Sweat & Soul
colorado
durango
by Erinn Morgan It’s a Tuesday morning and Mary Monroe and I are sawing off a fallen tree in Durango’s Horse Gulch with the help of her husband, Travis Brown. We were supposed to ride elsewhere on this crisp mountain morning, but at 8 a.m., I got a garbled message: something about a “fallen tree…gotta go…meet at Sale Barn Trail.” Who am I to turn down trail work when sweat equity is precisely what keeps this southwestern Colorado town’s growing cache of trails in such prime riding shape? Monroe is the executive director of Trails 2000, the Durango-based advocacy group that builds new trails and habitually tidies up the old ones. She grabbed the reins of this nonprofit in 2006, inheriting a 20-year-old trail legacy that was founded in 1989 with the concept of building 200 miles of trails by the year 2000. That goal has far been exceeded, yet the moniker remains. Trails 2000 has built the lion’s share 118
Courtesy Trails 2000
of local trails in D-Town and has won accolades across the country for its efforts. Monroe estimates that Trails 2000 volunteers contribute more than 3,000 hours of trail work every year to various land agencies to build and maintain the local trails. “All these trails are hand built by the community,” she says. Beyond the free pizza and camaraderie, why do they do it? “People who live in Durango just love the trails,” Monroe explains. “A recent city survey found that, time after time, people listed the most valued thing in the community as our trails.” Organizing and leading this behemoth cadre of trail workers is no easy feat, but Monroe has the cycling cred to handle the job. Originally from Wisconsin, she spent 10 years as the public relations and sports marketing director for Trek before working as chief marketing officer for U.S. Cycling [communitypages]
Members of Trails 2000—Durango’s proactive trail advocacy group—work on an alpine trail near Durango, Colo.
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