Editor’s Note: This story is part of our series “Helping Hands”, which aims to spotlight Johnson Countians doing good in the background of their community. If you have an idea for someone to spotlight in a future “Helping Hands” story, email us at stories@johnsoncountypost.com.
When Derek Buckridge rides a mountain bike down a trail through the woods, there’s a type of reverie that comes with putting all of his focus toward staying on two wheels.
Everything else just disappears.
“You just kind of get lost in that blissfulness of nature and the adrenaline,” he said. “I get that (feeling) with trail building too.”
As a construction supervisor for the Johnson County Park & Recreation District, that’s the type of feeling he wants to recreate for others as he supervises the building of biking and hiking trails across Johnson County.
In his role with JCRPD, Buckridge helps volunteers with a local nonprofit Urban Trail Co. build and maintain the county’s system of single-track trails used by both hikers and mountain bikers.
That work typically pays off this time of year — spring and summer — as outdoor enthusiasts return to the woods and local trails in droves.
Pete Barth, a volunteer trail builder with Urban Trail Co. and a longtime mountain biker himself, knows Buckridge’s feeling, too.
Ultimately, Barth said, the experience someone gets as their bike glides through the woods doesn’t happen without some help from people like them, caring for and maintaining the trails.
“For as long as I can remember, there’s been kind of an ethos to mountain biking — that you give back to the trail and help to build or maintain them,” he said. “Historically, they wouldn’t exist if mountain bikers didn’t get together and build and maintain them.”
That idea is what got Buckridge and Barth interested in the work Urban Trail Co. does — a group of volunteers who help design, build and maintain trails across Johnson County and the wider Kansas City metro area.
Volunteers have been building trails for decades
Before Urban Trail Co. was Urban Trail Co., it was the Earth Riders Trails Association.
That group began as a social club of bikers in the 1990s, Barth said. Then eventually, it evolved into a formal nonprofit that works directly with local municipalities to help build and maintain local trails. (The social club still exists today, but operates separately from Urban Trail Co. — though Buckridge said they do periodically work together on projects.)
“It was really just people in the mountain biking scene that started and operated it,” Barth said. “It had pretty much no budget at the time, and then it grew and grew when we started getting more people helping out. It kind of exploded.”
Barth has been volunteering with Urban Trail Co. essentially since the beginning, for roughly 25 years.
A year ago, Buckridge assumed the role of Urban Trail Co.’s president after roughly a decade of helping build and maintain trails as a volunteer.
Johnson County has roughly 55 miles of single track trails available for both hiking and mountain biking. Over the past year, Buckridge said roughly 175,000 pairs of feet hit those trails.
Since trail use is most common in the warmer months, Buckridge said the bulk of Urban Trail Co.’s building time is during the fall and winter.
When the summer comes, the group’s attention turns to keeping the trails clear through tasks like trimming weeds.
Urban Trail Co. maintains existing trails, builds new ones
The nonprofit partners with a number of local parks departments and fellow nonprofits across the Kansas City metro on both sides of the state line.
The bulk of Urban Trail Co.’s work occurs on weekends, which Buckridge supervises.
The nonprofit has recently worked on trail systems at Cedar Niles Park in Olathe and Shawnee Mission Park in Shawnee. Buckridge said that each year, roughly 500 to 600 volunteers work on Urban Trail Co. projects.
The group helps JCPRD construct new trails, but it also works to maintain the ones that Johnson County already has — especially if they suffer damage or get debris during storms or wear down with regular use.
“Besides the initial construction, there’s always maintenance to do in order to deal with erosion issues or overgrowth,” Barth said.
The group also does conservation work like removing invasive species that grow along trails (such as honeysuckle) to help aid the growth of native grass and wildflowers.
“We work with (our partners) to make sure that the impact we’re having is a positive impact and not a negative impact on our environment,” Buckridge said.
In addition to building and maintenance, Urban Trail Co. also serves as an online resource for Johnson Countians to check the status of the trails (whether they’re closed during or after storms, for example). Some volunteers also help operate the swing gates at the entrances of trails.
People interested in volunteering with Urban Trail Co. can sign up to do so here, and donations can be made on the Urban Trail Co. website as well.
Trail builders say the task helps form a community
As both the president of Urban Trail Co. and a construction supervisor for JCPRD, Buckridge’s primary role at Urban Trail Co. work days is to supervise and facilitate the volunteers’ work.
Part of the excitement of that role, he said, is to help bring in and educate new volunteers about the importance of maintaining the county’s trails.
“We don’t want a lot of notoriety,” he said. “We’re doing this because we enjoy it, and we want the community to enjoy what we love so much.”
Doing the type of work that Urban Trail Co.’s volunteers also helps build relationships. That’s been the case for Buckridge, he said, over the past decade of both helping build trails and enjoying them.
“The mountain biking, hiking, and trail-building community in Kansas City is so strong and so close-knit,” Buckridge said. “My lifelong friends are all mountain bikers and trail-builders.”
In addition to the community factor, Barth said, trail building has its physical and mental upsides. Many of the people who do it enjoy spending their time outside, and in some ways, it can provide a sense of stress relief.
But a particularly big plus to building trails is getting to see them put to use.
“It’s rewarding to see the results of our work, and especially to come out and see people on the trail that I never would have imagined I would see out there,” Barth said. “It makes me feel good to see that other people appreciate the work that we all do.”
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