talk about that. There are a lot of good worthy causes and places people can put their resources. How does Redding Trail Alliance make sure that dollars given and dollars earned in putting on events actually get to the end purpose of building trails, maintaining trails, expanding the outdoor opportunities?

We just do our absolute best to be wise with our funds and try and do kickass projects for the community. We have a great board. They're very supportive and very unified. I think that helps us be successful. I've known of nonprofit boards that maybe don't always agree, and it can kind of handicap the organization. Ours has been very unified and supportive of our mission. They also watch what we're doing. All our big moves and big expenses are governed by a board. It's not just me out there making my decisions on my own. It's not the Nate show. A lot of people think it is, but it's not.

You can go to the website — you guys have a ton of volunteers and folks that do so much work and they're all detailed there. You clearly have a team that's very supportive and willing to invest their own personal time.

We have a pretty amazing board — a lot of really cool community leaders. One of them, the Honorable Judge Burgess — he asked me to ask you something about the 12 Days of Christmas.

Judge Burgess is a sitting member of the bench. I am a practicing attorney. All I can say is he serves with excellence along with the other judges in our Shasta County area. And he knows that I can't say anything about allegedly having been manipulated or tricked into singing at an office Christmas party the 12 Days of Christmas based on a false allegation that everybody did it. I'm happy he's on our board. He's a great lawyer and a good judge. And he's on the right side of the California bar, so I don't think I can say anything else.

Going back to your question about people's money coming to Redding Trail Alliance — they're helping ensure that we keep doing these events, and we think these events are important for Redding. The Lemurian probably brings in 70 people who are going to be here staying the night from a good distance away. The economic impact of that, while not huge, is real. And when people come here and experience the Lemurian for the first time, their eyes are opened to how awesome our trails are and how awesome our town is. Mountain bikers travel to go ride their bike. The continued impact on our economy from a tourism standpoint is significant because those people are going to come back, they're going to stop here, they're going to ride their bikes, they may stay here. That's the other important reason to have a nice catalog of trails that are really exciting — what you want is at least three days worth of good, solid 18 to 20-mile rides that highlight some amazing trails. If you can have that, you have a trail destination. The Lemurian and the Jackalope expose these trails to people. The guy that won the Jackalope was from Petaluma and he was just blown away at the race and the trails. He was like, I'm going to tell all my friends about it. The trickle-down effect of that is real. And I think that's why we get so many people who sponsor the Lemurian or just sponsor events in general — because they're so happy with what we've done so far and it's easy for them to write a check because they know we're going to continue to do our best to not only keep what we have going but build some really new, fun, exciting stuff. It's kind of a selfish thing. I mean, it's part of the reason I'm doing it — I want to ride new trails. The people who sponsor us love the trails that we're building and just want to support it.

But these trails are not just for mountain bikers. They're not just for trail runners. If somebody wants to put a backpack on, go for a hike, take their family for a walk, they can use the trails as well, right?

Oh yeah. There are so many good trails for those experiences all throughout the area. As we've grown as the trail organization in the area, we build and maintain trails for all different user groups. I want to highlight Salt Creek. It's a project we did back in 2022. There was already an existing trail along Salt Creek from 299 down to the river trail. A decent portion of it went through private property and was shut down. People wanted that trail back open — not just mountain bikers, but trail runners and hikers. It's very popular with everybody. We went in with support from the Friesen Foundation and the McConnell Foundation, rebuilt that trail on Bureau of Land Management land with a few small easements through non-Friesen property, and installed a 70-foot fiberglass bridge over Salt Creek. I love to just go walk it with my dog. There are so many good trails we have around here just to get out in nature. They're not challenging — they're scenic, they're beautiful, they take you along beautiful creeks. I've seen salmon in that creek. I've seen otters in that creek. And within the city of Redding, I think the NERP on the Sacramento River right downtown is an amazing amenity — a one-mile loop that's absolutely beautiful. I take my dogs out there almost daily in the summer and walk around, let them get in the water. So yeah, we have something for everybody. It's absolutely phenomenal.

