Tired of trail-side trash? Adopt a bike trail

Instead of complaining about all the trash along a section of a bike path, members of the Mid-Valley Bicycle Club in Corvallis, Oregon, are taking matters into their own hands.

Ten cyclists met at the bike path along 99W, and in little more than an hour had picked up 20 large garbage bags of crap from along the one-mile stretch. Among the items they found was a stripped down bicycle frame, which they're considering upgrading into a new bike.

Good deeds like these aren't isolated to Corvallis. Bicycling groups all over are joining “Adopt-a-trail” campaigns in communities to keep their trails clean.

Adopting

The state of Delaware, above, has an official Adopt-a-Bike Path program. Schaumburg, Illinois, will post your group's name to the bike trail and the City of Sonoma, California, encourages residents to adopt bike paths along the city's waterways.

A google search of “adopt a trail” followed by your community or state name is likely to result in a local program.

In addition, many of the longer rail-to-trail bike networks are sponsored by associations that take on litter pickup and trail maintenance among their duties. For instance check out the Capital Crescent Trail website for the DC area and Olympic Discovery Trail in Washington state.

Mountain trails

There are also groups like the Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay that looks after mountain bike trails in the hills east of San Francisco. In fact, one of the major missions of the International Mountain Bicycle Association is trail building and maintenance.

If you're not a joiner, you can still do your part. I once read where some C&O Canal bike patrol volunteers riding along the towpath were stopped by a cyclist who wanted to report some broken glass that needed to be picked up. They thanked the person, but asked why that person didn't just take care of it themselves.

When I rode along the Cedar River bicycle path this summer, I'd see a guy out there on a bike festooned with a couple of garbage bags. He'd put recycleables in one and trash in another. No association or adopt-a-trail logo, he was just doing it all on his own.

That's something we can all do.