Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, a Chapter of IMBA

CAMBC in the Local News!

CAMBC's contributions in the area of trail building and trail maintenance have been recently covered in an article by Jedd Ferris featured in the April 24, 2012 issue of C-Ville Magazine (Issue #24.17 :: 04/24/2012 - 04/30/2012).

Photos from April 21, 2012 Walnut Creek Workday

Local kids build berms! You can too! Join us at local trailwork events.

Image courtesy of S. Lindblom

Kids are really excited about building and maintaining our local trails, as evidenced by this photo taken by Sam Lindblom. Here you see Jasper Ramsey and Carter Lindblom helping build a sweet berm at Preddy Creek.

An hour or two of your time participating at a trailwork day has an immediately noticeable impact on improving and maintaining our local trail systems. Come join us at any one of the volunteer trailwork events listed in our calendar above.

Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day 2011!

CAMBC held its 8th Annual Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day on Sunday, October 2, 2011, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Preddy Creek Park. It was part of IMBA's National Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day celebration. Thank you to all the volunteers that came out and helped make this a special day to young mountain bike riders and future trail blazers. Click here to view the NBC 29 coverage of the event.

CAMBC and IMBA join forces!

September 1, 2011

I am pleased to announce to our members and friends that CAMBC is now a chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). The CAMBC/IMBA region is Central Virginia including, but not limited to, all or part of the following counties: Albemarle, Buckingham, Greene, Orange, Madison, Nelson, Louisa, and Fluvanna.

All CAMBC members are now automatically members of IMBA, and all regional IMBA members are now members of CAMBC. I want to welcome new IMBA contacts and congratulate everyone at CAMBC. With this announcement I want to inform members and friends

1. Why CAMBC has become a chapter of IMBA, and
2. What this means to CAMBC members and friends.

Read on if you want to know the details.

1. Why did CAMBC become a Chapter of IMBA?

   IMBA is the sole international organization representing concerns of mountain bikers on national and international issues. Examples include trail access, trail design and construction, land manager relationships, and congressional lobbying. As such, IMBA represents the best interests of mountain bikers everywhere, even if they are not IMBA members. However, advocacy and action on all these very important issues is often a numbers game. How many folks are represented? There's strength in numbers when it comes to advocacy.

   Therefore, CAMBC has joined forces with IMBA to improve our advocacy and action abilities in our region. As a result, IMBA also gains greater advocacy and action abilities regionally, nationally, and internationally. CAMBC's founding members also established the club in 2003 based on principles that are in direct alignment with those of IMBA. Thus, joining forces with IMBA was a natural course of action for CAMBC's Board of Directors. In fact, many of our members have been longstanding IMBA members.

   Here are a few regional issues that IMBA and CAMBC are dealing with and will continue to address as one unified organization:

   • Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (VA DCR). This facilitates our involvement in Virginia State Parks such as Douthat and Biscuit Run.
   • Biscuit Run State Park development. IMBA was invited to the advisory table for the Biscuit Run State Park development. CAMBC is also involved with this advisory group, but IMBA is recognized as the authority. By joining forces with IMBA, we hope to increase our advocacy for mountain bike trails in Biscuit Run.
   • Wilderness issues. IMBA has been negotiating and lobbying for years on wilderness issues in the George Washington National Forest (location of the SM100, big mountain rides, etc).
   • Trailwork education. CAMBC trail work education originated from IMBA documents, and IMBA "wrote the book" on how to build sustainable trails.
   • Unification of effort. IMBA is making efforts to unify all mountain bike clubs in Virginia so we can work as a team to address trail issues statewide.

2. What does it mean to CAMBC members that CAMBC is now a chapter of IMBA?

   • All regional members of IMBA become CAMBC members. With our conversion to IMBA Chapter all regional members of IMBA become CAMBC members and all CAMBC members become IMBA members. Everyone will enjoy all standard benefits of IMBA membership. For CAMBC members that have historically joined IMBA and CAMBC each year, from this point forward they will go through one process to gain membership in both organizations.
   • Fees for CAMBC dues will increase to IMBA rates, but members receive membership to both organizations. This means CAMBC members that usually join both organizations will save $20 on dues, while CAMBC members that usually don't join IMBA will pay $10 more, but they will be members of both organizations. CAMBC will share revenues from member dues with IMBA. Note that CAMBC will retain 100% of our fund raising that is not generated through member dues (this is the majority of our funding for those who haven't followed my emails about volunteering for SM100, Chimney Chase, Pavilion events, etc).
   • IMBA will begin managing our membership dues and renewals. This means that (1) you will get reminders before and after your dues are about to expire, (2) you will get a CAMBC/IMBA membership card when you join/renew, (3) you will have an "account" at www.imba.com where you can manage your own membership, see your membership history, etc, (3) you will receive quarterly newsletters from IMBA/CAMBC giving you insight/news on regional, national, and international mountain bike issues, and (4) CAMBC volunteers will not have to spend time and effort managing membership for CAMBC (something we don't do very well). IMBA will also make efforts to convert CAMBC non-member contacts in our region to dues-paying members.
   • CAMBC's membership will likely increase by 30% to 100% over the next year or two with the influx of IMBA regional members and contacts.
   • Discount on club liability insurance. CAMBC will receive a 15% discount on club liability insurance.
   • CAMBC will receive priority considerations from IMBA on regional issue advocacy, IMBA Trail Care Crew projects, assistance with grant writing, dealing with land manager issues, etc.
   • Increased advocacy influence. CAMBC will have more influence when negotiating with regional, state, county, and city organizations for trail access and trail building & maintenance issues.

There's lots more to add and/or explain but as you can see, there are compelling advantages to CAMBC members and friends that merit this union with IMBA.

As a member of CAMBC's Board of Directors I believe this may be one of the most strategic and forward-thinking steps CAMBC has taken since our founding. With this step CAMBC has strengthened our capabilities and set a course toward a future of increased advocacy, education, and organizational effectiveness. It gives me great pleasure to know that the "value" CAMBC offers to our members and our community is now greatly increased as is our ability to assure trail access for our friends and community.

All CAMBC members and contacts on our email list can expect to begin receiving communications from IMBA/CAMBC in the near future, beginning with welcoming announcements and membership information.

Thank you to everyone who supports CAMBC and the mountain biking community.

Dave Stackhouse and CAMBC Board of Directors:

Al Inigo
Alex Kurland
Ken Crawford
Sam Lindblom
Shawn Tevendale
Will Sanford

Join CAMBC now! We are always accepting membership applications and you can now join ONLINE! Click here for details.

CAMBC is a charitable non-profit organization, dedicated to educating and promoting mountain bike access in the Charlottesville Virginia area, maintaining trails, and providing a meeting point for local mountain bikers.

Join our E-mail list-serve! mtb@cambc.org is a list for announcing rides, trail work days, social events and general communication. Anyone can Join! Click here for instructions on subscribing.