Beautiful. We talked about the Lemurian, we talked about the Jackalope, but there's also the Bigfoot Adventure Challenge and the Tiango Trot. What are those?

The Bigfoot Adventure Challenge is going on right now. It started April 1st and goes until the end of May. It started as the Mayor's Mountain Bike Challenge. Mayor Brent Weaver — he was a mountain biker and as mayor he wanted to create something to highlight our awesome trails. He worked with Brian Sent, I think Brian Crane was on board from the beginning, and Ryan Schubert — that was the kind of founding committee. They created the Mayor's Mountain Bike Challenge. It's a passport-style challenge where people can download or pick up a passport at a local bike shop. It just has a list of rides or routes to do. You go out, do the ride, check it off your passport. Do three rides, turn it in, get a pair of socks and get entered into a raffle. We have a big finale party where we give away thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to local outdoor stores. Then we wanted to branch away from just being the mayor's challenge because it had grown regionally — some of our rides were from Weaverville, some were up in Mount Shasta. From that grew the Bigfoot Adventure Challenge, which I am just absolutely stoked about. It grew organically and now our community has completely embraced it. We developed this model of this style of event. I know it has to be being done elsewhere, but I've never seen it. The adventure challenge is — you have a mountain bike passport if you're a mountain biker. You have a trail passport if you hike or trail run. We have a multi-sport passport, which is mountain biking, trail running, and gravel riding. We have a gravel passport for gravel riding — those bikes look like road bikes but have bigger tires, and they're really the all-terrain bike. You can go anywhere with them — roads, bike paths, dirt roads. We have a family challenge. We have a dog challenge. However many passports that is — you just pick one that you want to participate in. It gets you out. We mix up the routes every year and add new routes, especially when we bring new trails onto the system. We really like to highlight those new trails and see how people love them. And what people really come to embrace is blacking out a passport — doing all of the routes on it. For the trail route, if you blacked it out this year you've run about 80 miles. On the mountain bike one I think it's like 140 to 150 miles. And then you have some crazy people who are blacking out two or three passports. Last year we had over 440 participants turn their passports in — and that's just people who turned them in, not just those who downloaded and participated but didn't get around to turning them in. Almost our entire board participated in this event. I think only one turned their passport in, but almost all of them got out there and rode or ran. It just shows there's a lot of people engaging in this event.

That's great. That sounds like there's something for the whole family. Okay, guys, we're going to go do this walk, we're going to do this hike.

It really does get people out of all abilities, all ages. That's why I call it a community event. It highlights our trails, encourages people to be active, and exposes people to the great trail network that we have. So then what's the Tiango Trot? We held our second one last November. It is a dog-friendly trail race — a 5K and 10K. You don't have to have a dog to do it, but a lot of people do. We moved it to the Churn Creek Greenway, which is owned by the McConnell Foundation — a beautiful little trail system right along Churn Creek. The first year I think we had about 25 people participate. The second year was over 60, so it's definitely growing. What we're seeing the value of is having a 5K that gets people on dirt trails. There are a number of 5Ks here in town, they're all on the river trail — but having one that gets people on dirt trails is really special. We've found that having a very accessible event like that is something we foresee growing pretty big because almost anybody can come walk or jog a 5K, and getting out there and seeing all the dogs is really fun. And a big portion of the proceeds we donate back to a local dog rescue. The one we've chosen the last two years is All Dogs Thrive — a newer nonprofit that is helping get dogs out of shelters and into people's lives. They're doing an amazing job.

That's really cool. Okay, two areas we haven't finished up yet — the future of the organization, and then how can people get involved. Am I missing anything else?

