00:00:00 Matthew Kuehlhorn
You’re speaking to this resource and I love the fact that you brought in how Gunnison trails is not just mountain biking trails like that is potentially a little bit of a of a myth still. And so you know the more we can do it’s it’s really broader from what I’m hearing in this conversation and it’s all trails and these trails are are certainly a resource for not just the folks that live here but the folks that travel and that are seeking this recreation like. Secrets out we have world class trails around here. Like she’s really world class. Welcome to the Kooler Lifestyle podcast. I’m your host, Matt Keelhorn, and I’m excited to have you join me as I interview community members and business leaders from the communities in which I live, work, and serve through my business Kooler Garage Doors. We’re going to bring you highlights on characters in our communities. Why? Because Community matters, and I want to know more about who is behind our business and leadership in order to understand and support the Community fabric that our relationships make up. And collectively, we can build stronger communities that support our lifestyles, our youth, and our health. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Kooler Lifestyle Podcast. I’m your host, Matt Kelhorn. Today, I’ve got a really great friend of mine. Tim Kugler, he’s the executive director for Gunnison trails here in the Gunnison Valley. And I’m excited for this conversation. I’ve got some questions. I’m going to open up my brain and learn a little bit more about Gunnison trails and trails and recreation in general. Tim, thanks so much for joining.
00:01:37 Tim Kugler
Yeah, good morning, man. Thanks for having me on.
00:01:40 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah. Are you beaming in from a Home Office here in Gunnison?
00:01:45 Tim Kugler
I am actually beaming in from a Home Office up in Crested Beach South,
00:01:49 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Awesom
00:01:49 Tim Kugler
which is where we’re living temporarily before moving, relocating back to Gunnison.
00:01:54 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, yeah, right on. Yeah. I’m excited to get into Gunnison trails and in the evolution of this organization, kind of the why behind it. But before we do, I want to just build some context for listeners. Where did you grow up, Tim?
00:02:09 Tim Kugler
I am from Alexandria, VA which is about 15 minutes outside of Washington DC on the Virginia side right on born in 1983 and I my parents are still back back east in the original house I grew up in and I’m one of five kiddos and and my siblings are kind of spread out all across the the US so most of us kind of headed West after after college.
00:02:35 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Cool. Where do you fall in the five? Are you middle baby
00:02:39 Tim Kugler
in the pecking order? I’ve got three older brothers and then there’s myself and then we all have a younger sister. So the running joke in the family as my parents just kind of kept trying until they got their their, their daughter
00:02:55 Matthew Kuehlhorn
right on and how did it, how did it progress? So Virginia into Gunnison, give us the snapshot there, how that unfolded.
00:03:04 Tim Kugler
I was really fortunate to go to school in in Charlottesville, VA, which is kind of in central Virginia, right at the foothills in the Shenandoah Mountains. And that was sort of my first taste of. I hate to say rural’s not the right word, but Charlottesville at the time was probably a town of oh, 100,000 people, maybe decent sized college town and. And just a really, you know, coming from the DC area where everything’s kind of paved and there’s shopping malls and it’s just busy. You know, Charlottesville kind of gave me my first glimpse of sort of, you know, mountains and and it’s certainly not in the mountains, but pretty close by. It’s right in the foothills there. And man, I’m going to have to can I stop that real quick?
00:03:49 Matthew Kuehlhorn
You’re blowing.
00:03:50 Tim Kugler
You hear that on your end, okay, hang on one SEC.
00:03:53 Matthew Kuehlhorn
It’s not that bad. People, people do it all the time,
00:03:56 Tim Kugler
I know, but. Okay, the pause. You mean okay, stand by.
00:04:02 Matthew Kuehlhorn
This will be the this will be the cover photo that would just you like zooming and zoning in eye photos.
00:04:16 Tim Kugler
I know, right? My eyeball is doing this. OK, turning that off. Messages. You can your listeners can just see how like crazy popular I am. Just the constant Bing, Bing mail messages. All right. We’ll see if that’s any better. Do you want to revert back to anything pick up where I left off?
00:04:43 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah. You kind of you kind of stop midstream there. You’re talking about Charlottesville. Yeah.
