Your community goal is to improve recreation, economic development, people’s health and well-being, and maybe more.
You want to develop purpose built, bike-optimized trails, and harmonize multiple types of trail use. You may be at the beginning of the process to simply imagine high-quality trails, or you’re further along to now plan, fund, build, renovate, or steward trails.
IMBA Trail Solutions partners with community leaders and local trail organizations by uniting stakeholders for optimal outcomes. We meet you where you are with every possible solution, for every objective and any phase.
Trail Solutions for All Trail Users:
- Family-friendly, shared-use systems for every riding ability and any trail user
- Trail systems that cater to all progressive skill levels
- Modern bike parks
- Expert-level trails crafted with cutting-edge industry features
- Legacy trail renovations to sculpt rowdy, modern systems
Trail Solutions for Your Objectives:
- Community Health
- Tourism
- Economic Development
- Environmental Management
- Harmonizing Multi-use Scenarios
Supporting You at Every Phase with Excellence:
Trusted and Pioneering Expertise
Your project deserves the deepest knowledge and widest experience to avoid cost overruns, stay on schedule, unite community will, and secure funding. Our comprehensive approach demystifies complexities and lifts you over barriers. Our partners span municipal managers, federal and state land agencies, private land owners, and more.
Your trail challenge is our solution. Solutions are backed by the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), and IMBA’s original, pioneering, and standard-setting expertise in trail advocacy and development. This expertise informs comprehensive solutions across the entire trail development process that have been applied to more than 750 IMBA Trail Solutions projects in your region and worldwide.
IMBA Trail Solutions serves communities at important moments when the cost of getting it wrong is higher than the cost of doing it right. Let’s partner, collaborate, and have fun together to create the best experiences for everyone to get outdoors.
Vision & Community Engagement Solutions
Across nearly 40 years of advocacy experience and 750+ community projects, the best trail systems have been grounded in sound visioning and a process to engage the right community stakeholders in the right ways, at the right time. Community support (or lack of) affects access, funding, use, local goodwill, and more. IMBA Trail Solutions offers a proven methodology to build local will, commitment, and momentum toward approval.
Assessment & Inventory Solutions
A landscape-level, in-depth professional inventory by IMBA Trail Solutions will craft a way forward for trails, be it reviewing a new landscape, expanding a trail system, modifying existing trails, or looking community-wide at what’s present and possible. Your IMBA Trail Solutions team will listen and learn to understand current uses, vision, and goals for trails. Then, survey their way toward identifying every opportunity, while working with you to hone in on what’s most compelling for your community. Need a fresh set of eyes?
“Trail Solutions and IMBA have taken our ideas and our thoughts, cobbled them together, and presented them back to us with a master plan. They’ve lent a guiding hand throughout the entire process for the last five years.”
—Taft Sibley, Trail Champion, Walden’s Ridge Park, TN
Professional Planning & Design Solutions
What’s your plan? When you partner with our professional IMBA Trail Solutions planners, you are on your way to developing a creative system that lasts, manages risk, minimizes user conflict, and serves all users and skill levels. Innovative designs and progressive trail systems keep users coming back for years. Well-designed trails by IMBA Trail Solutions are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable while complementing the natural landscape. IMBA Trail Solutions can also transform existing, dated trails into an optimized system. Is your community in need of a trail plan and physical design?
“Trail Solutions has been tremendously helpful. They’ve built really great trail, created a good master plan which is the core of what we partnered with them to do. Having them added a lot of credibility. What you don’t see is how many phone calls they’ve taken for us and all that they’ve taught me through this process.”
- Blake Melton, trail champion, Standing Boy Trails, GA
“We connected with IMBA at the very beginning stages of project design and project planning. We went from having zero riders a year within an hour of Portland, to now this system serving somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50,000 annual visits.”
— Zach Jarrett, trail champion, Sandy Ridge Trail System, OR
Professional Trail Construction Solutions
IMBA Trail Solutions constructs high-quality trails to endure. Our expert builders tailor cutting-edge trail construction techniques to the local environment, inspired by their respect for the natural landscape. We’ve worked in high alpine forests and near sensitive habitats. We’ve created lines for World Cup championship courses in Red Bull videos. We build bike skills parks and well-balanced trail networks that can welcome beginners and thrill advanced riders alike.
