Espresso

It's time you did a little trail work...
Stuart Kernaghan
photos by David Ferguson

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Ever been out to a trail day on the North Shore? Well, if you ride the Shore and haven't done any trail maintenance before (or this year) then it's about time you came out to one. And lucky for you, there's a trail day coming up this weekend on Sunday, July 21st.

All of the official trail work done on the Shore is organized and supervised by the North Shore Mountain Biking Association (NSMBA). The NSMBA got its start back in 1997 after several local trails were sabotaged, and since then it's become a grassroots voice for mountain bikers on the Shore. One of the NSMBA's primary objectives has been to ensure mountain bike trails on Mt. Seymour and Mt. Fromme (Grouse) stay open, and according to Jeremy Power, president of the NSMBA, trail maintenance goes a long way towards that goal.

Right now, there's an unwritten gentlemen's agreement between the District of North Vancouver, the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), and the NSMBA that no new trails will be built until the old ones are improved. That means a lot of trail maintenance days to keep up with the ever-increasing number of riders going down the mountains. Crossings have to built over streams, wet areas need proper drainage, and steep sections have to be protected from erosion. Much of what happens on trail days is repair work, but a lot of it also improves the trails and makes the riding sweeter. Think about that the next time you're cruising over some boardwalk rather than pushing your bike through a swamp.

Riders in the Lower Mainland are starting to understand the connection between trail maintenance and trail access, and the number of people turning up to help has been growing steadily. 12 to 15 people were the norm at early trail days, but now anywhere from 50 to 60 are lending a hand and "many of those people have been to numerous trail days. It's becoming a skilled workforce out there," says Power.

The only possible downside of trailbuilding is that "it's not all glamorous work. Everybody wants to build a stunt; nobody wants to move rocks and dirt," as Power puts it. The reality of the North Shore, however, is that the materials needed to fix trails - rocks, gravel, and wood - have to be gathered and brought in by hand before anything else can happen. That's why it's usually more important to have people moving rocks and dirt than building stunts.

So just how much work gets done in an average summer of trailbuilding? Well, there are seven trail days this year, with about 50 people doing six hours of work each day. That adds up to approximately 2100 man-hours of maintenance per year - the equivalent of one person working five days a week, eight hours a day, for 52.5 weeks. Which is a hell of a lot of effort going into local trails when you think about it.

In the past, the NSMBA tackled different parts of Seymour or Fromme each trail day but that resulted in a patchwork of tight, well-maintained sections that ran into areas that still needed work. The whole trail wasn't being reinforced so now trailbuilding efforts are focussed on one trail per mountain for each trail-maintenance season. This summer, it's CBC on Seymour and Espresso on Fromme. (Nothing's happening on Cypress because the District of West Vancouver told Power it wasn't interested in working with the association. That's too bad for riders on the Shore, but also for West Van. It's not often that you get people willing to do a few hundred hours of work for free.)

Not surprisingly, trail days are an important part of the NSMBA's long-term plan for the Shore. The key component of that plan is to create main arteries down the mountains to alleviate the strain on heavy-use trails like Bogeyman and Ned's, and that's going to require a lot of volunteer labour. Thankfully, local governments are on board with the idea; the GVRD is working on 20-year development plan for Seymour that includes mountain bikers, and the District of North Van is even going so far as to promote the Shore as a mountain bike tourist destination.

People don't need to be NSMBA members to come out for trail days, but Power thinks it's a good idea. The $20 membership fee provides insurance coverage for trail workers and pays for tools, but more importantly that membership gives mountain bikers on the Shore a collective voice. "The more people we have on the membership forms, the more clout we have with the land managers and the government," he notes.

There are about 600 paid NBSMA members at the moment, and that means lots of people riding the Shore aren't members. If you're looking for a good reason to join the NSMBA or hadn't thought about it before, consider this: the more NSMBA members there are, the easier it is to deal with people who want to shut down the trails to mountain bikers.

Hanging out in the woods, working on the trails, and doing your part to keep them open should be enough of an enticement to get you out there on Sunday, but if it isn't a BBQ lunch courtesy of On Top Bikes and Sailor Hagar's, and draw prizes (including a set of Bonz cranks) should help. Meet at the trail head at 9:30 a.m. or catch the On Top courtesy shuttle from the Upper Lynn School, which is located two blocks down from the top of Mountain Highway; the shuttle leaves at 9 a.m. Check out the official flyer for details.

There will be three more trail days this year if you can't make it this Sunday: August 18th on Seymour, September 22nd on Fromme, and October 6th on Seymour, so get out for at least one of those days and check the NSMB bulletin boards next week for pictures of what you missed.