Danville, VA:  Sweet Singletrack and Community Development

Trail advocates and community leaders work together to make a good community great.

The TCC poses with SVMBA members at the trailhead of their local park.
Rich Edwards, IMBA Trail Solutions, shows proper tool use and safety techniques before the crew hits the woods for some rockwork and bench cutting.
Carefully watching their fingers, Rich leads a small group in the setting of stones for a sustainable, durable crossing.
SVMBA members dig in and begin benching on a new trail that will bypass a road connector. The Crew, with the help of SVMBA members, laid out the new trail to take advantage of fun natural features, while minimizing impact on sensitive drainage areas.
The trail takes shape around the new rock crossing. Grasses removed from the corridor were later replanted around the rock crossing to minimize the impact of the rockwork.
The nearly finished trail takes shape through the dense trees. Abundant leaf litter made it easy to camouflage the recent work.
SVMBA member hard at work, roughing in the bench along an outside corner. The corner is designed to have a slight inslope at the beginning and end, to decrease the likelihood of tread creep.

Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew leaders, Jill Van Winkle and Chris Bernhardt, visited the Southern Virginia Mountain Bike Association (SVMBA) in Danville, VA this June. Local riders have created a fun trail system on a large parcel of land that will eventually be developed as a high-tech business park. With most other riding opportunities more than an hour away, having accessible singletrack in Danville is greatly needed by the City's residents.

Local club leaders have done an excellent job of working with the City of Danville's Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Department, and have gained the trust and admiration of the department's director by building and maintaining approximately 6 miles of singletrack. Jill and Chris met with representatives of the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Department, and provided them with information on how multi-use trails in business parks help increase the value of the development, as they provide needed recreation opportunities for local employees. Other economic benefits of trails in urban areas were also discussed, much to the satisfaction of the city.

After a morning Trailbuilding school, the folks from SVMBA were shown the finer points of trail layout, full-bench trail construction, and, with the help of visiting Trail Solutions' Rich Edwards, how to create an armored stone crossing over a drainage ditch. At the end of the weekend, volunteers finished the armoring and cut in the approaches to the crossing, and built 200' of fresh new trail that snakes through the woods. To thank volunteers, SVMBA hosted a picnic on the banks of the Dan River, before taking off on a much-deserved ride, which included testing out the newly-constructed trail sections.

Thanks to SVMBA and Chris Tompkins for hosting the first visit of the newest Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew, Jill Van Winkle and Chris Bernhardt.