Mitch Marich, Board Director, Emeritus

Mitch was raised in Long Beach, CA and spent most of his summers going to the beach and body surfing. He was also a Boy Scout and learned a love of the outdoors, hiking, and camping with them. After a year at UC Santa Barbara, he was accepted at the United States Naval Academy and subsequently spent 10 years on active duty and 20 more in the Navy Reserve.

Mitch starting road riding long before the existence of mountain bikes, but got away from biking for jogging and trail running until he over worked training for a marathon and got back on the road bike. His mountain biking started in the late 90s with borrowing his daughter’s rigid Trek to ride up to H. He soon connected with both the Over the Bars and Pasadena Mountain Bike Clubs and got first a hard-tail, then a full suspension bike; currently a Bionicon Golden Willow. He has ridden many SoCal trails, but wants to travel to many more ‘bucket list’ locations.

Being retired from the Naval Reserve and only working part time, he has been able to spend a lot of time on the trails. Mitch’s first trail work day was with CORBA on the Ken Burton trail, probably in 2005. Besides working with CORBA, he started helping Mark Gage maintain the lower Sam Merrill trail where he used to trail run frequently. He also helped the PMBC with the MWBA Pancake Breakfasts during MWBA’s trail work hiatus. Mitch was a leader in the revival of the MWBA’s trail work in 2010 and reorganization into a non-profit.

Mitch is a part of the MWBA Tool Committee and helps maintain and organize the MWBA tools. If you join MWBA for a trail work day, you will often meet Mitch as he handles volunteer sign in paperwork and transports many of MWBA’s tools. He is also one of MWBA’s USFS B Certified Chainsaw Sawyers and is “on call” to help remove fallen trees from the trails.