Wow, my calendar tells me that today is the first day of September and cooler mornings and tacky dirt are certainly making it feel like fall time. Regardless if you are thinking about squeezing as much fall riding in as possible, or are dreaming of snow I’d like you to consider putting one more event into your fall calendars.
We are hosting IMBA Canada trail expert Jay Darby to run a trail development workshop in Gold Bridge/ Bralorne September 24-26. Jay has worked with communities across BC to develop, expand and build world class trails. If you’d like to learn more about Jay, you can read about him here: https://www.wanderingpathconsulting.ca/
Here are three reasons that you should consider attending this workshop:
- It’s free! Sal Demare from the SLRD has worked to arrange funding to offer this community training at no cost to participants. I should note that the funding has to go through one more approval on September 8th, but we do not expect any issues with this step.
- Sunshine Mountain is now a designated Rec Site. This is great news, for many reasons but does come with some additional regulations around trail construction. Any trails on Sunshine will need to meet IMBA or Whistler Trail Standards moving forward. This workshop is focused on developing awesome trail within these standards.
- We will actually be working on trail. Over 50% of the course will be in the field, working on Alphagetti. So if you like to get dirty and work to make trails more fun, this is the course for you!
The planned dates are Friday evening September 24 and full day September 25, 26. However, this is still subject to funding approval. So please consider this a save the date for now. Everyone is welcome Friday evening for a community hall style presentation. Saturday morning will also be in class and all are welcome. Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday will be in the field and class size limits will apply.
I will also note that while the focus of this course is developing bike trails, the principles discussed are transferable to all trail types.
We will have copies of the IMBA trail manuals on hand, in the short term I have attached the Whistler trail standards document.
If you have any questions please let me know. If you are considering attending please respond to this message so I can start a list. There are some capacity limits for the field based parts of the course.
Thank you and I hope you get to ride your bike this week.
Blake Rowsell, BRA Co-ordinator
