As we hiked up Swamp Creek Trail, flanked by Overland Mountain Bike Association’s crack trail-building team, fittingly known as the “Get Shit Done Crew” our surroundings transitioned from known to unknown when we entered the Cameron Peak Fire burn. In the worst-affected areas, the once healthy forest was reduced to a rolling sea of telephone poles, blackened and scaled by flames. The ground transformed into a foreign surface more closely resembling moon-dust than terrestrial soil. A thick layer of ash replaced the organic mat, three inches deep in places, rocks surrounded with halos of thin flakes—an indication they had been super-heated to over 2000 degrees centigrade.

Trailboss is the mountain bike legend you’ve never heard of. Despite having a full-time job, he can be found without fail and regardless of weather, toiling away on trails nearly 300 days a year. He has volunteered thousands of hours to maintain a network that is unmatched in America for its dense concentration of high quality, expert level mountain bike trails.