The Alaska ATV Club was officially started in the late winter of 2003 by a group of local ATV enthusiasts in south-central Alaska. Concerned about the lack of a unified voice for the ATV riders of all types, we focused our organization on a set of goals based on our Mission Statement “to promote the safe and enjoyable recreational use of ATVs of all kinds through-out the State of Alaska”.

Through education, trail work and cleanups, and “open for all” scheduled rides we are making a difference in the attitude of both the non-riding public toward ATVers and the ATV riders themselves.

Since the inception of the club we have been trying to make effective training more widely available to beginning riders in the area. Attempts to partner with existing training programs have proven unsatisfactory in curriculum or costs to students. We believe that the environment here is more extreme and the potential for injury high enough that curriculum suitable for lower 48 riders doesn’t cover enough of equipment repair and survival fundamentals as well as rough country riding. We also feel that more training on the Generally Allowed Uses on State Land and the differing status of trails; state or federal public land, easements across private lands etc, is needed to prepare ATV riders for riding in Alaska. We also are trying to make this training available to all beginning riders at no or very little cost. There is currently training available for a fee, to someone buying a new ATV the cost is reimbursed for one person in the family. We are concerned about the large group of users who buy used ATVs privately and the rest of the members of the families who have to pay the full price. As a result there are many ATV users who have not had any formal training at all. We are continuing to work at providing these riders the opportunity for training to improve their riding ability and knowledge.

Our primary effort in trail and area improvement so far has been the annual Spring Jim Creek Cleanups and fall cleanups in various trails and trailheads. We were all tired of and disgusted with the trash and junk that had collected in these areas. The last organized cleanup in the Jim Creek area had been done around ten years before our first effort there. The wooded area along Sullivan Road held household trash dump sites, abandoned vehicles and other un-identifiable pieces of equipment, and trashed out camp sites. On our first cleanup in May of 2003 we had 50 participants and picked up four 40 yard (demolition site sized) dumpsters of trash. Although we didn’t have weight slips for this cleanup, using the average weight per dumpster established during later cleanups this would be approximately 14 tons of trash. Almost all of this was picked up within ¼ mile of the parking lot. Rakes and shovels were the standard “armament” of the ATVers on this first cleanup. We couldn’t do a lot with a complete abandoned vehicle but we did drag some impressive hunks of steel out to the dumpster.

We started our door prize program with this first cleanup. Every participant who brings in a trash bag full of trash is entered in the door prize drawing. The prizes are donated by the dealers and now also a growing number of other area businesses. In the second year we started our continuing tradition of providing a BBQ for the participants in the cleanups with the help of area businesses and food stores. Over the last five years we have collected 60 tons of trash. The turnout has increased every year, last spring we had 387 people sign in on site for the Cleanup.

The important aspect of the numbers is that every year it takes more people to collect less trash. We went from the 14 tons with 50 people on the first cleanup to the 9.4 tons with 387 people last year. We have to go farther into the area and look harder for the trash. We are not only making a difference here, we are winning the war. Each year it stays cleaner and more people are making a special effort to keep it clean through the summer. There probably will always be a need for the Cleanup but there is a growing shift in attitudes about Jim Creek. Its reputation is changing from where you had to be a little crazy to spend time there to a place where families can camp, fish, recreate and enjoy the outdoors. We are proud of our contribution to this change so far and will continue to work to keep the change going.

Another of the goals of the Alaska ATV Club is to preserve access for ATVers to the trails and areas we can ride now and to work to regain access we have lost. To this end we fully supported the creation of the Knik River Public Use Area, encompassing all the state owned land in the Knik River Valley (including the Jim Creek drainage). The language of the legislation guarantees that there will always be motorized access available within the area. We are working with DNR in developing the Management Plan that will determine the parameters the different users will have to live with within this area. We are also involved with trails management in the Sutton area with DNR and the MatSu Borough. Through the Alaska Outdoor Access Alliance, an umbrella organization of groups concerned with access issues of all types, we are working with BLM on issues of motorized access along the Denali Highway, as well as working with Alaska State Parks and the MatSu Borough. We are also working with the MatSu Trails Council on access and trail maintenance issues. We will work with any organization that supports full access for all user groups.

We schedule two or three trail rides every month during the extended riding season. The locations change depending on water levels but we try to ride every third ride at Knik just to make it easier for the first time rider to ride with a group. Our rides are advertised on our web site, other ATV/Alaska oriented web sites and the Anchorage Daily News. People don’t have to join the club to fall in with the group on the trail and the more experienced club members will always help out the newer riders enjoy the ride and stay safe. We try to have fun on all the rides, regardless of how tough the trail and bad the weather and we usually succeed. We are trying to develop a more objective method of describing the difficulty of the area trails so riders won’t be surprised at what each trail brings. We try to run a wide variety of trails from Talkeetna to Eureka each year. One of the benefits of the ATV Club is that we are spreading the knowledge about the areas trails. When land planners start working on their plans, if no users can tell them about the area trails, the trails won’t be in the plan.

As we enter our sixth year we find we have plenty to do to reach our goals and we can look back at progress made. We are still looking for an economically feasible way to deliver ATV training classes. We are working with State of Alaska agencies now on curriculum and hope to have a class ready for rollout for the summer of 2008. We are planning our Spring 2008 Jim Creek / Knik River Public Use Area Cleanup for May 17th this year with between 400 to 500 volunteers showing up to help. We will do the Fall Cleanup at a different location as we rotate it among different trails. And we definitely call the Jim Creek Cleanup a continuing success, 60 tons of trash collected with 1250 man-days of effort by volunteers. Again, the best measurement of the success is the changing attitudes of everyone using the area, all the users are keeping it cleaner while they are using it.

We are planning on running 2-3 rides per month this summer with 1 of these at Knik River each month. We usually see groups ranging from 10 to 20 people turning out for each ride we run. Enough people to have fun, make it easy to get "un-stuck" and generally have a blast! We are always looking for new trails to use and new people to ride with!