No Trail Elves Here Sierra Nevada Group Makes The Magic

When he was 17, Greg Williams took a life-changing bike ride into the northern Sierra Nevada.

- Trina Ortega

The four days of riding from Nevada City to Downieville in the heart of California gold country was special, but the moment he rolled up and over a ridge one evening and saw the craggy Sierra Buttes massif at sunset, Williams knew he wanted to do something to preserve responsible access to the area.

He had settled in Downieville for the mountain biking, and when the U.S. Forest Service no longer had the resources to maintain the local trails, Williams and two buddies spent $600 on a chainsaw to clear trees that had fallen during the winter. It turned into an annual tradition.

“It was more of an excuse just to have all of our friends come up, work a little bit, drink some beers, and tell some stories. We started with maybe 30 people, then the next year we had 50, then we were getting up to around 100 people, and we didn’t have enough tools to support it,” Williams says in a video to promote Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship (SBTS), the 501(c)3 nonprofit he eventually formed in 2003.