New Mexico/IMBA Memorandum of Understanding Announced

Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew leads IMBA Trailbuilding School for 50 State Park employees.

After attending IMBA's training, these State Park employees will go back to their park and apply the techniques and skills they learned in their own parks.
Throughout the trail layout session, the group practiced checking the grades of the sideslope and new trail with clinometers.
After placing pinflags in the ground to represent the downhill side of the new trail, volunteers run sections of the route to see how it flows. On-looking participants can see from the way the volunteer runs if the swales in the trail are flowing and placed well.
Special thanks to David Simon, New Mexico State Parks Director, who was instrumental in making this training possible. He reaped the benefits immediately when he got to ride the new trail.

Rachael and Nat Lopes, Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew, taught an IMBA Trailbuilding School at Lake Sumner State Park in New Mexico. A representative from almost every one of the 32 State Parks in New Mexico attended. The school was a great kick-off to the new partnership that IMBA and the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (a division of NM State Parks) has signed. The official MOU was signed by Parks Director, David Simon, at the beginning of the two-day training.

The classroom session taught the techniques needed to construct, maintain, and design a sustainable trail, including appropriate trail grades, avoiding erosion, and designing a fun trail. The participants of the school came from all over the state and work in a variety of environments from sandy desert sagebrush to juniper pinon forests. The school discussed trailbuilding techniques that could apply to each of these environments.

Taking these techniques into the field was a lot of fun with this hard working group. Nat and Rachael worked with the group on laying out a new multi-use trail on the east side of Sumner Lake. By the end of the day the group had designed about 2-miles of trail. The next day they broke ground early in the morning and by mid-day they had constructed about 1.5 miles of trail. This new trail has rocky sections, sandy sections and fun swales in and out of the crenulations of the hills. The group put in a total of 500-trailwork hours in just two days.