COGGS is a local nonprofit cycling advocacy group that builds and maintains many of the single-track trails in Duluth, including Piedmont, Spirit Mountain, Lester Park, etc.
In the past six months there have been some incredible things happening with COGGS that I wanted to take a moment to share with the rest of the Twin Ports community.
The absolute biggest thing is that a proposed multi-use, single-track trail has been accepted by the city of Duluth’s Master Plan (Huge thank you to Andrea Grygo for creating this!). The city is behind COGGS mission of developing a cross-city multi-use, single-track trail and making Duluth a destination mountain biking town.
Hansi Johnson, IMBA’s Midwest director, knows of no other city in the entire country that has the potential to have a trail of this scope within the city limits. This big picture dream has all the right components coming together for us to make it a reality.
More immediately, COGGS has verbal approval to begin designing specific projects for Mission Creek and the Spirit Mountain Nordic system. That, along with our current projects of Lester Park and Brewer Park, provide instant opportunity to continue helping establish the kind of trail system that local riders want and will draw riders from other areas.
It may seem like COGGS is doing great and better riding opportunities keep popping up all over the place. To a degree this is true, there are more riding opportunities, for a wider ranger of cyclists, than there were five years ago. However, currently we are severely limited by the amount of volunteer work we have to work with. The projects in Mission Creek, Spirit Mountain and Brewer park have all had an open door for moving forward for 1-3 years already, but because with our current level of help we can only really focus on one or two projects at a time, they sit dormant.
The COGGS Board is working on ways to try and remedy this issue by looking at fundraising and grant opportunities. We also have the Yes! Duluth program providing workers that are being coordinated by a COGGS paid supervisor. This crew is currently working in Lester Park, and volunteers can also join them in their efforts.
Things like the Yes! Duluth program are helping, but we need additional help to make the dreams we all have of Duluth being the best place to live and ride bikes it can possibly be.
So how can you help? Here are a few options:
1. Come out and volunteer at trail work days. If you’re a COGGS member you will get regular email updates letting you know when and where we’ll be working. We regularly work, or have the access to work throughout Duluth, so no matter where you live we can be working on a trail nearby. Our website, www.coggs.com, has a membership form and also links to trailwork updates.
2. Donate to COGGS. Because we are a 501-C3, your contribution is tax deductible. Many members have been utilizing this, most notably the saint who matched the funds we collected from our spring membership drive.
3. Help with grant writing and seeking grant opportunities. Other towns of similar size have significantly bigger trailbuilding budgets and their local clubs just do planning while they hire the construction to be done. Rapid City, SD has had over a million dollars of money flow through they local cycling clubs. Specks on the map like Copper Harbor, MI have budgets over ten times ours. By winning grants we can pay for our trails to be done by professionals.
4. Participate in COGGS events. We have workdays, we put on races, we go on trips, we have parties. All of this builds community and this makes the work fun.
Again, right now each and every one of us has the opportunity to help the Twin Ports take a huge jump forward as far as being an epic place to ride if we all just do a little bit. I look forward to working with each of you to help this vision become a reality.
Adam Sundberg
COGGS Chair
