In the morning we had a little talk about basics in trail building. For example there are differences between volunteer builders and paid professional builders. Usually volunteer builder just widen the corridor and the trail then gets its final touch as it is ridden whereas professionals dig down to mineral soil for sustainable trails.
IMBA and Whistler trail standards are some resources for building sustainable trails. Trail building varies depending on the Trail difficulty rating. The average grade increases and width decreases from green to double black. A trail is rated by its most difficult feature. The 11. Steps of Trail Design mention 'control points' that could be trail heads, parking, view points. Pinch point are points where the trail has to go through, e.g. because of private properties.
Afterwards we headed to the Simpcw community where a new downhill oriented blue/black trail is planned. We met up with Tom form the Simpcw on the bottom of the future trail area. Thomas and Tom defined the borders/handrails of the area before we bush walked up the hill and scoped the area for the future trail.
Always looking for nice natural or outstanding features that we flagged for later consideration, we found these nice two trees which would be great for installing a ramp later on and flagged some nice outstanding boulders.
Tom invited us for lunch in the Simpcw community. We were introduced in their First Nation community and territory, Charlie and Justin introduced us to different languages and sang us a traditional song before we enjoyed traditional lunch. This experience was very interesting.
In the afternoon we hiked up an existing flow trail and discussed different TTFs along the trail and how these features make a trail more interesting. For example drops could be build on a natural grade, features could be build so that beginners and experts have fun. Then we started from the top and tried to find our flagged spot before we went for lunch. As we didn't track the GPS-route it was a little more adventurous to find it. But we scoped out a bigger terrain, which was very helpful.
