Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew Offers Professional Help for Ski Resorts
By Becky Lomax
Originally published in the National Ski Area Association Journal, April/May 2006
"Even though the weather fell apart, we made huge headway on our bike trails," quipped Syd Ryerson, recreation manager at Montana's Big Mountain Ski Resort. "They were here with more than a band-aid to help." For professional assistance in designing her new trail and repairing older trails, she turned to the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). They didn't just send a how-to pamphlet, but came, assessed the trails, dug dirt, and taught trail building skills. Ryerson wants to build a new mountain bike trail that would minimize environmental impacts and reduce future trail maintenance costs.
Getting their hands dirty, two IMBA professionals helped design her new trail addition and taught a two-day school on sustainable trail building. "It was important to me to learn how to build bike trails correctly. The goal was to build sweet single track," said Ryerson, "and they gave us great assistance on how to achieve our goal." And best of all, the program is free.
To hook into the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew Program, Ryerson submitted an application for Big Mountain Resort to be one of 70 stops on the summer 2005 tour. The ski resort was selected, along with Big Bear Mountain, Calif.; Angel Fire, N.M.; Brian Head, Utah; Attitash, N.H.; and Steeplechase in Maeppa, Minn. On average, Subaru/IMBA Trail Crew Care Program Coordinator Aaryn Kay sifts through 250 applicants. According to Kay, "We're looking for areas with good local partnerships with bike clubs and land managers... places where we can make a difference." She points out that ski areas with summer mountain biking operations are ripe for the program, which can increase the economic lure of the area. "With existing trails, we can add features to draw people," she says, "or we can help areas that are just starting up a summer mountain bike program."
With a November application deadline, IMBA selects its tour stops for the following summer and announces the visit recipients between mid-January and early February. The application process includes scheduling considerations, so ski areas can avoid big events or heavy-use weekends. In preparation, Ryerson organized volunteers, local land managers and bike trail users to attend the trail building workshop. While not required, but recommended by IMBA, she arranged lunch for the volunteers and provided housing for the visiting trail care crew leaders - Nat and Rachel Lopes, a husband-wife team with avid mountain biking experience and a history in GIS mapping, soil sampling, cultural resource management, firefighting and wilderness first aid. The pair is now entering their third year as trail care crew.
Trail Building Workshop
Avoiding a cookie cutter format, each Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew workshop meets local goals. Ryerson's aim was two-fold: to improve Big Mountain's existing trails and to design a new summit trail. Other areas use IMBA's program to implement reroutes to rockwork, reclamation to basic construction, signage to creation of trail features. In some areas, the team designs and maps new routes with a GPS; in others they teach how to drain water without eroding the trail bed; in others they organize volunteers for work - but all with an underlying goal: how to design, build and maintain sustainable trails. To educate groups, the Lopeses created a video and a Powerpoint presentation showing good trail designs with environmentally conscious features. In one workshop, the Lopeses helped Steeplechase Ski Area build a sustainable downhill trail for advanced riders to add to their miles of intermediate cross-country bike trails. In a two day weekend, the Lopeses and area managers pulled together more than 50 volunteers from local bike clubs to completely construct a 3/4-mile mountain bike trail with 240 vertical feet of elevation drop and 28 technical hits.
At Big Mountain Resort, the Lopeses hiked the proposed new summit trail with Ryerson and a U.S. Forest Service representative. Where bikers could gather excessive speed on a jeep trail, the Lopeses recommended installing a "whoop-di-doop" trail, or series of tabletop jumps to decrease momentum while increasing fun for all riders. They also suggested contouring the trail around slope features to control speed and minimize erosion. "Their visit gave our proposal for a new summit trail credibility to the forest service," said Ryerson. "Their recommendations included everything from specific tactics to avoid impacting the environment." To improve Big Mountain's existing summit trail, Ryerson pulled together volunteers from the local Fat Tire Club. With shovels, picks, and a little grunt work, the Lopeses taught volunteers how to perk up the trail's fun factor while creating a more sustainable trail. They chose a troublesome section: Water ran straight down the trail digging a trench, and a sharp switchback caused erosion from skidding. After removing the soil berm on the trail's outside edge, they installed drainage features to encourage water to sheet off the trail. They also transformed the switchback into a rock-reinforced insloped berm turn, changing the way riders flow through the corner. Instead of skidding back tires, they ride up the berm's side which curves tires in the right direction. Both tactics reduce the amount of maintenance the trail requires.
Sustainable Trails
"There's a lot of people who know how to build trails," said Ryerson, "but not with sustainability in mind." That's where the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew comes in. Their program emphasizes elements to achieve sustainable trails. Rather than constructing steep downhill trails that widen over time, erode from water runoff, and create high speeds, trails should contour the slope. While dropping speeds, a contoured singletrack will not widen, and grade reversals shed water off the trail rather than down its slot. Jumps, hits, tabletops, bridges and berms are built to last. Fortified with rocks and boulders, dirt is only used to build transitions. In addition, all features are constructed so less experienced riders roll over the feature at slower speeds rather than launching big air.
As risk management strategies, IMBA encourages using well thought out combinations of features to help diminish rider speeds and effective signage to alert riders to upcoming features, so they ride within their abilities. Sustainable trail care crew tactics not only reduce trail maintenance, but have another benefit to ski areas, too. Mountain bikers enjoy fun features rather than riding in a straight line. Not all fun is about speed. When trails hold entertainment for all levels of mountain biker skills, in theory less poaching occurs outside designated trails. Nat Lopes also points out that ski resorts concentrate riders and trails in developed areas - places where lifts and runs already cut through trees, where the environmental impact is centralized rather than having it spread out unmanaged and unchecked into sensitive areas like adjacent national forests and wilderness zones. At Big Mountain, for instance, critical grizzly bear habitat flanks the north and west bowls; placing attractive bike trails in already developed high use areas should minimize the chance of riding running rampant in the adjacent forest.
Ski Resorts are Prime Candidates
In its 10th year, the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew program continues to offer free professional expertise on summer bike trails. "Working with ski resorts is great," Nat Lopes says. "The economic motivation is really clear as well as interest in building trails right and concern for risk management." Those are hard-to-overcome hurdles in other land use areas or with other mountain bike groups. And Nat adds, "Ski resorts can offer riding that is much more challenging than a lot of other land use type areas." To apply for a Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew visit, ski resorts do not need to be destination mountain bike areas. Many like Big Mountain use mountain biking as part of a product mix for visitors and the local community. "Mountain biking alone isn't a money maker for us," says Fred Jones, CEO of Big Mountain Resort, "but it's important as part of our overall summer outdoor recreation package and tying into larger community bike trail projects." To that extent, trails that people want to ride are key to developing the mountain bike business on any level. Talk to any avid mountain biker: He or she will have a brilliant trail idea. But few know how to build sustainable singletrack. "The trail care crew was so professional," said Ryerson. "They walked the talk. Their passion to build mountain biking trails is infectious."
For information on the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Program, call IMBA at (303) 545-9011 or log on to www.imba.com.
Becky Lomax writes about skiing and the outdoors from her home in Whitefish, Montana. She is a member of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association (NASJA) and is the author of Moon Handbook Glacier, a guidebook to Glacier National Park and Flathead Valley.
Last summer the Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew Program made 70 stops nationwide, including six ski areas, assessing trails, digging dirt and teaching trail building skills. Various areas have used IMBA's program to install signage, create trail features, learn how to drain water without eroding the trail bed and even map new trail routes using GPS/GIS technology. With a November application deadline, IMBA selects its tour stops for the following summer and announces the visit recipients between mid-January and early February.