I do want to backtrack a little bit. I'm not going to dwell on the negative, but we were talking about the bike industry and I said I was so frustrated I wanted to walk away. Rewind to about November of last year. A friend reached out to me — she used to work at IMBA, the International Mountain Bicycling Association. She said Shimano has developed a funding source to help implement trail projects called Trail Born. She called me and said, do you have anything that you could use $30,000 for? And I said yes, yes we do. The two trails we were finishing up or building this season I had budgeted $37,000 for. So having them come in with $30,000 was a super easy ask. Working with them was easy, the grant reporting was easy. So I always have to have that asterisk when I talk about the bike industry — they did step up to the plate for us. A huge shout-out to Shimano.

The Shimano-SRAM battle — does it still rage in the bike industry?

It's been Shimano and SRAM for a long time and it still is a big battle. And I'm a Shimano fan now. It better be. Absolutely.

All right. Where is Redding Trail Alliance going in the future?

Lots of places. We're kind of just chasing that funding. What happens depends on what comes with Whiskeytown — that could open a huge door of opportunity for us to get in there and really have a good impact on that park. We are also looking at a pet project of ours that has been in the works since about 2018 or 2019. Just north in Lakehead, there's a mountain called Sugarloaf. It's 3,000 feet of vertical from the lakeshore to the peak of that mountain. There's a nice Forest Service road that goes to the top — pretty well maintained because there are towers up there. The majority of that mountain is Forest Service land. I want to build gravity-fed mountain bike trails from the top all the way down to the bottom. What that does is it creates a gravity experience — you could have a shuttle truck drive you to the top, you get dropped off, and you have 8 to 10 miles of trail ripping back down, just all smiles. That's one of the key pieces of trail infrastructure Redding is lacking. When you look at most real mountain bike trail destinations, they almost always have the opportunity for a really fun shuttle experience — like Downieville, like Moab. If we're able to build that and add it to our catalog, even though Lakehead is 20 minutes away, anything within about a 30-minute drive from the heart of Redding is considered our trails. What it would do for us is amazing. And I really think it would be a great benefit for that local community, because all they have is the lake. If it's a bad lake year, why are people going to Lakehead? People from Redding and the I-5 corridor could stop for a couple of laps, stay, have a burger at the Bass Hole, and you're combining boat recreation with mountain biking. So that's kind of been a dream of ours. We applied for a large planning grant to get that project shovel-ready, unfortunately in the tune of about $300,000. So we're always trying to find ways to move things forward.

Adding to the trail catalog, maintaining what we've got, keeping great relationships with the public entities and the stakeholders. And then how do people get involved? From volunteers to grant writers — how do people connect with the organization?

It's very easy — just shoot us an email. We've gone from being heads down doing what Redding Trail Alliance knew to do to being extremely transparent and also listening to what the community wants. We opened up a membership just over a year ago. Those members greatly help sustain Redding Trail Alliance from a financial point of view, and we engage with them four times a year. We have membership meetings where they're invited to come listen to what we have going on and give us any feedback or input. Honestly, my phone number is on the website. If people want to call me, I'll pick up — usually if it's a 530 number. We'll listen to anything anybody wants to say. We have over 500, probably close to 550 people on our volunteer email list. When we're out building or maintaining trails, we typically send out an email on Sunday that tells people what we're doing — hey, Monday through Friday we're going to be doing this, you're welcome to join us. Every once in a while we're able to host a Saturday volunteer event day. Those typically have 10 to 13 people come out. Some of our bigger ones have been about 20 people. But the biggest way to get involved — if you are a person who uses the trails or even just values what the trails do for our community — is to become a member. It's easy. You don't even have to think about it. It's an app, you sign up. We have a monthly fee if you want to go that route, or you can do yearly. It's as cheap as $5 a month. To put it in perspective, if you use the trails twice a month — which is pretty low — you're paying $2.50 every time you go out. You can't get a cup of fancy coffee for five bucks. People think nothing about paying $6 for a cup of coffee or $8 for a beer. If everybody who uses the trails recognized the impact they could have, it could be insane. We could have a full-time maintenance crew just out there brushing trail. Our flow trails could be maintained every year instead of every three years. All the trails in Whiskeytown could be getting built. It could move the needle on what Redding Trail Alliance is able to do significantly. And that's just getting enough people to commit at five bucks a month. Let me break it down. Our base level is $5 a month, and we really appreciate that because those are people who maybe weren't donating anything before and now they're donating $60 a year. That keeps us in touch with them. The next level is the Trail Advocate. Then you have the Trail Steward, which is $20 a month — I'm happy to say I'm a Trail Steward, and so is Camille. Then you have the Trail Champion, which is $40 a month — each of these levels gets you more benefits. A Trail Champion gets a free entry into one of our events, a jersey, a hat. Stewards get a hat, a pair of socks. And then you have Trail Superheroes, which is $100 a month. Guess how many Trail Superheroes we have? We have 15 people. 15 people giving $100 a month. Insanely generous. These are not super wealthy people — these are people who have a little bit of disposable income and they recognize and love what we're doing and they're stepping up to the plate. That's huge.

