Volunteer
How You Can Support NIMBA
The Northern Indiana Mountain Bike Association (NIMBA) is a not-for-profit, all-volunteer group dedicated to the sport of mountain biking. NIMBA works to help riders find trails, promote the responsible use of mountain bike trails, maintain existing trails, and assist local park departments in new trail development.
We rely upon annual membership fees, direct donations, and fundraising events like the 16 Trail Challenge as well as annual mountain bike races to fund our activities.
We also organize and participate in weekly rides, special events, campouts, and other activities our members are willing to organize and attend.
Trail WorkDays
Trail Work Days will be starting in April!
With the official first day of Spring just 12 days away, I am catching myself glancing at my bike (Giant Fathom 1) much more often lately. I don’t have a fat tire bike, and I want to get out on the singletrack. I swear the bike feels it too.
As much as I want to ride, I am also acutely aware that trail riding is only possible because of the thousands of volunteer hours put into NIMBA's 45 miles of trails each year. Last week NIMBA was honored to host a dinner and meeting with some of our core volunteers and share our plans and ideas with them for volunteerism and trail workdays in 2023. With their support, we are ready to share some of those details with you all.
- NIMBA will be hosting Spring "clean up" days at all of our trails throughout the month of April. These will entail clearing sticks and general debris, minor trimming of the brush as needed, any minor repairs, and general trail prep. See below or Facebook events for the schedule.
- We are going to do some semi-major changes to each trail, each year. Think section reroutes, feature building, and flow design. We will post these work days on the web and Facebook as they get scheduled.
- We will be setting up a trail steward for each of our 6 trails. This trail steward will help coordinate and support the dedicated volunteers we have that live nearest each trail. During the prodigious weed-growth season, occasional work days just don't cut it. Having a point person to communicate anytime with a nearby team is much more efficient.
- Putting in the hours needed to keep up with the trails is a sacrifice, and the entire Michiana mountain bike community appreciates all of you who have worked on our trails. To show that appreciation more visibly, we are developing a rewards program for when volunteers reach specific trail hour milestones. Details are not finalized, but anyone who at least attends one entire workday (roughly 5 hours) will get something. Rewards will scale with the milestones.
- Our volunteer hours log is back on our website at nimbamtb.org/submit-volunteer-hours. We will use this form to track hours for our trail rewards program and share with local park and community leadership. Those of you regularly maintaining trails - please use this form after you log hours. If you are considering doing trail work on your own time, there are several things we will need to touch base on first. Please reach out to NIMBA or Jason Hanks via Facebook Messenger or email at nimba.bike@gmail.com
See you on the trails!
Jeff Pedler - President
Jason Hanks - Trail Maintenance and Volunteer Coordinator
Northern Indiana Mountain Bike Association
