Enjoy this tongue-in-cheek look at how the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance is serious about sustainable trail building. Plus get a sneak peak at the new Silent Swamp / Preston to NW Timber connector trail - slated to open summer 2013 on the East Tiger Mountain outside Seattle. This new trail will add another almost 3 miles of sweet singletrack to the existing 8+ mile trail system open to bikes; and this is just the start of what's in the works.
Evergreen's got Trail Crew Leads out working hard on Tiger right now trying to get this new trail done. Work parties are happening every weekend and every Wednesday through February and the beginning of March to get the latest section whipped into shape. If you’d like to ride this new trail sooner than later, please do come on out and help 'em get it built.
Fueled by 1500 passionate members, 10,000 followers, and 1000's of volunteer hours, Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance has grown into Washington State's largest MTB and trail building organization. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out and get dirty with us. No experience, skills or particular physical fitness level required.
Learn more about Evergreen, and find the next work party on our
calendar.
And, credit where credit is due...
Video by: Kevin "Kevmo" Philbin
Music by: Girl Talk, "All Day"
Like others have said, spend a bit of time before you ride fixing up the trail.
Ride and then clean up the lips, berms etc before you leave.
Spend 1/2 hour or even 15 minutes before you ride doing some digging/raking
Bad weather days when you can't ride, grab your shovel and rake and work on the trail.
every 1 out of 4 rides spend the time digging or every second ride spend 1/2 hour digging.
There are so many different options you can always work some digging into your time. You can't expect everyone else to build you a trail to ride. We all have limited time.. Well most of us.
If everyone said.. "Oh I don't have time" then, there would be no trails to ride. Stop being a "trail freeloader" and find some time, make some time to do it.. Take your kids into the forest for the day and make a day of it. Go for a family picnic and take your shovel with you.. Its not hard!
And last year the last trails that were "pirate" and we could build on got taken over by the ski area. Bittersweet because now we can't make them bigger, but we can jump on the chairlift for $30.
I honestly can't think of anywhere I could go to build a jump... The local pump track is a bit more open to helpers, but that's because people take their kids there after it rains EVERY time it rains.
DIG ! RIDE! DRINK BEERS! AND DIG SOME MORE
I work 50 hour weeks and like to do at least 5hours of trail work a week pity riding is only 8 hours at a push 10
I'm sick of people saying ' oh its was unridable ' .... Yeah unridable for you maybe but many can clean it every time , don't get your own maximum abilities mixed up with other peoples.
I get incredibly pissed of with people altering my stuff cos they think its unridable , people see some roots and an off-camber ride it a few times at most , fail , give up and alter it to thier own level of ability. ( and im not trying to brag about my skills ( lack of ) i'm far from some trail god ).
Before my trails got logged people with 8 inch modern DH bikes were cutting out the mild off cambers ( the hills is pretty flat so no ' real' off cambers anyway ) , filling in braking bumps and chopping out roots...
If it's not your trail leave it alone , if it's beyond your skill or not your taste go and build your own stuff..
So please, don't modify or dumb-down other people's trails. The proper thing to do is seek out the authorities or people who built or are currently in charge of maintaining the trail. First ask them if modifying the trail is desired.
Remember, everyone expects different things out of a trail. I consider the trail in this video to be a paved highway, but there's nothing wrong with that. Volunteers organized and built the trail and it is enjoyed my many people. It's awesome! Similarly, the sketchy, almost impossible trails should be left alone unless work is blessed by the trail owners/maintainers.
But yeah, lawsuits suck. I hope you come out of this one without legal bills or fines!
XC rider's like to tech trails at slow speed but for more gravity focused riders like to keep "flow" . But then again if the XC crew don't dig who give a rat's arse what they want!! ha ha
Around here, it is highly discouraged to perform trail maintenance outside of an official work party where the work being performed can be overseen by someone in the know. Now because of this policy, it often makes finding time to join a work party difficult to impossible for people with busy schedules. And sure, you could make the argument that repairing the lip of a jump of berm is dead easy, but even those menial tasks have been screwed up by those who thought they were doing the right thing.
Don't take anything that I just said as an excuse for not trying to make the effort, but at least in a lot of cases, there are some behind the scenes reasons why people find it difficult to volunteer and the last thing a qualified trail builder wants is to have the trails damaged even further by people who mean well, but really don't understand proper trail maintenance.
I'm really impressed by all the effort that's put in this trail!
That might be a good idea to talk to the city administration and the guys that own that woods in my region.. but it seems to be a lot of work to establish those great ideas..
Now, can we get some trail building videos from US Southwest, Southeast, and New England?
1) what're the songs?
2)where can you get a half rake/half compacter like that?
The songs are from Girl Talk.