2009 CMBA Trail Building Days
[^^^^^That looks like one of the bogs on Tom Snow!]
We've got our Trail Building Days sorted out for the season. Here is The List:
- Saturday, May 30
- Sunday, June 21
- Sunday, July 19
- Saturday, August 8
- Saturday, August 22
- Saturday, September 12
- Saturday, September 19 - Bow 80 prep!
- Saturday, October 3rd
- Saturday, October 17th
All the Trail Building Days will be based out of Station Flats, and will focus on Sulphur Springs and Tom Snow. There is a ton of work to be done, so we'll need everybody we can get. Details will be posted closer to the actual dates.
We also have Trail Building Nights, starting on the evening of Monday, May 25th and running the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month until further notice. We'll be posting details of meeting places and times in the next couple of weeks. The next few Trail Nights will be July 13th, July 27th and August 10th, so save the dates!
More trail days added
We've added a few more trail days to the schedule:
Also, August 10th will be our final trail night of the year, as it's getting dark before 9:00 then.
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Trail marking in the snow
Trail marking in the snow is surprisingly easy, except for the cold and slipperyness. Today's marking was for a re-route of one section of Tom Snow that can be fairly barfy. We'll be working on this section during the upcoming trail day on June 21st.
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pinkrobe.blogspot.com
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NOHVCC course
I was at the NOHVCC course for trail assessment and design last night and today [and tomorrow]. It's pretty interesting. There was plenty of stuff I was already familiar with, but getting a refresher was great. One thing I wasn't expecting was another perspective on the role of SRD in the development of trail systems. SRD is the supreme authority on getting trail work approved in Alberta. They are the cheese. They also have no budget, and even that was cut recently. Trail won't get built without external sources of labour and financing. That means you, in case you were wondering.
A project I would like to see this summer, would be a full inventory of the trails in the Moose Mountain area. The first step would be to get a basic GPS track of each trail, most of which we already have. Waypoints could be captured to indicate "areas of interest" or problem spots that should be fixed. With that, we can go to SRD and say, "Trail's busted. We need a TFA to fix it". With a full description and accurate mapping, we would stand a very good chance of getting permission to do the work.
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pinkrobe.blogspot.com
#pinkrobeyyc
NOHVCC course - Field Day
We spent the whole day in the Ghost FLUZ on Sunday, at the first staging area past Waiporous. In the morning we did a Level 1 Trail Inventory, and got familiar with the Level 2 stuff. In the afternoon, we participated in two trail design exercises. Overall, the course was valuable for many reasons, not the least of which was getting a better understanding of how to better work with SRD.
I also came to understand just how good we have it on the mtn biking side compared to the OHV folks. Doing any sort of work on an OHV trail is a monumental and expensive undertaking. Reclamation takes years to do, and any new trail has to go through a mountain of paperwork. In contrast, getting approval for a MTB trail without stunts is, relatively speaking, a piece of cake.
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pinkrobe.blogspot.com
#pinkrobeyyc
IMBA 'Trail Workshop' in Canmore
I attended the weekend portion of the IMBA course and it started as most IMBA trail courses start...in the classroom for some math and science, then outside with a well worn polaski. We tackled three very different areas, 1) Devonian Drop remake, 2) Creek crossing on a low end trail and 3) Trail design and implemnation of a new 1km kids trail.
The Devonian Drop is a mess, it's fun but water runs straight down the centre and erodes the trail in all the wrong places. The new route is awesome, it's steeper with more turns, better berms and lot's of grade reversals. It took about 20 volunteers 2 days to get things working properly.
The creek crossing lessons were fairly simple in concept but a lot of work to execute, hauling rock and material from 300 meters away is slow, hard work. The end result was a nice section of trail with no deep, boggy sections of mud.
The kids trail was built using a mini-excavator (I got to operate it for a wee bit) and was almost entirely a bench cut trail which means lots of work dragging material downhill away from the trail.
The weekend was great, the people were fun and we now have even more trail to ride.