TNF’s VIRTUAL Open House for OHV Grant ideas
Posted: February 5, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: funding, maintenance, reroute, TNF, USFS Leave a commentEvery year, each national forest applies for funding through a grant program. These forests are required to seek user/public input in order to qualify for these funds.
Sadly, these forests are not required to follow the input of the users when writing the final grant application. But we do the dance in case our particular forest does listen to our input.
The Tahoe National Forest is currently in the driver’s seat regarding the Rubicon Trail and the Fordyce Trail, among many others. It is in our best interest to give our input. The details of how to do that are below. Once the draft grant application has been filled out, there is a public review period. It’s better to get your ideas in before that initial draft than try and get them in afterwards.
There is a needed Rubicon reroute that should get funded through this grant and there may be MAJOR Fordyce work funded through this grant but more likely just Fordyce planning funds.
This year it seems the USFS is still in a covid lockdown as they are only doing a “VIRTUAL” open house.
So, here’s the info…
Tahoe National Forest invites public to provide input on annual off-highway vehicle program grant application
Tahoe National Forest is preparing its annual application to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division, to request funding for trail and facilities maintenance, law enforcement and education and safety. The forest invites interested individuals and organizations to a virtual open house on Feb. 13 to learn more about the state OHV grants the Tahoe National Forest is considering applying for and how to provide input.
What: Open house to discuss Tahoe National Forest annual OHV grant proposals Where: Virtual, join on Teams
When: Feb. 13, 2025, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Annual state OHV grants provide important funds for the U.S. Forest Service to develop and maintain trails and trailheads, repair winter storm damage and restore trailside environments, as well as provide patrolling, education and monitoring of OHV areas. When finalized, the grants will be available for public review and comment on the State of California’s website ( http://ohv.parks.ca.gov ) from March 4 – May 5, 2025.
Questions, comments or letters can be submitted through the following ways:
- In-person: During the virtual open house meeting via written comments
- Email: Trails Program Coordinator Joe Chavez, joe.chavez@usda.gov
- Mail: Tahoe National Forest, Attn: Joe Chavez, Forest Trails Program Coordinator, 631 Coyote St., Nevada City, Calif. 95959
Feedback on projects and grant opportunities is requested by Feb. 24, 2025.
The Saga Continues…
Posted: January 6, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: broken, maintenance, repairs, transmission Leave a commentI would follow through with my promise to post more about the trails, but I don’t have my Jeep back yet.
So, Jeep. “Just Expect Every Problem” or “Just Empty Every Pocket”. I seem to have proven that true, again.
Below is a picture of a piece of cast iron. It’s a very important piece. It seems the violent rotational vibration I experienced on I80 at 65mph was worse than I had thought. Not only did it destroy my transmission, but it broke off this small piece. This piece of cast iron is one of the four mounting points for my transmission to my engine.
If you look closely, you can see a shinny spot in the upper right corner. It looks like the gasket is missing but the actual mounting surface is missing.
We talked about the possibility of welding it back on and that idea was quickly dismissed.
Now, if this were for my mother driving to the store every Sunday morning, I’d say go for it with three. Since I will be driving this rig on the Rubicon, I can’t take the chance running three out of four. That means a new engine.
Nate’s got on it for me a had a new long block in a day or two from Jasper’s. Unfortunately, there was bad news with the new engine. Nate himself did the inspection didn’t like the pitting on the surface where the water pumps mounts. He sent the engine back and called me to say the repairs would be delayed.
The upside is I won’t have to replace the rear main seal that was leaking. Well, I guess I did replace the rear main when I replaced the entire engine.
Looking back, there were signs the transmission was not happy. I had been putting off a flush or fluid change. My advice is to jump on maintenance as soon as possible!
Happy New Year!
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Rubicon Ronin
Almost made it…
Posted: October 30, 2023 Filed under: Access, Maintenance | Tags: FOTR, maintenance, snow Leave a commentThis morning, I met up with a few fellow FOTR volunteers at the entrance to Blackwood Canyon. The goal was to meet the dump truck full of twelve yards of rock for the upcoming FOTR maintenance effort on November 5th.
Well, we met up with the truck, but we failed to get the truck to the dump spot. The drive was tight.
The very last grade was a LONG north aspect that actually had the big rig slipping towards the edge and drop off. He correctly backed down and we decided the correct line of action was to turn around.
This was as far as the rig made it.
On a side note, even if you have a mobile ham radio mounted in your rig, always bring your handheld as a back-up. This antenna set-up does not work without the whip installed.
This is how I store the antenna when not in use, as it fits better in the garage.
But at some point, over the last few days, I lost the whip. About to call the Ham Radio Outlet to order a replacement. Maybe Amazon can next day deliver? If not, I’ll have my handheld.