They made the decision for them and their households that the $100 a month is more important than another streaming service. The streaming services convinced everybody they could get rid of cable for $10 a month, but now there are a dozen of them and it's $150 a month. Trails or streaming services — something their kids and their family is always going to remember, and something that's better for their longevity, their wellbeing, their mental health. Everything is better about being outside.

We get that feedback. One of them told me, she's like, this is how I stay mentally healthy. My job is stressful, the trails are my outlet. A hundred dollars a month — to her, it's a bargain. And that's how they all feel. Let's back it up to the $40 a month. How much do you pay for a decent gym membership? It's at least 40 bucks a month. Outdoor trails — they're free for access, but really they're not free. To have people understand that and become part of the solution — we hope more people hear this podcast and sign up.

What is the website and email address?

ReddingTrailAlliance.org. And the email is info@ReddingTrailAlliance.org. Or you can email me at nathan@ReddingTrailAlliance.org, or even camille@ReddingTrailAlliance.org. We'll get back to you.

When I got connected to you through Dusty, everything you've said has been completely true. Camille was back to me instantaneously, you were back to me. We were texting, we were emailing. It was really accessible. So everything you've said has been my lived experience as well. Have I forgotten anything about bringing this organization to light in our community?

I don't think you've forgotten anything, but one more thing I want to say. I've gone from just being extremely thankful to be able to do what we do to now acknowledging the value that Redding Trail Alliance brings to our community. I just want to highlight one other aspect — a really high quality trail system creates a quality of life and a vibe in our community. Redding has changed so much in the last 10 to 15 years. Downtown, it's a thing now. Our trail system is becoming world-class. We still have a ways to go, but we can get there. And when you create that quality of life, when you have big companies like Dignity Health that want to attract skilled workforce here — doctors, engineers — people will choose to live and work here for usually two reasons. One, they have roots here, so they're coming back to be with family. Or two, they are outdoor enthusiasts, and there's a high chance that trails are involved in that enthusiasm. Yes, we have rivers, lakes, fishing, skiing, backpacking — but trails are an important piece of that infrastructure. The land managers aren't going to be building. They aren't going to be maintaining. They don't have the capacity to. So if people want to see new stuff happening and they want to see what we have well maintained, the reality is an organization like ours has to be in existence and thriving.

Completely agree. We've been in business, my business partner and I, for 17 years. And if we hire somebody who does not have roots in the community or who is not an outdoor enthusiast, they're with us two years and gone because they go back to wherever they're from. On the other hand, if somebody likes the outdoors, they stay. It's gorgeous here. Well, man, I appreciate your time. I appreciate the work you're doing. I hope that this podcast has put the bug in the ear of a number of people, because that thriving trail system out there is good from top to bottom for the community.

I really appreciate you having me on here. And one more thing I want to say — I feel like I've probably dogged on the bike industry, but if any of my peeps at the bike shops are listening, I love you all. Local champs. They're great people. I know the bike industry is struggling, but we really appreciate our local bike shops.

Agreed. Thanks for your time, man.

Awesome. Thank you. Take care.