00:04:54 Tim Kugler
Charlottesville, It’s it’s an amazing town. It’s it’s like I said right in the the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains. And I got that was kind of when I got into mountain biking. My brother John was actually in Med school at the University of Virginia when I started there as an undergrad. So he kind of took me under his wing, kind of introduced me to mountain biking and trail running and I just was hooked on on getting out and getting after it in the woods and so. From there when I graduated I I chased my brother Mike out to Truckee CA where he was living so right in the Sierra Nevada and I was out there for about two years and then I actually moved relocated to to Crested Butte and my trip there was you know I I I passed through on a cross country Dr. couple years prior and it I rode Reno flag bear Dead Man’s Trail loop which is up Cement Creek saw like. I think I saw a black bear. I saw a raccoon the size of our, our £35 Aussie Shepherd. I was just like, you know, abundant wildlife and and I was just sort of hooked and was like, I gotta move. So the next summer I moved here. In July and to across the Butte and I, I haven’t left the valley since that was in 2008.
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00:06:40 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Right on. So did you move without without a job? You’re just like, I I need to go to this place. The records are amazing.
00:06:49 Tim Kugler
You know, I was actually, in hindsight, I was actually pretty responsible. I had lined up a job as a bike mechanic at Big AL’s bicycle heaven. So that was my first job I did. Move here without a without any sort of housing set up. And I was actually fortunate. I camped out Slate River Rd. for a month, which is not really feasible. This day and age like that was in July and I felt like I had that that whole drainage to myself for you know what is now a very busy time of year in the Crested Butte Valley or in the Gunnison Valley and. Yeah. Lower Loop Trail was my commute to work and so it was just sort of yeah it was like it was like heaven.
00:07:36 Matthew Kuehlhorn
The good old days.
00:07:37 Tim Kugler
Yeah I know it’s funny that would be able to say that now. You know I always kind of laughed at folks and said that but but that was that’s sort of my, my one thing I can point to in my life where I’ve seen pretty dramatic change is what I was able to do when I moved here in LA and now if you were to try and if you try if you try and camp up the slate drainage and in July you kind of. Yeah, there there’s very little options for that unless you’ve gotten here you know and set up, set up camp well ahead of time, well ahead of the weekend.
00:08:08 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, it’s just always busy. Yeah, now I get that. So then you got involved I guess when did you get involved with Gunnison trails and we can just open this up a little bit broader too and keep you talking. So when did you get involved with Gunnison trails and then give us that little snapshot of of history for the for the organization.
00:08:29 Tim Kugler
Yeah, I I actually got first got involved with trail maintenance and trail building locally with the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association. So they’re a nonprofit trail advocacy group. They actually boast being the oldest mountain bike club in the world. They, they started in 1983, so I joined their board of directors in 2012, I believe, and I was a board member with them for five years, so 2012 to 2017. I went back to Graduate School at Western. They have a really cool masters in environmental management program, which I was the 2nd graduating class of that. So I, my wife and I moved down to Gunnison in 2015 so I could start graduate study there and then. It was really serendipitous right around the time I got my masters and sort of I I did sort of like a baseline study of our. Trail sort of trail reports or rather trail plans here in the county. So you know different municipalities have have trail plans and then the local organizations have their trail plans and kind of did a study of how well those interface and and whether or not there’s sort of like a big overarching big picture plan that kind of encompasses all those or if everyone’s just sort of putting out their own ideas and. The good old days. Knew quite a bit about the the local trail advocacy scene. Yeah. And and a little history on Gunnison trails. It was founded in 2006 by Dave Weens and it was you know from its inception it was basically a way to assist our Bureau of Land Management. So the the public Land Management agency that takes care a lot of the public lands around Gunnison. We were fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of BLM land and then also a lot of Forest Service land. And one of our most popular trail networks, Hartman Rocks, which is just a couple miles South of Gunnison and boasts about 45 miles of trail. That network has kind of been an evolution where it used to be. You know, this is before my time, but I always hear folks say, you know, back in the day you go out there and that’s where people would take, you know, pickup trucks, worth of old washing machines and refrigerators. There’s just kind of a dumping ground, a lot of old tires and. Through a lot of local effort it’s been cleaned up and then some of the sort of historic usercreated trails were sort of adopted into into a managed system by the BLM and Gunnison trails kind of came along to assist the BLM and sort of maintaining those trails. And it’s you know I’ve I’ve been fortunate to ride and and hike in a lot of different places but not not by any stretch as much as some other folks from around here. And and everyone always returns to how fortunate we are to have a a a network of trails like that like right. Close in proximity to Gunnison it’s it’s just really cool exposed granite boulders and and rolling sort of sage covered covered hills and and I just really unique trail network that to this day I don’t think we could build a network you know if we were given that blank canvas again I think it’d be really hard to recreate the trails that are out there they’re just they’ve just evolved through time and each one is unique and. Uses the terrain really, you know exceptionally well. It’s just an amazing network that I feel really lucky to now kind of inherit the stewardship of.