We partner with every conceivable type of agency and land manager. We provide direct service and often combine resources with other top builders through general contracting arrangements. We’re eager to share the joy of trails with your community. When will your trails be shovel-ready?
“I cannot thank IMBA and your professional trail building crew enough for the work they performed this fall in Cedar City... They are all top-notch professionals. IMBA has built a fantastic trail that millions of people will eventually ride, I am sure of it.”
— Dave Jacobson, Trail Champion, Iron Hills Trail System, UT
Land Access & Trail Access Solutions
Understanding where and how you can develop trails is essential, and sometimes complicated, whether it’s on public land, private land, or both. IMBA Trail Solutions helps you navigate the complexity, backed by IMBA’s team of community engagement, land management and policy experts who have helped solve countless access challenges.
Funding Solutions
We know that you can have the best trail plan in the world, but if you don’t have a funding strategy, and financial plan, it will remain just an idea. IMBA Trail Solutions and IMBA provide comprehensive fundraising counsel and services to make your case, research and connect funding sources, design successful capital campaigns, and coach you and your team on partnering with all types of funders.
If you are a funder wanting to research and understand vetted, fundable trail opportunities, we can assist in confidence. IMBA has worked with most trail philanthropists and funders in the country.
Trail Signage Solutions
Clear maps and signage are crucial for positive user experiences and the reputation of your trails. This is an often overlooked yet essential element of a quality system. Our designers craft custom signage solutions: from analysis, to wayfinding plans, to final installation. Our signage not only enhances navigation and ensures user safety but also enriches the overall user experience. Are you ready to create an unforgettable trail experience that keeps users coming back for more?
"Not only do we get constant feedback on how well built our trails are, but we are consistently applauded for the user friendly signage. They covered every detail, from the trailhead and hub kiosks to the carsonite posts...identifying every trail, the intended use, and skill level. Even making sure the signage "style" matched the feel of our trails. IMBA Trail Solutions didn't just build a world class trail system, they built a relationship with Hot Springs."
– Traci Berry, trail champion, Hot Springs, AR
"Some of the rock work is just stunning. And it really beckons back to the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] origins of this park and honors the work that was done by people in the 1930's."
– Mark Hoyle, Cacapon Foundation in Berkeley Springs, WV
Advocacy & Maintenance Solutions
Trails should be an essential community amenity like any other recreation infrastructure.
The best trail systems are the result of a community and a local trail advocacy organization forging a partnership to develop and steward quality trails for the long-term—together. Success requires both municipal leadership and a high-functioning local organization. We help put the two together. We help local organizations develop, grow and accomplish more. Modern-era, quality trails require modern-era stewardship and maintenance plans. IMBA Trail Solutions and IMBA coach and provide services to organizations that support high-level performance, and provide communities with Trail Care Workshops to ensure sustainable trail maintenance will be front and center to protect investments by all.
IMBA Trail Solutions offers the original and best Trail Care Workshops: hands-on, on your trails, with your community volunteers. Land Management Workshops are tailored for land managers.
Community Designations & Marketing Solutions
IMBA Trail Solutions and IMBA offer tools to help you assess your trails and amenities as a step toward improving and earning valuable, nationally recognized IMBA designations. IMBA’s assessments help communities, destinations, and organizations understand where they stand today and how to level up with purpose.
When partnering with IMBA Trail Solutions, your community gains the added value of your project being amplified to IMBA's important audiences: media, trail users, funders, and advocates. IMBA impact storytelling and communication channels are among the largest and most effective in the trail community.
An IMBA Trail Town embodies the essence of a welcoming and vibrant locale, where the beauty of nature intertwines seamlessly with community life. It's not just a place, but an ethos—a commitment to fostering a diverse array of outdoor experiences within reach of every resident and visitor.
IMBA’s Ride Center™ designation is the gold standard for mountain biking destinations. These world-class locations deliver it all: epic variety, unmatched quality, and progression that keeps every rider stoked, whether you’re an advanced shredder chasing flow, a family looking for a weekend getaway, or a first-timer discovering the joy of trails.
IMBA Trail Solutions In Action
"Communities all over the country are embarking on trail projects, and many of them reach out to IMBA and Trail Solutions for help. My role is dedicated to guiding them through the process— connecting them with resources and helping them break through barriers to get those projects going as quickly as possible."
Meet our teamMarty Caivano
Community Engagement & Programs Manager
