Yet another Expresso thread

I don't think that there should be any features that dog walkers and people on horseback cannot ascend.

Agreed. I've never really understood the appeal of riding skinnies unless for practical reasons like getting over a bog or creek. As illustrated in my awesome diagram below, imagine the black curvy line represents the natural twists and turns of a trail. Even if the section is relatively straight, it still will have a bit of a curve to it, or at the very least, the rider will track their bike in a similar, curved line. The red line is your typical skinny. To me, it just doesn't connect with the 'natural' lines, whether the trail explicitly curves, or the rider is tracking their bike on a similarly curved track. The curved lines just feel more fun to ride.

Maybe you should learn how to ride skinniea

Maybe you should learn how to ride skinniea

I know how to hit my head against a brick wall, doesn't mean I want or like to!

Maybe you should learn how to ride skinniea

Thanks, I can, I just don't find them as fun as riding dirt.

I can see why people who like Expresso in its current state are worried, the work planned is likely to change the character of the trail.

But in time, if Expresso's character does change, you'll get over it, and move on to other techy trails. It's not like this is your only option on the shore.

The next two trails to the west of Expresso are pretty raw natural lines, and there's a whole mountain of raw natural lines on Cypress. Hopefully the NSMBA will leave some lines on Fromme in their raw state (e.g. Grannies, Crippler, Bookwus), and these will be sufficient to appease the old-schoolers amongst us.

Spreading out some of the newb load off of Pipeline and Ladies will be a good thing.

I can see why people who like Expresso in its current state are worried, the work planned is likely to change the character of the trail.

Espresso has already changed a lot from the initial character on the trail. The question I guess is what type of character of trail is desired. To a certain extent I think it is bad to have a trail that is all rutted out full of loose boulders that looks like an eroded mess. Non riders look at that and proclaim that mountain bikers do all this "damage". While I think that is BS (see St Georges Trail or parts of the Lynn Loop) perception is important to the continued approval of riding up there and other places. We always want to be good citizens of the trails.

I think the Whistler Bike park experience is what a lot of riders want to see on the Shore now. Hence Bobsled. Hence flow.

For me sustainable is doing it once and not having to come back regularly to fix it.

THIS!

This is a real challenge here with the rain and conditions that change with every season.
Some trails just can't be sustainable in the wet. Water will always win.

My take on the Shore: I have a ton of respect for the guys that first started building challenging trails 15-20 years ago. It was a huge paradigm shift ffrom simply exploring and trying to ride existing hiking trails, to going out and creating a more fun, more challenging experience for bikes. However, knowing what we do now about good trail routing (rolling countour, avoiding fall line, grade reversals, avoiding flat, marshy valleys), most of these old trails were routed poorly, going for the easiest route down the hill, requiring the least work to get them open.

Trail days have been too focused on armouring poorly routed trails. People are focused on "how do we fix the trail?" when the trail route itself is fall line, channels water, and is turning into a creek bed. I don't care how much you armour a trail, if the trail is a fall line creek bed, water is going to break those rocks loose, and continue to dig the rutted line deeper and deeper.

There is a misperception that tires and traffic are the source of deeply rutted trails. This is wrong. WATER causes deeply rutted trails. A well designed and routed trail can withstand huge traffic without being cobble stoned. There is also a misperception that a sustainable, well designed trail must be 6 feet wide, devoid of rocks, roots, challenge, and every corner bermed.

Anyone that is interested in sustainable trail should be familiar with these concepts.
Rolling contour.
bench cut.
half rule.
grade reversals.

IMBA's trail design book is a great resource. I think their 10% max grade is complete B.S., and made me discard the rest of their points for a long time. With more experience, I realized their trail building guidelines have a lot of merit. You can build a double black super gnar trail, that doesn't turn into a chundered creek bed rutty mess using these techniques. The main thing to think about is keeping water off the trail, and planning for hard braking zones. Steeps are fine, as long as you plan for braking, and throw in grade reversal afterwards, to get water off the line.

Wood work will ALWAYS have to be fixed or replaced eventually. This is ok if you have someone willing to do it, but once that person doesn't exist, that piece of woodwork should go unless is critical to the trail ie; a bridge.

Yes. I think it speaks volumes that Digger and Jerry, both known for their mastery of woodwork, are wanting to move away from bridges where they are not mandatory. Bridges are the best solution to get over big creeks. Everywhere else, they are more expensive, more labor to build, and degrade quickly, generally in less than 10 years. Another problem, is that many riders get sketched out by woodwork when it is wet. A skinny is not really a good solution to get you over a swamp, if half the users don't ride it and tromp through the swamp anyways…

Keep the good, fix the best of the bits that connect to the goods, reroute the worst bits, and remove the rotting crap.

THIS.

Good bits being the sweet rock face lines. Bad being the fall line creek bed chunder fest. I'm sorry, going straight down, riding brake down chunder is not "gnar". It's not challenging to go straight. More corners, more sidehill, more trail.

Grade reversals= rad g-outs, whoops, rollers, up'n'overs.
Rolling contour= slaloming trees, getting off the brakes and letting the wheels roll.

