news and projects
South Kennewick Trails
March 2024 Update: The parcel mentioned below sold quickly to another buyer. We are continuing to focus on creating trails, through partnerships with the cities and county and land user agreements. We are working on writing grants and refining our plan with Trust for Public Land.
January 2024 Update: We have formed a partnership with a land owner on the slopes of Jump Off Joe, who is interested in the conservation of our shrub steppe environment, and whose land is next to state owned land. We have also identified some parcels of land adjacent to the land of our partner, one that is up for sale currently, that we are going to try to acquire. We believe that between these three sources of land we would have a place for a MTB and multi-use trail system. This is a long shot, but worth a try.
September 2023 Update: We have been developing a flexible plan for a Kennewick trail system, the first step being to find a location that will be optimal for trails and widely supported. We have developed a presentation outlining the various options that we are looking at, and have begun meeting with various stake holders and allies. We have presented the idea to The Benton County Parks Commission, who were very supportive. We have also met with Evergreen Trails Alliance, and Friends of Badger Mountain, both of which have have been helpful with contacts and consulting. Finally we have had a meeting with a very conservation minded landowner, with whom we share many goals. We still need to consult with one more stake holder before we move on to the next step.
We are gearing up to begin a campaign for a trail system in the South Hills of Kennewick. Thanks to organizations such as Tapteal Greenway, Friends of Badger Mountain and others there are sanctioned trails in other parts of the Tri-Cites and hills and natural landscape have been preserved. However in Kennewick there are no such preserves and as the development of this community reaches the surrounding hills, we feel it urgent to try to preserve some of them for everyone to enjoy. We want to establish a trail system with MTB trails and multi-use trails that will be an asset to the whole community from our kids and families, to individuals and business. This will be a massive undertaking, but we think it will be worth it.
Richland MTB Trails
Jan 2024 Update: With the resignation of the Richland Parks Director, and the lack of volunteers to help with this project, and the opportunities heating up in South Kennewick, we have taken a step back on this project to focus more on the projects in South Kennewick.
Shrub Steppe Trails has two opportunities to develop and improve MTB trails in Richland. The first being the “Top of the World” park behind Yoke’s on Keene. The City of Richland has given us permission to build MTB trails on the land owned by Richland. While there are already trails in this area, we can take ownership now and create quality trails, and perhaps add a bike park or fun features, it is up to us. However part of this hill is BLM land, and we still have to establish an agreement with them. The final complication is that the land between the land owned by the city of Richland, and the BLM land is owned by a developer, and as such will be developed. There is however, a bridge of land connecting the two parcels that we would be able to use.
There is a second opportunity to build and improve trails in the Rancho Reata Canyon. A resident of Rancho Reata has asked us to help make the little used and over grown trails in the land easements of the Rancho Reata neighborhood multi-use, accessible and fun. While this effort would have to be lead by Rancho Reata residents, the result would be trails for everyone to respectfully use.
Progress in both of these projects would be dependent on finding “Trail Bosses”, volunteers in charge of these projects. We hope to find such volunteers as we open up our meetings to membership in order to invite more people to be involved.
SSTA Progress, IMBA affiliate
September 2023: As many of you know, Shrub Steppe Trails Alliance is a new organization, and as such there has been much work to do, just to get this up and running. We are excited to announce that all necessary work to set up has been done. The last piece being insurance. As a complete organization we were able to join the International Mountain Bike Alliance. IMBA has been very helpful during these early stages of advocacy and setting up, and has many resources to offer such as a grants data base, volunteer training and so on. While we have been hard at work advocating for trails, now, we will be able to hold events, such as rides, fund raisers and finally do actual trail work.
Kennewick Bike Park/Pump track
Update: The Kennewick City Park and Rec. Commission approved the bike park/pump track. The City Parks and Rec. Dept. is working with a company for a design and cost estimate. There is still the major hurdle of getting approval from the Kennewick City Council, however if approved, the park will be fully funded by the City.
SSTA has begun talking with the Kennewick Parks and Recreation Department about a bike park in Kennewick. We were very pleased to find that they already have the same Idea. Kennewick City Parks and Recreation Department is interested in putting a pump track in Vancouver Park, at the north end of Zintel Canyon, but they need a community partner to help. So the first thing that we did to help was attend a parks planning meeting with some of the commissioners and council members of Kennewick, in order to advocate for a bike park and MTB trails, as well as present ourselves as a community partner. The meeting went very well. Council members were very supportive. SSTA will now be working on getting started on the fundraising for this project in June.
Kennewick City Parks Comprehensive Plan
Kennewick City Parks are currently in the process of putting together the comprehensive plan for all the city parks. This plan will guide the priorities and projects of the Parks Dept. for the next several years. It is crucial to let the city know about both the desire and support for trails in this community at this stage of the planning. We have been fortunate enough to establish the beginnings of a working relationship with the City parks Department and so, Shrub Steppe Trails Alliance was invited to give input for the comprehensive plan at three different meetings. We were also told to invite our friends, which we did. We reached out to any organization we could that was interested in trails or bikes with the invite, including Chinook Cycling Club, Friends of Badger Mountain, Wheelhouse Community Bike shop, Bike Tri-Cities, Inter-Mountain Alpine Club, Tapteal Greenway and LCB Audubon Society. Between all these groups we made a descent showing and I believe we got our point across. We want and are willing to work for trails in Kennewick.
Tri-Cities Trails Social 2023
Organized and sponsored by Tapteal Greenway, this meeting was a pleasure to attend. We were excited to get to know the other organizations in the area that have goals similar to ours: creating and preserving mulit-use trails, mtb trails, conservation of our natural landscape.
The conversation was relaxed and productive. As a group we came to the conclusion that our organizations and our trails would benefit from the better communication between our groups. It was decided to create a shared calendar where all trails events, maintenance etc. from all groups could be seen in one place. That calendar has been created and can be found under the events tab here on the Shrub Steppe Trails Alliance website and will be in use soon.