Dec. 3, 2013, 5:38 p.m. -  mojosbc

#!markdown Nanaman, I'm a little confused by your use of terms like dirt, soil and gold. Maybe you guys have a different vocabulary down there. I'm an unpaid trail builder up here in Powell River, personally averaging about 750 hours annually. We build new trails but most of our time is spent upgrading existing trails, mostly built by hikers. Drainage is the single biggest issue, and to get water flowing again, off the trails, the first thing we usually have to do is scrape off the organics that retain water and prevent water flow. Most people refer to this organic material as dirt or soil. Often what we will then do is search for what we call mineral, the sandy/gravel/pebble mix that permits water to drain better. Some refer to this as gold because of the colour. I have yet to meet a single person who felt we had ruined a trail by doing this. Quite the opposite. The world has discovered the hundreds of kilometres of trails up here and are coming to ride them and love what they see. Those who return year after year such as the BC Bike racers have told us how much better the trails are than before. But I suppose it is a personal preference. If you prefer to ride through rutty muddy pools of water, which freezes into sometimes very deep rutty ridges aka tire traps in the colder weather because the dirt/soil/organic is still on the trail, well then we do still have some of that too because there is just not enough time to deal with drainage on all of them unless I live another 50 years. Maybe I will, I'm only 65.