THIS!
IMBA's trail design book is a great resource. I think their 10% max grade is complete B.S., and made me discard the rest of their points for a long time. With more experience, I realized their trail building guidelines have a lot of merit. You can build a double black super gnar trail, that doesn't turn into a chundered creek bed rutty mess using these techniques. The main thing to think about is keeping water off the trail, and planning for hard braking zones. Steeps are fine, as long as you plan for braking, and throw in grade reversal afterwards, to get water off the line.

If anybody is interested in learning more about these techniques, adapted for the Shore, you should attend the remaining Builder's Academy session on May 23. It's worthwhile. Good story by Morgan here.

I like the entrance to the trail, including the hollowed out wood slab! The alternate route obviously needs some work though.
I don't care too much about aesthetics, but I would like to see the dysfunctional woodwork removed, because it makes me sad when I cannot ride it. If possible it would be nice to improve and keep as many wooden features as possible.

Thank you dkl (and BJC) you took the discussion of sustainability to a much deeper level than I'd ever considered and I think you've both added a lot to our discussion. I think that we need to step back for a second from discussing the small things in order to look at the Expresso's place in the larger context of ongoing trail advocacy, the character of the other trails on Fromme and how they meet riders' needs and what future maintenance can be provided to the trail.

Jerry-Rig explained at the beginning that land owners want to move away from the wooden structures for liability and maintenance reasons and dkl pointed out that sometimes you have to play the long game and understand that you have to gain stakeholders' confidence in order to get where you want in the end. So it makes sense to me to decommission unsafe, high, unnecessary structures, but keep those that are necessary. Perhaps reach a compromise by having some narrow lines that are close to the ground?

The 'vocal minority' who enjoy riding skinnies and gnar that Cam mentions in one of his posts are a legitimate group of riders whose concerns should also be met. They feel (if I understand it right) that the trails are one by one being made less technical and that they are losing trails and always being told that there are other technical trails, so why don't they go and ride those. This makes those people feel that they don't matter. I felt that dkl said it very well when he talked about community and about always having something to strive for, a 'next level', and having unreachable levels that keep people involved and interested. I think that it's important to look at the trails on Fromme and ask ourselves how we want to distribute trails of different difficulty levels. Are there too many challenging trails? Too many middle of the road trails? The Shore has always been a tough place to break in to from a skill perspective, and it seems that we're working towards making some trails that help people get into the sport.

Finally, if we're talking about sustainability of the trail we need to plan for the future. If the TAP is successful, will Expresso get another 5 trail days next year? Or will it have to wait a few years? If a wooden structure has a 5 year lifespan (barring a tree falling on it) then such structures would be sustainable if there are another 5 trail days every 2 to 4 years. God willing we (as a riding community) are not going anywhere, so I'd like to think that we'll be able to continue maintaining a wide variety of trails.

These are some of the conclusions I've come to after reading through what dkl wrote. I think that he/she has a lot of insight into the considerations we should be taking when we rebuild trails. By applying these considerations first on a larger scale, then on a smaller one (looking at individual features on the trail) I think that we'll be more successful in keeping more people happy and building a successful and collaborative community.

I think the Whistler Bike park experience is what a lot of riders want to see on the Shore now. Hence Bobsled. Hence flow.

God I hope people aren't working towards that but you are probably right. A bike park experience is the exact thing I don't want to see. Nor is anything like that at all sustainable or reasonable on public land and with donated funds and labour. The trails on the shore must be analogous to backcountry ski routes, not groomed for-profit playgrounds.

DKL and dawnchairy, thanks for stepping up the level of thoughtfulness and insight in this discussion.

You've very clearly articulated the thoughts that go through my head every day in my role as the president if the NSMBA, and it's comforting to know that others in our community have a true understand of how complex and tenuous this process is.

There may not be any statues of committees, but we all know that no individual that has achieved greatness has done it alone.

The trails belong to the entire community, and I know that every builder associated with TAP is not building for themselves, but for their fellow riders.

There are multiple objectives to balance, and I am supremely confident that Cam, Jerry and Digger will deliver outstanding results. Looking forward to seeing a huge turnout to the first trailday.

Mathew

Trail days have been too focused on armouring poorly routed trails. People are focused on "how do we fix the trail?" when the trail route itself is fall line, channels water, and is turning into a creek bed. I don't care how much you armour a trail, if the trail is a fall line creek bed, water is going to break those rocks loose, and continue to dig the rutted line deeper and deeper.

The modern vision for trail building has moved away from this for several reasons, the main being that, in my experience, armouring doesn't really work in all the places it's been done. There has been a few problems show up with it such as people not wanting to ride over the bumpy rocks, so they ride around creating deep channels, and the rocks are starting to get polished and slick. The new awesome is dirt filling areas, throwing in re-routes and focusing on drainage to keep water away from the trail. Last year a major re-route of Griffen on Fromme was made, and it's holding up awesome, and it's all dirt. This year, a big wet part of Pangor was re-routed with a lower grade, no armouring, and a focus on flow.
The shore is changing, but it's changing because of what we've collectively learned.