Sustainable Trail Care Training

I was very fortunate this past weekend to be able to take a workshop/seminar offered by an IMBA trail care crew. While I know we're all hikers and the board has a hiking focus, the training at this workshop is geared towards any and all sustainable trail building and maintenance, no matter the user(s).

It would take most of a 'novel' to tell y'all how much I learned and how it is going to be applied to our trails here. Suffice it to say, it's going to have a major impact on all the trails our group maintains.

IMBA (International Mountain Biking Association) has three crews, two in the US and one here in Canada that can be booked for their training seminars.

I highly recommend them to any and all trail clubs. Even if you think you know how to lay out a trail and maintain it, I'm betting these guys could show you more than a few tricks that would improve your clubs' skill level.

I wish we could book them back in next year for more training but I dont' think we'll get that lucky.

I would like to hear more about what you learned.

The "whoops" 4x4 trail users refer to are made by logs across trails at a diagonal. On hiking trails, they were no more fun either.

I went out with East Slope Backcountry Horsemen, on contract for the Bob Marshall Wilderness, to maintain trails. I was provided the horse. I brought my green saw (a curved saw, cuts on the pull stroke) and long handle Corona loppers. Me and my partner for one trail traded off these tools to break-up continuous effort. The others came to help us out. We were done. We finished out assigned trail in a half-day.

Hatchets and axes hack the brush. Looks really ugly!