Trail Rangers
Meet the Pisgah Cowboys, a volunteer crew quickly fixing western North Carolina’s favorite mountain biking and hiking routes in need of repair.
It looks like a scene from Jurassic Park: a group of men riding through the forest in a tan 1959 Willys Jeep. The vehicle belongs to the driver, Mark Dulken. He inherited it from his father and, after a decade of rebuilding and restoring, it’s now this crew’s designated job wagon. The red wheels grind forward and they chart deeper into the woods, maneuvering up fire roads and over creek beds towards the worksite. Upon arrival, they hop out, unload their chainsaws and various hand tools, then get to it. It’s just after 9:00 a.m.
The Pisgah Cowboys are a lean and nimble group. The homemade, unofficial trail maintenance team based in Brevard, N.C., meets two or three times per month for drainage work, bridge building, and whatever else is needed on the trails around Pisgah Forest they frequent. Established in 2012, the Cowboys were the brainchild of a group of local mountain bikers looking to circumvent the slow-rolling nature of larger volunteer trail maintenance teams.
“We kind of got together and were like, let’s see if we can make our own group, that way we don’t have to deal with all the cat-herding,” recalls founding member Carlos Galarza, a mechanic at Sycamore Cycles.
Yet while the original Cowboys roster—comprised of Sycamore coworkers Galarza and Wes Dixon, local businessman Jay Cohen, trail builder Todd Branham, and Brevard College cycling coach Thad Walker—had plenty of technical know-how, it owned very little collective bureaucratic experience. The nascent group quickly realized that, to efficiently navigate all the “red tape,” they would need an expert. An Insider. Somebody like retired Pisgah District Ranger Randy Burgess.
“I just ran into them in a local pub one night after they had a trail workday and they asked me to join them,” recalls Burgess of his first introduction to the group in 2013. “They start asking me all sorts of questions, like, ‘Hey, how do we get to do more trail work?’ Because at the time I think they were mainly doing fairly simple work like trimming back trails, turning back branches, and cutting trees out. They wanted to get a little bit more involved.”
A few days later, they asked Burgess to join the group. His connection to the Forest Service allowed the group to take on more technical work, including building turnpikes and bridges. They produced the boardwalk on the Sycamore Cove Trail, then multiple bridges on the Cove Creek, Lower Avery Creek, and Daniel Ridge trails. Word of other potential projects trickles in from a variety of sources, including their own observations while out mountain biking, other work groups, the Forest Service, and the general public.
One recent tip came from the WNC MTB Trail Conditions Facebook page, a message alerting the group to a half-dozen downed trees on the Sycamore Loop. Ken Voyles, an environmental consultant and the newest Cowboy, happened to have some time that day. He shot the message over to the others. Dulken, a retired carpenter and cabinetmaker, was also free.
“So we just went out that afternoon and knocked it out,” recalls Voyles. “That’s kind of nice because we all live right here in Pisgah Forest and in Brevard, so we’re able to move pretty quick.”
The Cowboys operate under the same Pisgah Forest volunteer agreement as larger groups like SORBA and Backcountry Horsemen. They aren’t paid or funded, but as Dulken is quick to point out, the work offers plenty of perks.
“My favorite thing is when we are building a new bridge where an old one washed away years ago and we’re putting down the last board, and here comes the first mountain biker,” he says. “He is full of gratitude and thanks, and just to see the smile on his face and know that he’s the first one to cross our new bridge is just a really wonderful feeling.”
Life’s fluidity means the list of Cowboys is ever-evolving. People move in and out of town. Workplace and domestic responsibilities shift. Today, it’s a svelte team of seven. Each member brings a different skillset, but their shared curiosity has yielded top-to-bottom versatility.
“We learn from each other,” Burgess says. “You learn by doing. You build those drainage structures and rolling grade dips for long enough and you get it down to what works well.”
Most of their work is self-funded, but the group occasionally receives support from a few local breweries. Sierra Nevada provided a grant to help purchase hand and power tools in 2014. Noblebräu donated a chainsaw in 2024. Ecusta sells a limited run, Cowboys-inspired Mexican lager each May and diverts a portion of proceeds to the Cowboys. The beer name, Three Amigos, is a nod to Dulken, Burgess, and Galarza. Ecusta is also a rendezvous spot at the end of most work outings, where the team puts a stamp on the day’s hard work. They clink glasses, take their first hard-earned sips, and enjoy the moment…but just the one.
“We don’t pat ourselves on the back that much,” says Dulken. “When we’re having a beer after a project, we’re usually already talking about the next project.”
Cover photo: From left: Carlos Galarza, Randy Burgess, and Mark Dulken of the Pisgah Cowboys. Photo by Cody Noble.