00:12:21 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, this is, this is good and I guess for my understanding and listeners like Gunnison trails. So what I’m hearing is an advocate for trails, also a bit of a a steward, a manager in partnership with. Land managers like the Bureau of Land BLM,
00:12:41 Tim Kugler
there you go. Yeah just use your acronyms.
00:12:44 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And in in our county we have what is it, 8080 plus percent is public land mix of BLM which is probably the primary and National Park and Forest Service.
00:12:58 Tim Kugler
Yeah. I mean it’s, yeah it’s wild Western. You know the western US has. You know the majority of the public lands in the US but you look at some of these sort of more rural counties like Gunnison and yeah we have something like 80 I’ve heard like anywhere from 80 to 83% public lands which is you know from like a recreation tourism standpoint those are that’s gold for us you know that’s that’s just a lot of a lot of folks come here to to use those lands and experience those lands
00:13:30 Matthew Kuehlhorn
and that that user. Is varied. I mean we have, we have hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, horse, right. And and all these users, they don’t always get along. There’s sometimes conflicts.
00:13:43 Tim Kugler
Yeah. Completely. Yeah. And you know I would say we’re still really fortunate and that we have not only do we have an immense amount of public land, but we also have you know a lot of trails that access that public land like we. We still have the ability to spread out a lot of users. So that’s not to say there’s not conflict or even just kind of degradation to the resource from the amount of people coming. But you know, you look at areas, you know, folks will always say like in July, like, Oh my God, Crestview is, is just overwhelming. You know, it’s so busy and those same visitors kind of laugh and they’re like, are you kidding me? This place is like super sleepy. So it’s also a perspective thing like if you’re coming from. You know, maybe an area on the Front Range of Colorado where it’s just you know, you go to any given trailhead and you’re going to fight for parking. Some of those issues were still that’s not to say we, we aren’t seeing some of those sort of trailhead congestion issues, but it’s at a different scale to some of these other places and we’re we’re really lucky in that sense. But yeah we definitely deal you know there’s been in 20. Oh, goodness, 2017 or 2018, I’m going to get those dates wrong. The county convened sort of a working group of, you know, public land managers and recreation entities, various nonprofits and then other just sort of citizens called the sustainable tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee. And that committee, you know, it’s kind of been tasked with helping manage our recreation and and do so in a way that sort of protects the resource. So it’s not necessarily saying our sort of recreational tourism is bad. It’s more, let’s get it get in front of some of the problems that we’ve seen crop up in other areas. And that committee’s been really successful and kind of managing some of these, the conflicts that can arise or or some of the, you know, degradation that we’ve seen from from increased tourism. And I I kind of point to that committee is solving a lot of or at least helping mitigate a lot of those sort of usercreated conflicts that can that can come up and. You know in in other areas, yeah.
00:15:53 Matthew Kuehlhorn
What would it be like if Gunnison trails is not around if it never formed?
00:15:58 Tim Kugler
Like a chaos, utter, utter chaos out there.
00:16:01 Matthew Kuehlhorn
You know, like pirated pirated trails and maybe lost access and like the
00:16:06 Tim Kugler
yeah, I would say you know, we do we spend a lot of time doing trail maintenance, just like basic trail maintenance. It’s not the most you know a lot of trail users are always looking for the next new. Like piece of trail that’s going to be built like oh, what, what’s new this summer. And we have been fortunate to build some new trail behind the College in that in that area called Signal Peak. But you know, for the most part, most, most of our thank you, most of our time is spent just maintaining the trails that we have. And I have gone to a lot of areas that you know, don’t have an organization like Gunnison Trails or the Crestview Mountain Bike Association that is kind of out there. Maintaining the resource sort of at a full time capacity all summer and and it’s just night and day to see the difference in sort of the the overall trail experience. So you know trails like any anything need constant upkeep they they erode from natural conditions so rain and and snow and and then obviously the more users you have on those trails they also bring their own impact so. It’s sort of this, you know it’s great job security as long as you have trails and people using them you need to maintain them. And unfortunately our our Land Management agencies the Forest Service and BLM, they’ve just kind of seen a lot of their recreational budgets cut in the last you know several decades. So in a way they they sort of look to groups like ours as a as a solid partner so we they can they can reliably count on Gunnison trails to to help just do this basic maintenance that’s needed every year. So you know without a Gunnison trails do you know there’s lots of communities that maybe don’t have the same you know capacity for a group like ours and it it just shows and sort of the quality of the trails. You know we’ve we also are able to put resources towards looking towards new trail development which is always really exciting and then and we’ve also. You know the evolution of Gunnison trails which I kind of mentioned earlier, you know when we started out it was 100% apartment rocks because that was sort of the the trail system that was on the ground and and needed needed maintenance. And since then you know we’ve put we’ve got a 20 mile trail system in signal peak that’s relatively new. And then with our trail crew, which I’ll touch on that in a minute, we’ve been able to we now spend pretty much half of our trail work season, so about 1500 hours we spend just maintaining. Wilderness trails that are surrounding Gunnison. So a lot of people kind of pack Gunnison trails as a sort of a mountain bike organization, which is, which is fair. You know, we definitely love our mountain bike trails and a lot of the trails around Gunnison. So Hartman rocks and signal Peak are open to mountain bikes and they’re sort of built to that mountain bike spec. But we spend an equal amount of time working on trails or mountain bikes aren’t allowed and they’re, you know, for me that’s sort of probably the most rewarding part of my job because these are trails that have been on the ground since like. You know the days of mining and and the CCC so like 1920s and 30s and they’re just again trails in today’s climate would be really hard to to put in the places they are. They just go through these amazing amazing areas and so to be able to kind of steward those and maintain them for generations is kind of it’s just really special for myself and and our organization to be able to do that I.
