The iconic Demo Forest Flow trail near Santa Cruz, CA, is being rebuilt this spring

The Soquel Demonstration State Forest (SDSF), located just north of Santa Cruz, CA, is truly one of the OG mountain bike trail systems. The trails in the “Demo Forest” have been ridden for decades, and they still serve as a popular mountain bike destination for mountain bikers in and around the Bay Area. “These are the most mountain bike-oriented trails — legitimate trails — we have in the region,” said Matt De Young, Executive Director of Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship (SCMTS).

In 2015, the SDSF got a major upgrade when the “Flow Trail” was built. Ten years ago, flow trails were still a relatively new concept, and the Demo Forest Flow Trail quickly became known as one of the best flow trails in the state, if not the country. In many ways, the Flow Trail in SDSF helped define the term and provided a model for other trail builders to follow.

“[It’s] hugely popular,” said De Young, adding that it’s by far the most popular trail in the forest. According to trail counter data, the Flow Trail receives roughly 50,000 visits per year. “People travel from all over to ride those trails. I’ve met people from all over the world out there on the Flow Trail. Ten years in, it’s been very popular, and people still love it.”

This spring, SCMTS is rebuilding and revamping the Flow Trail to make it better than ever.

Why is the rebuild necessary?

“Summertime here in California, we don’t have any rain from June through October, so soil moisture really depletes,” said De Young. Due to the dry, soft soil, “the trail gets a little bit beat up over the summer.”

Flow trails generally require more maintenance than historic singletrack trails to keep the berms from getting cupped out and to maintain sharp and poppy lips on the jumps. In addition, flow trails with a high trail speed can form braking bumps, especially when the soil is dry. Add the Demo Forest Flow Trail’s 50,000 rides per year to the dry summer soil, and the SCMTS is constantly battling braking bumps.

“We do our best, with the annual maintenance, keeping it going, but it was at a point where we really wanted to give it a refresh — do a big push, not just Band-Aid fixes, but rebuilding some things that weren’t working quite right,” said De Young.”

Fixes and upgrades coming to the Demo Forest Flow Trail

The rebuild will address maintenance issues by removing braking bumps and resurfacing features. SCMTS will harvest new dirt, bring it onto the trail, reshape the dirt, and re-compact it. Essentially, the entire trail surface is getting a makeover.

But they’re going beyond just a simple surface refresh.

SCMTS is also addressing “sections that were not working well and causing people to [create] breaking bumps and craters in the berm. So just adjusting the flow of the trail so that we can minimize some of those maintenance issues.”

“We had a lot of 180, kind of tight berms, and people can be intimidated by those. People can grab brakes,” De Young continued. “We want to make sure there’s really good sight lines.”

Moving a berm is no small feat. “We have gotten out there with our crew and rebuilt a number of the berms. […] Some of them are six feet tall — they’re, massive, massive berms.”

The professional trail builders from SCMTS brought their mini excavators out for the heavy lifting and dirt moving, but much of the rebuild has also been done by volunteer labor. In the smaller areas, hand labor was better suited, and volunteers also helped with hand finishing behind the machines. “We let the machines do the heavy, heavy lifting, and then have the volunteers come in and do the cleanup,” said De Young.

Much of the volunteer labor was conducted or led by what SCMTS calls “Trail Sages.” “They’re our most experienced volunteers. They’re able to lead their own independent trail work out there. So it’s really been a place where we’ve seen that community stewardship model be super effective.”

A coordinated workday on the Flow Trail recently brought out over 60 volunteers, and the Trail Sages are also hosting ongoing drop-in workdays every Friday.

De Young anticipates that the bulk of the rebuild will be complete by the end of April, but that there will be some ongoing drop-in volunteer workdays taking place through the rest of the springtime.

SCMTS has invested over 500 hours of professional labor into the rebuild, which is equal to $35,000 of investment. In addition, volunteers have contributed 369 hours of labor — an estimated $13,653 value, based on California’s estimated rate for volunteer hours.

Are any new trails planned in the Demo Forest?

Mountain bikers are always champing at the bit for new trails, and while SCMTS has been hard at work opening new trail networks, like the Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument, it’s been quite some time since Demo Forest has seen a new trail.

“There’s nothing planned right now,” said De Young of the possibility of new trails. However, “We are in talks with Cal Fire, the land manager, about some concepts and options. There’s interest there.”

One of the concepts they’re discussing concerns the Corral Trail, which begins as singletrack and finishes on a fire road. SCMTS would like to see Corral be a singletrack descent the entire way.

“There’s also desire for a climbing trail out there because right now, people ride fire road and actually have to ride some pavement and other public roads to complete loops out there,” said De Young. “So there’s a great opportunity to have a climbing trail to keep people off the road, mitigate safety issues, and also keep the roads free for emergency response and logging and just reduce impacts on the roads out there as well.”

While “nothing’s on the books,” with tireless advocates like SCMTS rebuilding existing trails and advocating for new ones, the riding in Demo Forest just keeps getting better and better!