Sylvan Island trail Day! Sunday Oct 29th 9:30AM **ITS HAPPENING!!!**

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The new bridge frame has been set and they are on track for being able to open the bridge around Thanksgiving!! THATS LESS THAN 5 WEEKS!!!! We’re getting Sylvan Island back and we want trails to ride the very FIRST day that bridge opens!!!

Sunday, October 27th, 9:30 AM- Sylvan Island trail day!!!!!!

How do we get there?? As of this writing, we will all need to boat/kayak. We have a VERY SMALL flat bottom that we can use to row your tools/coolers over, but this is EXTREMELY LIMITED. Please combine items to reduce the number of coolers. If 20 people show up wanting to be boated over it will take 90 minutes to accomplish- we simply can’t do that. Get with your friends and borrow your own kayak/canoe. ¼ mile downstream from the Sylvan parking lot is another parking area around the old foundations. We can drop off canoes/ kayaks here and carry them down to the river using the bike path.

Directions to Alternative Parking Area When driving down to Sylvan- turn left at the “T” intersection instead of going right to the sylvan parking lot. It will take 20 minutes to haul your boat to the river launch and get to the island. We ask that peeps start rolling in about 9:30 ish so we can begin the trail day ON THE ISLAND at 10:00. Its going to be cold- use a boat you won’t capsize.

IMPORTANT!! Because this is a FORC trail day- participants must be FORC members for our insurance!! Non-FORC members; We apologize, but this is a necessary requirement. If you would like to join FORC to provide a little funding to help fund bringing your trails back on Sylvan Island- We’d be happy to have you join the fun!!

ON TRAIL DAY: There will be very short trail work safety sessions- We ask that NO ONE leave for trail work without attending one of these sessions. We realize that FORC has some of the best and most experienced trail builders in the country- seriously- but some of your friends may not have the experience. We anticipate many inexperienced people wanting to help out and our insurance requires it. We promise these will be extremely short and STOOPID to the point- we want to get you into the fray as much as you want to be there!!

What you need to know- It’s been 3 ½ years since the bridge closed and the island has reclaimed the vast majority of trails to the point that FORC’ers who have ridden them 1,000 times couldn’t recognize where they were. There are now 1,300 pin flags on the island showing where the trails are/re-routes desired. The trails as flagged are 95% exactly where they were, although all 4 miles of trails aren’t completely flagged yet simply because we ran out of flags- again! While we are hoping to eliminate some of the mass interconnectivity- Sylvan has always been fairly free form and kids do what kids do, so while this is a good goal nobody should lose their happy if we end up with more intersections than you had hoped for.

NOTE!- If you and your crew have a favorite area on Sylvan you want to bring back to good, let Kurt, Becky or I know and we’ll get you in there!


What Sylvan Needs Most:
1. HAND SAW CREWS! There are a LOT of trees down and Moline Risk management cannot give authorization for chainsaw work. There are 25+ locations where hand saws can do the work and open up the areas. We’d like to put groups of 2-4 people with hand saws on an area and let you go to town. There are several places where we may have to wait for Moline Arborist to cut the trees out because they are too big to do with hand saws- Nemesis and Next to Nemesis both have the SAME DANG TREE!! If anyone has a large, old fashioned, 2 person saw and you want to see what it was like cutting trees like Grandpa did- get a crew together- we have several 40”+ trees that need to be cut!!

2. Weed eaters, Loppers and machetes for corridor clearing. Rogue hoes and hard rakes for trail bed clearing. Most areas are grown in so that clearing the corridors are no different than a brand new trail. The trail beds have surprisingly large trees and bushes smack in the middle of them. These all need to be removed. Many of these can be pulled right out of the ground by cutting them about 4’ tall and using that as a lever to loosen the root ball. Area without trees in the trail bed have dead branches, sticks and other debris- hard rakes are the easiest way to cear them out.

3. Re-Routes There are a few areas where new re-routes have been flagged for various reasons- to get the low trail to higher ground, to utilize previous unused areas or to re-route a crappy section. These are very limited in scope but require a fair amount of effort to get in. If you and your crew want to work on one of these let us know.

On trail day we’ll have maps and tasks that will be provided to those wanting to break a sweat and help out!!

Weather Dood says upper 40's for a high- dress in layers, wear gloves and long pants, carry water or other beverage of choice.



The 10th Annual Sylvan Island Stampede is scheduled for April 8th, 2018.

Stand by for any needed updates right here!!