A Culture of Building

We originally published this article back in May, when Morgan attended one of the first sessions of the NSMBA’s Builders Academy. With a summer of TAP trail days behind us, the ground moistening up for the first time in months, and the need to find something to do all winter, the Fall sessions of Builders Academy are perfectly timed. The first session runs this upcoming Tuesday, October 2nd.

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The North Shore Mountain Bike Association is taking strides toward educating a new generation of trail maintainers and ensuring those with experience have the right techniques and certifications. In 2011, the Trail Adoption Plan saw a tenfold increase in the number of hours logged by NSMBA-facilitated trail maintenance days. A year later, after a successful run in its first year with TAP, the NSMBA is now expanding their program by introducing a second tier of trail maintenance structure: the Builders Academy, supported by Arc’teryx.

  Mark Wood, NSMBA Program Manager; mastermind and instructor of the Builders Academy. Te second round of theory sessions run on May 16 or May 23 with the practical building day on May 27th – if you’re interested, sign up HERE.

The first sessions of the NSMBA Builders Academy – the first step on tier two – were held in April.  While I had attended numerous NSMB.com trail days in 2011 and have done a fair amount of research on the political side of building, I’ll admit it: I didn’t know what a grade reversal was until having it explained at the Builders Academy.

  This first article looks at the theory behind the Builders Academy, with more to come from the in-field session.

Thus, the first step of the Builders Academy is the theory session. This is good because, in the trail days that I have attended and the time I’ve spent soaking up knowledge from experienced builders, there are obviously still aspects of the fundamentals that have slipped past me. Ensuring that everyone who goes through the Builders Academy has had these ideas placed right in front of them before going into the woods is a very good thing.

  The philosophy behind the program was developed by master builders on the Shore with consultation from an important player, the land managers. Working with the land managers lends credibility to the curriculum and legitimacy to the work we do out on the trails.

A little bit about the Shore’s background:

• 2000mm+ of rain per year
• thick organic mat – robust biomass
• steep and rocky terrain – a building challenge and dictates trail grade
• an inherited trail network – most trails built 15-20 years ago

  We’ve inherited this trail network, and the lines chosen are not always the most sustainable. The word alignment is important because many of the Shore’s most classic and original lines are do not follow what would now, with decades of experience and education, be considered sustainable alignments.

The classroom curriculum loosely follows the International Mountain Bike Association’s book, Trail Solutions. While specific approach can vary geographically, but the fundamentals of trail building remain. While what the IMBA calls “rolling contour” is the ideal trail alignment, there are still other techniques that have to be employed.

  Trail flow and line selection. You can have a flowy trail with wide open corners and high average speed, while you can also have a slower, more snaky trail with many twists and turns. As long as the rider experience is consistent and the alignment is sustainable, either is fine.

Some of the most vocal critics of mountain biking use environmental degradation as a defence. This leads to a point about the inherited trail network. Yes, environmental degradation is a factor, but the NSMBA is moving forward with a much more educated and concise approach to maintaining and building trails. They are “creating standards within the building community”.

  A photo from a recent NSMB.com review, showing a trail in need of some drainage work…

At the end of the day, “positive rider experience” is the goal for trail building; sustainable trails maintain this experience longer. In effect, the inherited trail network is being retrofitted with TAP – updated to current building standards and long-term sustainability.

  Darren Butler of Endless Biking checking out one of the NSMBA’s new fire rakes. DB and EB have adopted Upper Griffen with the TAP program; Darren came to the course as a refresher on the fundamentals.

 The key to this sustainability is alignment: a fall line alignment sets you up for challenging maintenance. In some cases, unsustainable sections of trail need to be realigned, completely changed, and the previous line decommissioned and re-naturalized.

  Where is this on the Shore? 

Drainage is a big issue, and grade reversals are an absolutely necessary piece of the drainage puzzle. A grade reversal is where the builder upslopes the trail bed, creating what the rider experiences as a bump or roller, to encourage water to leave the trail bed. Grade reversals also help control rider impact through speed and flow. We’ll look at grade reversals in more detail in the next installment of this article. Another necessary tactic is outsloping. The trail bed should slope toward the downhill side, in order to avoid pooling on the inside.

We constantly fight erosion and the process of entropy of the trail network. Entropy always wins, but with so much water coming down the hill every year, it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

  Remnants of the North Shore’s original human use for the hills. We were not the first, and we won’t be the last.

Trail Assessment is part of the trail maintaner’s task. Identifying user hazard is the number one, while drainage is the largest ongoing part of the task. To properly assess drainage, you have to walk the trail in the rain!

  Huge old stumps are a reminder of what once was, with signs of previous human activity.

There are many parts of trail assessment, and the Builders Academy aims to prepare its participants to perform trail assessment and be part of ongoing local trail maintenance. The next step after Builders Academy is the NSMBA’s Watchmen program, where people can volunteer to adopt their own trail, and visit it regularly enough to reliably report its condition and any necessary work to the Association.

  “Anything worth doing is worth doing right” – Stuart Kerr, long time North Shore builder. When Chris Barker rebuilt this section of Mt. Seymour’s TNT, he put a drainage culvert at a problem spot. All that beautiful gold stays right where it should: on the trail bed.

Sometimes irreconcilable issues crop up, and the curriculum covers the recommended strategy for rerouting a trail and reclaiming the old line. The bottom line here is that the NSMBA always strives to take the “environmental high ground” – leave your job site better than when you started, and always work with land managers to be sure your work will remain.

  Mark puts his money where his mouth is, and cleans out the sump before one of his culverts on Corkscrew.

The Builders Academy is the first step towards becoming an authorized trail builder capable of leading trail projects. It is fundamentally a trail maintenance and stewardship training course; in order to understand maintenance it’s best to be familiarized with construction as well.

Many of these techniques may seem to be common sense, but having them all laid out in front of us at once was a good refresher and helped connect the different factors in building. After the classroom session, we met up the following weekend to put the shovels to the trail. With the TAP program running full steam, there are plenty of opportunities to get your hands dirty.

  The Builders Academy crew headed up to work on Dreamweaver during the in-field practical session.

NSMBA Builders Academy teaches good trail maintenance fundamentals and applies them to an in-field trail work day. One of the main tenets of the curriculum, and of the NSMBA’s most recent trail maintenance blitz, is that they are “building a culture of builders” and “keeping people keen and motivated”. It’s 2012 and the Shore is saying “make trail building a pursuit worth doing for everyone”. The compound interest on this program is clearly going to far eclipse the immediate benefits, which are already great.

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The Fall sessions of the Arc’teryx Builders Academy begin this upcoming Tuesday, October 2nd – if you’re interested, sign up HERE.