Good Morning Everyone –

As most of you are aware an incredibly supportive outdoor recreation leader passed away two weeks ago.  Hal sent out the article about Chad Denning and many people around the UV are still reeling to understand how and why.  Chad was a very vocal advocate for Mountain Biking and when he ran the Stoaked Tri he provided us over $400 for helping at the race.  He was also a key player during our discussions with Dartmouth and fully supported our management of the area.  He was the first person to get an official race to occur on the Boston Lot land.  This was the cap stone to the Western Trail Running Series and it was set for this coming weekend.  The race will go on as Chad would have wanted it to.  There will be more people than before and probably a few who do not know Boston lot at all.

The loop starts at the hospital lap, up query, down highway, white dot, up burnt, up droids to the top of Burnt, then down and out to the hospital lot.  Here is last years loop: http://www.strava.com/activities/83894402/overview

I am writing this for three reasons.  The first is let all the group know that there is a race coming the Lot this Saturday morning at 9am.  The course will be signed on Thursday.  Please stay off the trails or just stay on craft that morning.

The second is that we need sweeps and trail help to assist the group with pulling off this race.  The sweeps and middle trail folks need to know Boston Lot well.  Our roll will be to keep people on track, get help if needed and sweep/pull the flags at the end.  If you can help please let me know.  The more the better.

The third is that we are going to be having closer and closer relationships with the trail running group over the coming years.  Chad and I had spoken about moving this event to the Nature Walk lot next year and making it a full half marathon with 3 peaks: craft, burnt and query.  This will require even more planning but will be an amazing event.

This is a hard email to put together as I had just hoped to go flag the event with Chad on Thursday.  Now we will be putting it on without him. 

Thank you,

Brian