00:19:38 Matthew Kuehlhorn
There’s a couple of things I love. I love your passion for it and you keep referencing stewardship and I think that’s beautiful. I think we got the right guy in the right seat. Like good job and
00:19:49 Tim Kugler
thanks
00:19:49 Matthew Kuehlhorn
you’re you’re speaking to this resource and I love the fact that you brought in how Gunnison trails is not just mountain biking trails like that is potentially a little bit of a of a myth still. And so you know the more we can do it’s it’s really broader from what I’m hearing in this conversation and it’s all trails. And these trails are are certainly a resource for not just the folks that live here but the folks that travel and that are seeking this recreation like secrets out. We have world class trails around here. Like she’s really world class and and that’s a beautiful thing. My question for you is referencing my past history. When you were five years old, Tim, I got into mountain biking. I bought my first Schwinn Marauda. I think it was it. What’s the deal? Saved up my paper out money and I bought a mountain bike and my buddies and I would go out behind the old Asane asylum in Traverse City and we would build trails and we named them and they’re still alive today with the names on them. Are there people that go around Crested Butte Gunnison and and we’re just pirating trails? What’s the cost or the benefit and is there any enforcement around there is just my curiosity just because of my upbringing like. I was a hack, by the way. Like our trail, our trail building skills was like we weren’t there. But I’m just curious, you got to start.
00:21:16 Tim Kugler
You got to start somewhere, right? I’ll start. No, I mean, I would say, you know, mountain biking is a young sport. You know, it hasn’t been around forever. And part of that culture is sort of that, that sort of rogue trail building. You know back in the day when Hartman’s was kind of first getting put on the map a lot of those trails were from just that someone going out with a shovel and putting a trail on the ground and or you know riding a Moto through this age and kind of burning in a trail. So that’s very much like ingrained in our in the in the mountain bike culture and that’s that’s like you can agree or disagree with it but that’s just kind of the way it is but it has evolved like you know today if if every young kid. Who got a bike wanted to go out and and dig a new trail. You know we just don’t have the the resource for that anymore. Like there are enough people on the landscape and we’ve sort of you know developed a lot of the landscape in such a way that we’re, we’re we’re finding that we’re, we’re we found the limits if you will. So yeah there’s certainly there’s always going to be Rogue trail building that goes on. But you know, for us as a sort of an educational outreach organization, we, you know, we certainly can’t condone that. We know it’s kind of part of that culture. But, but you know, a lot of that goes into, you know, a lot of our work goes into not only sort of trying to show folks. Not just saying no and say like hey you know you’re going to get prosecuted or or you know going after like we’re not really policing that sort of activity. But at least what I can try and do and what Gunnison trails can try and do is just show why that you know sort of new trail development. Why why the process. You know the hoops that we have to jump through as an organization. Why those are important and it you know to the 16 year old teenager that just wants to go out and. Build a sweet trail and ride his bike like some of that. Some of my spiel is going to kind of fall on deaf ears you know because I I get that they they want to build their own creation and and maybe having an area where that’s sort of okay is is not a bad idea to kind of scratch that itch of of the young kid that wants to go build trail but but you know certainly for I think it really helps when people can kind of understand the the. You know, the big picture of all the users out there on the landscape and why, you know, a trail that might be really rad for you and your buddies has these other impacts that you might not, you know, might not be able to fathom in sort of your smahal. You know, the way you the lens that you look through and that goes for all users. You know, there’s there’s so many trail users that just you know that their experience is kind of what dictates. Who they can relate to and and how they want to use the trails and how they want to sort of have their outdoor you know outdoor experience. And it’s it’s really unfortunate because we have a lot of varied trail users here and the more people can relate to the other user the better off you know the the landscape and and just just people getting along out there is going to be. So you know there’s a lot of animosity between you know silent users and people who might just want to hike and they. They’re going to turn their nose up in a mountain biker and same thing. I know plenty of mountain bikers that can’t stand the sound or side of a Emoto and then you’ve got equestrians and hunters and it’s just it’s a really varied landscape and nothing helps more than when folks can kind of relate to their other trail user. Doesn’t mean they have to go out and buy Emoto. But being able to relate to that other user group is it just goes really far and and getting folks to to cooperate a little bit. Yeah yeah I’m hearing that. Me and.