Shannon is trying to work out the details to get rock delivered to keep the FOTR work party on the 5th on track. Stay tuned.
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Rubicon Ronin
2022 Rubicon Trail Annual Report
Posted: February 21, 2023 Filed under: Maintenance | Tags: adopt-a-trail, maintenance, projects Leave a commentI’ll try this two different ways; first here’s a link to the report on the El Dorado County website:
Here’s version two, trying to implant the actual file here:
Yes, this is El Dorado County, not the Tahoe side. I’m putting this up for general information and as an example of what may happen after the formation of the Rubicon Trail Collaborative Council. Hopefully, after the RTCC gets going, this type of report will be available for the entire length of the Rubicon Trail.
My take-aways are for one, the Adopt-A-Trail program. There are two segments available for adoption. Hopefully, this same type of Adopt-A-Trail and Adopt-A-Waterbar (rolling dip) will come to the Tahoe side. Start thinking about which segment your club would like to adopt!
Second is the list of projects. It seems like a very short list. That’s good because that means things are being taken care of within El Dorado. I literally have a list, with short descriptions of each project, that is eight pages long for the Tahoe side.
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Rubicon Ronin
Rubicon Trail Collaborative Council (RTCC)
Posted: February 15, 2023 Filed under: Access, Maintenance, Travel | Tags: closure, maintenance, management, users Leave a commentOn Monday, February 13th, a public meeting was held at the Cal4 office in Sacramento. There were probably 20 people in the room and just as many on Zoom. The topic was a new way to get more user input regarding the management and maintenance of the Rubicon Trail.
Amy Granat (CORVA & Tread Lightly) and Roger Salazar (OHMVR Commissioner & CORVA/Cal4 life member) presented a new idea for managing the Rubicon Trail: the Rubicon Trail Collaborative Council.
The idea is to build off the example of the Rubicon Oversight Committee (formerly held by El Dorado County). This new group would bring together the users and get the users a seat at the big table along-side of the governing agencies that currently manage the Rubicon Trail.
The establishment of this new group goes along with the establishment of a new Rubicon Trail management process. The idea is to manage the Rubicon Trail as one trail from Wentworth Springs to Lake Tahoe. This could (and should) include the Ellis Creek Intertie. One of the bigger changes is the Forest Service (FS) will be represented by Region-5; that’s the FS headquarters in Vallejo, CA. The individual forests (El Dorado National Forest ENF, Tahoe National Forest TNF & Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit LTBMU) will not each have a seat at the new table.
The new ‘table’ will have El Dorado County, Placer County, US Forest Service, Ca State Parks OHMVR and the new Rubicon Trail Collaborative Council (RTCC).
The current MOUs between ENF, TNF, LTBMU, ElDo Co, Placer Co, CA St Parks and various law enforcement agencies will be amended to include RTCC and to establish a consistency in management and maintenance across the trail.
The make-up of the Rubicon Trail Coordinating Council will include five types of stakeholders: landowners, businesses, state OHV organizations, trail management ‘non-government organizations’ (NGOs) and OHV clubs. Each category will have two seats. It will be up to each category to determine their representatives. (That will be fun.)
The Rubicon Trail Collaborative Council will be housed as a non-profit under the CA Outdoor Recreation Foundation, which will also act as facilitators and representatives for RTCC. Amy & Roger will be those facilitators and representatives for the RTCC board.
If you are wondering if this will ever actually happen, I believe that it will. Amy stated that the larger agencies have already agreed to the idea, verbally, not yet in writing. The hard part is amending the current MOUs to get everyone to agree to the new wording. Again, those large government agencies have already agreed on the idea.
Similar agreements are already in place for other types of recreation and trails. In our world, The Dusy-Ersham Trail has a multi-MOU agreement and the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) has a very similar agreement with all of the forests and counties that it crosses. Nothing on the PCT gets done without user input and approval.
This new management agreement will lift the decisions above any one agency, group or individual.
Moving forward, there is a plan to hold an organizational meeting of the RTCC this month. This meeting will probably include the first set of discussions about who will represent each of the five groups within RTCC.
Helpful links:
Roger Salazar – https://ohv.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22606#salazar
Amy Granat – https://corva.org/board_of_directors; https://treadlightly.org/meet-the-team/board-of-directors/
California Outdoor Recreation Foundation – https://outdoorrecreationfoundation.org/
If you didn’t catch it, Amy & Roger will be the two user representatives at the new ‘big table’. The RTCC will provide them with guidance to follow as they talk with the ‘agencies’.
This new management arrangement should prevent illegal or unnecessary closures of the Rubicon Trail due to wildfires 20 miles away, because of possible snow fall heading toward the trail or any other arbitrary situation that may arise.
I’m extremely hopeful.
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Rubicon Ronin
The 'Other' Rubicon 