trail building

The chance to travel and have one’s eyes opened to new ideas and information - no better way to bring in the New Year!

Why all the excitement?  Well, I had the great fortune to travel down to IMBA HQ in Boulder, Colorado at the beginning of January.  A weeks worth of meetings, knowledge sharing, team building and enjoying mountain air, were all part of IMBA’s Staff Training event.

Trail design can sometimes be a pretty complicated endeavour. One must balance many considerations when adding new trail to an existing network. This includes the basics like user types, difficulty level, existing trails, and the ever present question of sustainability. Furthermore, different types of terrain provide additional challenges; a beginner trail in rooty and rocky terrain can require significant effort.

Last weekend, in my capacity as IMBA Canada's Quebec Coordinator, I attended a meeting in Sutton in the eastern townships. A group of bicyclists and trail users met in order to form a trail association. The goal is to organize and propose a network of trails in the area. Sutton has a great reputation amongst outdoor enthousiasts for hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter but the bicyclists hope that they can put together a proposal to have trails designated for mountain biking as well as a few new trails in the area.

Thanks to the dedicated efforts from members of the CABC and the support of the city, the trails around Red Deer, AB, are experiencing quite a rejuvenation. Years ago, a few key builders came to the city from Whistler and built an extensive bike park with very advanced features, including a 25+ foot tall corkscrew drop.