Oh, what fun it is to build!

There is just something completely awesome about getting new trail on the ground.

The IMBA/Subaru Trail Care Crew blew through town this week. Their goal was to host a couple of days of classroom learning and a few hours of on-the-hill training, getting a great group of volunteers up to speed on how to get new trail on the ground. It's a pretty big deal, as IMBA has only one (count 'em) trail care crew in the country. As it turns out, the local BLM office has a new rec guy who's a bit of a fireball, and one of the first things he did when he clocked in for work was start lobbying to get these guys here. It was a real coup.

Fortunately for all concerned, there was (and is) a shovel-ready project available to use as a trail building classroom - the new bike trail system being built at SnoBowl! So, lucky us, some real trail experts used our local hill as a classroom to teach the nuts and bolts of getting new trail on the ground.

Pinch me, is this for real??  :D

About twenty folks joined Jordan Carr and Lani Bruntz from IMBA after the classroom sessions, and built several hundred feet of very fun new trail over the course of a few hours. Best of all, after the build, the IMBA team walked up the route of the under-construction beginner MTB trail to give us ideas on what we can do to make it a better riding experience for newer riders. Most of the volunteers expressed interest in weekly build days to get a top-to-bottom trail completed before summer, so that we can run the lift for lift-served riding once school's out. 

To call this a banner day for SnoBowl would be a profound understatement.

Here are a few pics of the build:

The pre-talk.  Several of the folks on the crew had not used trail tools before, and the IMBA folks gave an overview of safe tool handling.

A determined bunch

Lani and Jordan demonstrating the work sequence that ends with finished trail.

Putting that instruction to good use

Some very cool progress happening here!

The finished product - a phenomenal upgrade from the previous route

Here's a big, healthy THANK YOU to Mike Setlock from the BLM for bringing the IMBA team in, to Subaru for footing the bill for such a great program, to the City of Elko for the volunteer lunch, Great Basin College for the classroom space, to Jordan and Lani from IMBA for being such enthusiastic and skilled trail evangelists, and most of all to the volunteers who showed up to learn how this all works. It's so incredibly cool to see what we can all accomplish working together!

Some much needed maintenance on the Ruby Crest Trail

Boy, was this ever needed.  Some great work done last summer by the Friends of the Nevada Wilderness, brushing out and maintaining the Ruby Crest Trail between Overland Lake and Harrison Pass.  While they were there, they also did a lot of work on the Overland Trail, between Overland Lake and Ruby Valley.

Too bad these guys can't just move here permanently, there is a LOT of work to be done up there!

Penny pinching and the planning process

Now that spring is here and the NEPA is behind us, we're getting a lot of pre-work done before we hit the ground on the first segment of trail. Job #1 as far as I'm concerned - continue tweaking to figure out how to get this trail built for the least amount of money possible. We're not willing to sacrifice quality, obviously - for a whole raft of reasons. But there are alternatives out there to hand-built trail, and we're looking hard at every alternative that could be suitable for this project.

One of the more interesting prospects is the idea of using draft animals to do some of the heavy work. The mule pulls along a piece of equipment that's kind of a cross between a plow and a box scraper, making the initial ground cut for the trail route. Hand crews then follow and finish with the tread. The process improves the efficiency by about half over hand-crew-only construction, thus reducing the amount of time needed and, obviously, the amount of money spent.

There's evidence that many of the old trails around here were built using this technique. Gerry Miller, a former Forest Service employee now with the NRCS (and Northeastern Nevada Stewardship Group) tells me that you can see one of these old trailbuilders rusting along an old trail in the Overland Pass area. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Another option that might work for us is using trail excavators - essentially a very small backhoe-looking thing to do that initial cut. One of these excavators increases the efficiency significantly from even the draft animal method. The nice thing about the excavators is that they, too, will leave only a 24" tread - a very important element for this project, as a wider tread will invite incursion by ATV users. Since this is a non-motorized trail it's important that we keep the tread very narrow.

We have significant side slopes for the length of the project - this is big country - and these techniques may or may not work for us. We have some professional trail builders looking at the project, though - if we all think it would work, they'll work with our Nevada Conservation Corps crews and our volunteers to get this thing built in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible.

My personal goal is to save enough money on this first segment to give us real seed money for getting the second segment rolling. With the economic situation the way it is, we're going to have to work even harder to come up with funding for this project. We need to be able to demonstrate to the granting agencies that we're building very high-quality trail - as efficiently as humanly possible.

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Right now we have an on-the-ground meeting set for May 19-20 to get the trail centerline set. Once that's in, we'll be looking for volunteer help with the limbing/brushing that will need to be done. Watch this space.