Volunteering - CAMBr

Volunteer with CAMBr

All CAMBr trail systems are 100% built and maintained by volunteers. You can make a difference! Come out to a trail workday or help at one of our 3 races. It’s extremely rewarding and a great time!

Our Story

Trail Workdays

Join us for regular trail maintenance and building sessions. No experience necessary - we'll teach you everything you need to know!

• Building new trail features
• Trail maintenance and repairs
• Clearing brush and debris
• Erosion control work

Race Support

Help make our 3 annual races successful! We need volunteers for registration, course marshaling, timing, and more.

• Registration assistance
• Course marshaling
• Timing and scoring
• Setup and teardown

Join the Crew

• Volunteer 3 times = free exclusive trail crew shirt
• Free lunch provided after the workday ends
• Excellent way to meet fellow riders
• Teens earn volunteer hours required by many schools

Why Volunteer?

Meet Fellow Riders

Connect with the local mountain biking community and make lasting friendships

Give Back

Make a lasting impact on the trails you love to ride

Learn New Skills

Gain trail building knowledge and sustainable construction techniques

CAMBr Current
Trail Conditions

Natural surface trails and bike parks can be easily damaged when they’re soft, wet and/or muddy. All trail users should stay off the singletrack trails and jump lines unless they’re dry, or frozen solid. CAMBr volunteers put in many thousands of hours each year maintaining and constructing trails, and we closely monitor their condition.

CAMBr uses the Trailbot smartphone app to publish trail conditions updates. Trailbot is a completely free, ad-free, easy-to-use trail conditions app for iOS and Android – so you’ll know what to expect before you go, and can make informed decisions when conditions aren’t favorable for hitting the singletrack.

Visit Trailbot.com to download the app, or find it in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Within the app you’ll find not only current trail conditions updates for all your favorite CAMBr trails, but also weather information, trail descriptions, maps, and other useful links. Trailbot updates are also pushed to our website for easy access.

Please respect the trails, and all the work that goes into them, by staying off when they’re soft.

ABOVE ALL – IF YOU’RE LEAVING AN IMPRINT, IT’S TIME TO LEAVE

WHAT ARE FREEZE/THAW RULES?

There’s a season in the Chicago area, typically between mid-November and the end of March, when temperatures will drop below freezing at night and then warm up above freezing during the day. What this means for the trails is when actually frozen they are hard and good to ride. But when the temps go up and the moisture in the ground thaws, the dirt becomes very soft and muddy. This is because the water in the soil expands when frozen and it looses the tightly packed soil. The result is the trails can become very soft and muddy even if there hasn’t been much rain or snow fall.

So, to protect the trails from damage, only ride when the ground is frozen hard, and get off once the ground begins to warm up. South facing trails will usually soften up first, and if the sun it out and the temps get into the 30’s, you’ll probably need to be done by 10AM.

Remember, if you’re tires are leaving an imprint, it’s too soft to ride.