Why the IMBA hating

BINGO!

Although David Davis from an unpronounceable mountain bike area in Wales says that the terrain there is very similar to here and it is possible to build 'sustainable' trails.

It just takes money and support from the landowners.

Having lived a few miles from the Welsh border for much of my life, I have to say that the typical Welsh trail centre has nothing in common with the North Shore. All the gradients over there are pretty mellow and in recent times, all the trails are just gravel and rock based from the start. Anything that was steep and loam based (thus needing maintenance, but FUN) has been shut down in favour of the same old shitty 3ft wide tame BMX track type trail. Which I guess now looks familiar to people over here…..

sustainable and fun are mutually exclusive (99[HTML_REMOVED]#37; of the time)

Wales:

The first UK trail centre to receive IMBA Accreditation. It reminds me of Lower Ladies…..

sustainable and fun are mutually exclusive (99% of the time)

What a totally crap, generalising statement. Provide evidence for your claim.

totally, what a lame comment~ maybe in Wales sustainable is no fun, but over here you can make a totally sustainable trail that is still a blast to ride. All you need is a slope, some tools and a vision. The main problem is it's very hard to do on flat terrian (ie. trans canada trail), you need some form of slope to achieve a sustainable trail unless you are going to gravel the heck out of it!

Yeah I gotta say the construction standards on some of the welsh trails are phenomenal. Some of the machine built trails are going to be around for centuries. I'll try and find some pics.

They do all sorts of things over there too including DH tracks that are open year round.

The Welsh government trail development practices in terms of funding trail construction to encourage tourism is something that should be emulated here IMO.

I have lost sight of the debate here. I thought the challenge was that IMBA personnel were trying to muscle in on local builders, imposing their vanilla trail standards on existing lines. That is bad and should not be tolerated.

The fact that IMBA exists is not bad, and any new lines cut, esp. in high profile areas (the shore) should prolly embrace IMBA trail guidelines to prevent conflict with the landowners and all other stake holders.

What a totally crap, generalising statement. Provide evidence for your claim.

alright i shouldn't have said "fun".

"preferred" would work better

any kind of bike riding is fun…

but if one is going to choose between

this:

and this:

99/100 will be choosing to ride #2

alright i shouldn't have said "fun".

"preferred" would work better

any kind of bike riding is fun…

but if one is going to choose between

this:
99/100 will be choosing to ride #2

Not necessarily, and you have chosen poor examples to back up your point. Here in the lower mainland, finding a trail that you can pedal along nicely, while still having a view, is very rare, therefore, a trail like the Welsh one, may have some appeal with the 'grass is greener' mindset. Of course, we have some awesome trails here, and a lot aren't 'sustainable' (I put the word in quotes because it's still not rigidly defined), but there are some trails out there that are super fun to ride that will be around forever (as long as maintenance is kept up). You get out of the city, and there are some awesome examples of trails that are fun and maintainable, such as the Seven Summits in Rossland.

Even fall line and extreme trails can be built to be low maintenance (sustainable). However, it's just going to take a shit load more time and effort than an easier trail and some builders or land managers may not be willing (or can afford) to put that level of effort into it. Same reason there are more Fords than Ferrari's on the road. Also you can't expect loam to be low maintenance unless you, or a few bud's, are the only riders.

I think IMBA represents an excellent baseline standard from which new builders can start to learn the basics. However, as with any standard, users also have to understand inherent limitations and applicability. On the west coast of BC with the the combination of extremely wet weather and rider's preference for steeper trails, the IMBA standards can quickly fall short and site specific experience is required.

Not necessarily, and you have chosen poor examples to back up your point. Here in the lower mainland, finding a trail that you can pedal along nicely, while still having a view, is very rare, therefore, a trail like the Welsh one, may have some appeal with the 'grass is greener' mindset. Of course, we have some awesome trails here, and a lot aren't 'sustainable' (I put the word in quotes because it's still not rigidly defined), but there are some trails out there that are super fun to ride that will be around forever (as long as maintenance is kept up). You get out of the city, and there are some awesome examples of trails that are fun and maintainable, such as the Seven Summits in Rossland.

by sustainable i was thinking minimal maintenance, no irreverisble damage…

you're right. different things are targeted to different demographics. if there were only trails like that welsh one, life would be pretty yawn.

i don't know if the same could be said about only gnarly fall line trails… but i'm wearing my "young, downhill sled, i don't climb - i walk" glasses

but yeah a mixture of both is the best way

Can someone ban IP Freely ? He sounds like a christian preaching about the bible (whister guidelines). His post reminded me of my born again sister.

Can someone ban IP Freely ? He sounds like a christian preaching about the bible (whister guidelines). His post reminded me of my born again sister.

hehehe, Jay Hoots (Krantz) has done more for this sport than most, he's entitled to his opinion whether or not you (or I) agree.

I have done a lot of building and even more "fixing" of old crap lines. I have also done a lot of coordinating of groups for trail work. I know Mark and I have attended an IMBA clinic. He helped design one of the trails we built in our area.

In my opinion, any trail or section of trail that is "built in a day" is somewhat doomed. I say that because in my experience, unless you know what the weather and conditions are like in an area over a period of time, you won't know what the best solution is for a section of trail. What might be a great solution in a dry area with low traffic might be total crap if that area gets wet and sees high traffic.

The projects that have turned out like crap that I have been involved were ones that we showed up on the day with a bunch of people, tried to figure out what to do and went at it for 3 hours and finished up.

The better ones were visited by the crew bosses before hand, the work was planned in line with conditions (weather, traffic, line etc.), an appropriate solution was settled on, materials and tools were set up, THEN the work got done. The results after a process like that have left us with what I would call "sustainable" trail.

As an outsider to this event what I see went wrong was that the people "in the know" weren't consulted, so the best solution wasn't applied and possibly a "solution" applied that didn't even need to be there.

I also think this thread can have some positive value. The Mtb community needs an outlet to discuss what is happening and if something isn't working we should discuss it. Yeah it might bring out some negative opinions, but those might lead to some positive change. If you are too scared that outsiders will see us having a discussion about how a trail was built then too bad. What I see is IMBA being held accountable to a high standard of building and I don't see anything bad coming out of that as long as reasons are given. Good trail says far more about our sport than some negative opinionson the Internets.

My approach is that IMBA and Whistler provide guidelines and principals on how to build trails. But you also need to take in to account local knowledge and adjust accordingly.

Once I learned what I would call mtb trail building basics the book Natural Surface Trails by Design was one that really made me think about all the factors that go in to making a line choice and the consequences of it. It really helped me look at trailbuilding in a different light.
https://secure2.convio.net/imba/site/Ecommerce/490557198?VIEW_PRODUCT=true[HTML_REMOVED]product_id=1361[HTML_REMOVED]store_id=1201

I also know that one of the challenges IMBA faces is funding. They moved in to paid consulting for trail building because they needed an outside income source, but more importantly, they do have some extremely knowledgable people on how to mtb trails. Those people also know how to translate that in advocacy as well. They should capitalize on it as the overall result is a benefit to the sport overall.