I have been contracted by the USDA Forest Service to put on a series of workshops for trail crew leaders and other volunteers doing trail work on the Pisgah District. The dates for the workshops are as follows:
Saturday, May 7: At the Cradle of Forestry from 9AM--5PM. This is an all day indoor session that includes:
Saturday, May 14: 9AM--5PM. Field day learning proper trail maintenance techniques. Meet at the Pisgah Ranger Station in the overflow parking area.
Saturday, May 21: 9AM--5PM. More field work with hopefully some advanced techniques. Meet at the Pisgah Ranger Station in the overflow parking area.
For each of these you will need to bring food (lunch and snacks) and water. For the field workdays, you will also need the following: work clothes including long pants and good footwear, protective eyewear (normal riding sunglasses are fine), your bike helmet (the USFS is now requiring helmets for trailwork, so bring your bike helmet), work gloves (full finger riding MTB gloves are fine) and of course a willingness to get dirty and make a positive difference in the trails you ride.
We need good participation from the mountain bike community. This is a great chance for us to earn the respect of the USFS and other trail crew volunteers working on the district. Building a trails community is important, and this will certainly go a long way in that mission. If you are interested in attending, you have to let me know so we can get an accurate headcount for chairs during the classroom session and tools during the workdays.
My ultimate goal is to prevent any new waterbars from being placed on Pisgah trails. This of course will be a monumental task, getting the "old timers" to learn new tricks and give up the oh-so-cherished waterbar. These provide a known hazard for mountain bikers, are ugly as hell, and simply don't work for very long. We will be learning how to build good rolling grade dips instead. These dips are self cleaning (if built well), look more natural in their landscapes, and of course are easy to roll on a bike--or become great booter jumps--adding to the mountain bike experience.
These workshops are for you if:
There is no cost to volunteer workers. My fees have been covered by the USFS.
Please shoot me an email if you have interest or want to learn more. Pisgah trails received an enormous amount of damage during the storms of last season. This is a great chance to learn how to do the right thing to repair some of that damage and help protect the important trail resources in our area. Please pass this info on to anyone you feel will be interested.
Concerning various conflicts with the trail workshops, I have been made aware of the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure on May 14th and the 12 Hours of Tsali on May 21st. I apologize for the conflicts and fully understand if you have prior commitment sat these 2 races (racing or volunteering).
I did not set the dates in a vacuum, but worked with the USFS to come up with what we thought made sense. I had to get this done before heading out to Vancouver to the World Mountain Bike Conference on Sustainability in early June. I am one of the keynote speakers for this conference, and also part of a panel discussion on risk management.
I also serve on IMBA's Board of Directors, and our next meeting is at Whistler in mid-June. I will be out there for several weeks. In addition to the board meeting, IMBA Trail Care Crews and IMBA Trail Solutions staff will be given a two day behind-the-scenes tour of Whistler Mountain Bike Park.
In a nutshell, the dates we came up with were the only dates that would work for me and the USFS and other crew leaders. Sorry if these dates don't work for you.
We needed to set days that we thought a lot of folks could attend. It is always a logistical nightmare trying to work this out. The USFS wanted to make sure crew leaders from other groups could attend the training: Pisgah Trailblazers (equestrian club), Carolina Mountain Club (hiking club), Haywood Knolls (hiking club), Pisgah Hikers (hiking club) and more.
We knew all too well in setting dates that we would not be able to capture everyone who wanted to attend. By setting the three consecutive Saturdays, we felt many folks would be able to attend a day or two. It is not perfect, but it is a good start on some quality training for folks working on the district.
I would suggest that if at all possible, attend the first day which is the indoor PowerPoint presentations. My PowerPoint presentations will cover the basics of good design, why trails ail, and the various impacts to trails (from water and various user groups). It really is a ton of info in one day.
The other workdays are great, but there is always on going opportunities for such.
A while back there was a quote in the paper by the president of the Carolina Mountain Club. He said "Hikers are the only ones working on trails. Equestrians and mountain bikers are just tearing them up". Let's all work together to make him eat those words. I would be happy to do some night time sessions in the future in Asheville for those who can not attend these workshops. Such workshops will not however have the added advantage of working with other trail related groups in the area and building the larger trails constituency.
I will also pick a few weekend days in the future to train those most with a desire to become crew leaders and assistants.
The general problem with folks doing trail work is way too many are doing the wrong thing, they may be solving one problem but creating another. Waterbars do not work, and yet the hiking folks are placing them on an ongoing basis. Rock armoring is a great solution to eroding trails, but you need to know the rules on where rocks can (and can not) come from. Crews (maybe even some mountain bikers) have harvested rocks from streams and rivers to harden approaches (this is OK in some places but not on the Pisgah District). Some rocks were recently harvested for a project from an archaeological site, this was really bad. There needs to be a formal training for crew leaders, and these workshops are a step in that direction.
Let me know if there are any other questions.
We have a great opportunity to make very positive upgrades, improvements, and additions to the trail system we all use every week. The Forest Supervisor (John Ramey) and our new District Ranger (Randy Burgess) are both mountain bikers. The USFS got a significant amount of money related to storm damage in fall 2004. There will be a lot of trail contract work happening that could improve conditions for mountain bikers, especially if Trail Dynamics is awarded some of these contracts. God help us all if the contracts go to some other contractor that does not know much about trails, but the bid documents seemed to rule out such a contractor even being considered. We turned in our bid proposal on Friday last week, and we should know something May by 10th or so. The first pilot project is the Homestead Trail at Bent Creek.
What is missing from this grand opportunity to make a difference is you. Please attend any of these days that you can and/or join the trail crews for workdays scheduled in Pisgah (Todd B.), Bent Creek (the Bio Wheels crew) or DuPont Forest (that's me).
Woody Keen
President, Trail
Dynamics
LLC
© Blue Ridge Bicycle Club Inc. 2005