Calgary Cycle's Ibis Trail Fundraiser Reaches Goal

This summer in Alberta was a great year for mountain bikes. With a warmer than average temperature through the summer months along with a growing plethora of easily accessible mountain bike trails, Alberta had one of the best mountain bike seasons in recent memory. For those of us that work in the bike industry, it meant participation was up, and this is good news when people having fun on mountain bikes is your business!

Here at Calgary Cycle we wanted to figure out a way to give back to the mountain bike community and help keep the trail karma rolling! I was contacted by Greg McDonald, our local Ibis rep with an idea. Ibis was willing to put a bike up for grabs to raise money for the Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association, we just had to figure out how we wanted to give the bike away. Together we modeled a raffle after some previous efforts by Ibis. We didn’t have a catchy name or phrase, we simply went with: The GBCTA Trail Fundraiser. With every $10.00 you donated to the GBCTA you were entered to win an Ibis bike of your choice valued at close to $10,000. The raffle lasted two months and when we finished we had hit our goal of $10,000. Now it was time to donate the cash to the GBCTA and draw a winner for the Bike! Midway through October we drew a name, David Sullivan. He was ecstatic when I contacted him. He claimed, “I never win anything” and asked me “are you serious” a number of times. After some consideration he chose an IBIS HD3 with an XT 1x11 kit.

Derek Lee and Alf Skrastins(GBCTA) drawing the winner at the trailhead.

The next step was to get the cash to the more than deserving volunteers over at the GBCTA. They could not have been happier with the results! The money we had raised paid for the completion of the trail 'Snakes and Ladders' in West Bragg Creek as well as contributed to the purchase of a groomer for the fat bike trails in the winter!

Sandy Bruce(GBCTA), Peter Tucker(GBCTA), Greg McDonald(Ibis), Derek Lee(Calgary Cycle)

The bike came from Ibis almost immediately; we built it up at the shop and handed it over to its new owner, Congratulations David! The generosity of Ibis blew us away, its not very often you get a $10,000 bike to giveaway with no strings attached. To say thank you, and to tell them how the contest went I contacted Scot Nicol, the man behind the madness at Ibis. After a lengthy conversation about trail stewardship with Scot, I realized that Ibis has been raising money, and helping build local trails for a long time. They have raised over $250,000 in cash for trails associations around North America. This money combined with 'matching funds grants' from local organizations has meant they have contributed 100’s of thousands of dollars to the growth of mountain biking across North America. When I asked Scot Nicol about what drives Ibis to do this kind of fundraising he said simply: “We want to pay it forward. The only reason we are in business is because there are trails to ride.” When you look at it from that perspective we should all be giving back to the trails associations that work hard to make sure we have somewhere to ride.

When you get out for your next ride think of all the hard work that goes into creating the trail you are on. If you live in the Calgary area and feel inspired to help there are trail days throughout the spring and summer for more information look here, or here for shop sponsored days. Donations can be made to the trails associations either from Calgary Cycle 22x in Bragg Creek, or here.

A huge thanks goes out to the Calgary Cycle staff that raised this money, we never would have made the goal without everyone involved.

---

MENTIONS: @Calgary-Cycle

---

Posted In:
Stories Reader Stories