00:25:08 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Power in the big picture just seeing a larger larger picture and seeing how partnerships and I mean I can just think of you know if I was to go out and hack a trail like that just creates an erosion issue and and the trails that are maintained and out there like they take a lot of that into account and it’s a very user. It’s, it’s erosion, it’s natural resources taking account the big picture yeah.
00:25:38 Tim Kugler
And you know there are there’s plenty of areas where you know based on the the kind of local climate and geology like a really steep gnarly trail might actually I I wouldn’t call that like sustainable but it might not erode at the same rate as say a trail here in in you know Gunnison. You know the other thing that I I constantly you know there’s a lot of places that have been sort of denuded of their wildlife and they have you know whether it’s just like. Huge development everywhere or people on the landscape forever. But they just have you know it’s a little bit more I don’t want to say accepted but there’s just more of a culture of that kind of trails everywhere. And even though you know a lot, a lot of folks would say we have trails everywhere here and we do, we have trails you know in every drainage you know pretty much on every peak. But we’re still really fortunate where we live to have like intact healthy wildlife populations and so finding that balancing act between. You know, trails and recreational trail use and still sustaining sort of this other immensely important resource is something unique to certainly where we live here and and that’s kind of a challenge. But also, you know, I think a lot of us live here because of that, because of that sort of the wildness that we still have out our out our back door.
00:26:59 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, yeah, I love it. What, what’s on the horizon? What are we excited for any? Big trails and development or
00:27:08 Tim Kugler
yeah, we we kind of mentioned signal peak earlier that was we proposed a trail development plan in an area signal peak, which is right behind the college. It’s a, it’s like a 15,000 acre chunk of BLM land that’s always had sort of historic use on it, but it didn’t have an official sort of managed trail system until our plan was approved with the BLM in 2018. So that sort of adopted. A little over 7 miles of trail that we’re kind of, you know, always used over the years, but that sort of made them official, if you will. And then it also allowed us to build an additional, oh, I think at this point it’s like 20 miles of trail we’ve been chipping away that we’ve got now there’s a little over if you combine in those seven miles, I think there’s a little over 22 miles of trail out there. We’ve been we’ve been averaging about 3 miles a trail a summer constructing 3 new miles a trail a summer which has been really really amazing opportunity for our organization. And this summer we’re hoping to add on another 2 miles to a trail we finished last year called Sunny D so this new trail will will climb up to it’ll pretty much be the furthest the trail furthest out in the system. So in the in the far like northeast corner of the system. And that’ll provide some connectivity back to some some trails that have been on the ground for ever, which would be really cool. So that’s sort of our big fall plans. And then we also run a five person trail crew all summer long and that that crew is going to be doing a bunch of different projects, but we kind of start with trail maintenance in the low, low country. So signal and Hartman rocks early on in the spring. And then as the sort of the higher mountains melt out, we we kind of move up into the forest and start maintaining some trails in the West S Wilderness. This year we’re hoping to get a contract with the Forest Service to do five to six weeks of work on a trail. The South Lotus Trail, you’ve been on that one for. I have. Yeah, that one’s in the Fossil Ridge wilderness and is a an amazing trail goes by a couple of really cool lakes and that needs sort of. It’s due for some heavy maintenance. So just some some projects that you know you can go in and clear to treat down trees every year. But some of those sort of projects that might take a little bit longer just start to kind of pile up until you can really devote some time and resources to it. So hopefully our crew will be in there working in a pretty like one of the coolest spots in in the county five to six weeks and then we actually just. The Colorado Trail Foundation, we’re really lucky to where Gunnison sits on the Colorado Trail, which is a long distance trail over 500 miles in length from Denver to Durango. A big portion of that goes to Gunnison County. And so it’s just to our South and they have various trail adopters that kind of help them maintain different sections and they reached out to us about seeing if we could adopt A section or two, so. That’ll be kind of cool to have our own little you know adopt A adopt A section of trail with the Colorado Trail. Yeah. And that one’s just again kind of speaking to some of these sort of like iconic historical trails that one is like particularly special. Yeah. Yeah that’s that’s definitely that e-mail came through last week and that got me pretty excited to to have that opportunity.
