Trails Update: Sept 13, 2019
Overheard:
“What are you guys doing?” asked the panting teen as he walked his bike up the Lower Sproatt road.
“We’re extending the Piece of Cake climbing trail!”
“Why?”
…
roughly 15 years after the short but awesome “Piece of cake” and “A la Mode” trails were built, the vision to connect them is finally underway. We broke ground on the extension at this week’s Tuesday Dig Night. 25 Folks came out to work the dirt despite the looming showers.
“Many hands make light work” but the dirt put up a fight! Luckily, Ali and Colin brought some fresh recruits. As the sun set, Arbutus Routes quenched our thirst for fizzy drinks and trail stories. After some top shelf beer and Alpine Café energy bars, we could have kept digging under the stars…
But wait, there’s more!
We’ll be back in Piece of Cake again next week to continue the work. Alba Distribution is sponsoring this short but intense fall trail night… guaranteed to be more fun than the gym!
Meet us at 5:30 at the yellow gate (bottom of AC/DC)
Bring gloves and dress for the weather and darkness!
Signage push
The trail crew has been updating (or finally labelling) trail signs all over the westside (rest of the valley coming soon). Most trails are built with an intended direction of travel by design:
-Climbing trails have flat, tight switchback turns.
-Descending trails are typically narrower and can have steep and/or high speed sections, jumps and berms.
I think we can all agree with these statements:
“We want to keep our climbing trails free of brake ruts”AND“We want to shred down without worrying about climbing traffic”.
So, you’ll notice some new directional signage pop up where appropriate:
“Two-way traffic”, “Uphill Primary”, “Downhill Primary” and “trail EXIT”
User safety, quality of experience and managing tread impact, are important reasons to respect these new trail designations.
Lost and Found
I pick up a lot of garbage.
On the trails it’s mostly energy shot/bar wrappers or random flagging tape (a lot of flagging tape!).
In the alpine I find mostly terrible beer empties. Anecdotally, it seems that taste aficionados know to “pack-out what they packed-in” since craft beer cans are less common.
Strangely, away from the trails, deep in the forest, other than remnants of logging machinery, helium balloons are what I find most often! Whether it slipped from the hand of a pie-eyed child or released for a planned spectacle, it is garbage that eventually gets chewed-up by bears. This week, we all get to relive this cheerful “Happy 51st birthday Tracey from Vancouver!”
See you on the trails
Dan Raymond
WORCA Lead Trail Builder
