Success!! Our goal of having Sylvan Trails open along with the new bridge has been met- 90% of the trails are open and ride able!! Logistics for doing trail work has been difficult, a huge thanks to everyone who spent a few hours helping out because those few hours have made all the difference!

The trails are soft and there are areas where additional work will need to be done. Now that we can take tools over without calling the FORC Navy, we hope to continue recreating the riding experience we all loved by re-creating or improving on many of the features. For those who don't know- before the bridge closing, Sylvan Island was one of the top ten urban bike parks in the USA as ranked by Dirt Rag magazine. Our next goal is to recreate this level of fun!

The Sylvan trails rarely close due to the excellent draining capacity of the soils- which is mostly made up of old steel smelting slag, concrete and bricks. Until we see damage from riding during less than Ideal conditions, the trails will remain open 24/7 and we encourage you to enjoy them. Be aware the slag particles will wear your brake pads quickly in wet conditions and your cloths may smell like an oil refinery forever. Seriously.

We will be working on a race course sooner than normal for the 10th annual Sylvan Island Stampede. This will help pack in the specific trails to be used in the race and allow for a more directional flow to develop. This directional flow will not be signed or enforced in any way as Sylvan Island is an urban bike park rather than an MTB trail system. While we'd like to reduce the criss-cross nature of some areas, we feel an attempt to make Sylvan into a mapped and directions trail system would be futile. We hope to maintain the Urban Park nature while improving options for riding the entire system as a long loop.

There are many sections that we all love yet to be re-established including jumps, skinny's and more technical lines. Please contact Kurt Davis, Becky Bernard or myself if you want to go out and re establish any of these areas. We VERY MUCH support your work, we would just like the opportunity to seek the best entry and exit points for some of these B lines based on the course changes we have planned. We know many kids form the local neighborhoods may work without our knowledge and discouraging that is probably futile, but we ask the trail builders/FORC members help us implement these plans.

Thanks again to EVERYONE who helped out on this project and plans to help in the future. FORC- you are some of the hardest working, out of the box thinking volunteers the Quad Cities has ever seen. FORC's awesome trails and fun sprit is making FORC a recognized name throughout the entire USA! You are awesome!

-Ray Nees