TAMBA, NEMBA and CORBA MBU celebrate ten years
IMBA Trail News
Volume 11, Number 5
November 1998
Three IMBA affiliated clubs join IMBA this year in celebrating a tenth anniversary. The Tahoe Area Mountain Bicycling Association (TAMBA), the New England Mountain Bicycling Association (NEMBA) and the Mountain Bike Unit of the Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association (CORBA) were founded in 1988.
Ten years of volunteering
"This summer marks ten years of meetings, seminars, trail building, trail maintaining, trail repairing, letters, petitions, BBQs, film festivals, clinics, paperwork, sign making, education stations, raffles, t-shirts, stickers, etc.," wrote Gary Bell in the TAMBA newsletter. "This has all happened because of volunteer blood and sweat," as well as help from a number of private companies and other non-profits.
Bell noted that the US Forest Service and State Parks "don't have the money or manpower to keep up... So, after ten years of working together, these agencies actually call us for advice, manpower, or just to get out information." Readers of ITN may be familiar with three famous trails within TAMBA's domain: The Flume, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and the Tahoe Rim Trail.
Ten years of patrolling
CORBA's Mountain Bike Unit is the oldest off-road bicycle patrol in America, probably the world. Less than a year after CORBA was formed in 1987, Dan Kuehn, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, suggested that cyclists organize a program modeled after the then existing equestrian Mounted Assistance Unit. "On April 20, 1988, Matt Landis, Jim Hasenauer, Peter Heumann and Kurt Loheit met with the National Park Service and state officials to hammer out the first ever nationally recognized volunteer mountain bike patrol," wrote Mark Langton, a long-time CORBA board member, in CORBA's Terra Times newsletter. Langton and Chris Ksanznak "set out on the first official volunteer patrol in Malibu Creek State Park." Twelve members completed the MBU training that year, and by 1990 the number of certified patrollers had increased to 30. The effort quickly expanded to other parks. Today, 125 patrollers actively assist visitors on the public lands of the northwestern Los Angeles area.
For more about NEMBA, see the last ITN.