00:30:34 Matthew Kuehlhorn
That’s cool. Is there any, is there any work development from Gunnison and Crest Butte Trail I’ve heard rumors always been like.
00:30:42 Tim Kugler
Gunny, Gunny trails, when we started we had our our kind of big three big picture ideas trails and signal Peak, a Northwest Trail system, so kind of right off the van tile trails that sit in town. BLM land kind of comes right down to the Gunnison River there. So we’ve always kind of envisioned a trail system sort of in that corner that would maybe connect out to like the Mill, Mill Creek drainage, which is a really popular access point for the West Out Wilderness and then. Gunni to CB was, you know, we kind of have a route hose and there’s all sorts of wildlife hurdles with that one. So that one’s always just been like, yeah, an idea we’d love to love to see happen, but it’s it’s one that I think it would, you know, we don’t have any sort of, we don’t have a plan in the works right now for that one. It’s just sort of still just plan, a big picture idea.
00:31:36 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, got you. Close this out here. I want to know, I mean obviously maybe not obvious to all our listeners, but guns and trails is a heavily volunteer driven association and how can people reach out, get in touch with you and get involved with the work that you guys are doing. Yeah, we.
00:31:59 Tim Kugler
You know, I kind of highlighted our trail crew, but the the bread and butter of the organization is still our volunteer trail work days, which we do starting in the spring. So as soon as the trails at Hartman Rocks open, we’re usually out there just doing weekly maintenance. So we do something called trail work Tuesdays each two. Well, it’s usually averages maybe every other Tuesday in the spring and fall, where we meet at about 4:00 PM, work till about 7:00 PM, and then afterwards we we enjoy libations from our local brewery, High Alpine Brewing. And we grill grill some weenies and and just kind of hang out those to find out about that. We you know we post stuff to our social our socials and then I always send out an e-mail to our our membership base and it’s easy to sign up for those if you go to our website a little window pop up on the home screen and ask if you want to join our our e-mail list and we don’t send out a time but that’s like the best way for us to to kind of keep in touch with folks. And yeah those weekly opportunities are they’re just fun. You get to see like just the kooky trail of folks in the in the community that that love nothing more than coming out and helping maintain the resource. And it’s it’s how I got into it. You know, I started maintaining trails in college and and it was you know, it’s fun work, but at the end of the day it’s like the personalities that come out and just like that sense of community that you get is what keeps people coming back. Yeah that’s that’s certainly we encourage folks to to come on out and and lend a hand. It’s always a a good time.
00:33:28 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah I love it man. We’ll definitely include your social links for Gunnison trails and and website information there. And then you know I also heard member like people can become members. Yeah and that’s a big piece of of support and I definitely encourage people to check out getting involved with Gunnison trails and
00:33:49 Tim Kugler
Thanks man.
00:33:50 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah Tim any final closing thoughts?
00:33:52 Tim Kugler
man I just appreciate you having me on and and shining a little light on on Gunnison trails and and yeah thank you. Thanks for highlighting. You have all the different you know players in this community and beyond. And yeah I hope if listeners have any questions I’m easy to reach. So yeah feel free to reach out and and contact.
00:34:13 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah I love it man. I appreciate you. We don’t hang out often enough to play ping pong or
00:34:18 Tim Kugler
we didn’t even talk. We didn’t even talk ping pong. No. I thought we’d at least be this one at least half. This would be talking smack about ping pong.
00:34:27 Matthew Kuehlhorn
We’ll gear up another time, but we are due for for a couple good games there, my friend. And
00:34:31 Tim Kugler
we are, we are.
00:34:32 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I’m glad that we had this time to connect. I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
00:34:36 Tim Kugler
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me on.