Growth in trail work events this fall

Digging, shaping and maintaining. The number of trail building and maintenance initiatives really took off this fall. From Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands to Poland and the Czech Republic, IMBA Europe member organisations have been very active promoting volunteer work by mountain bikers ánd introducing forestry rangers some trail building basics. The Czech Republic kicked off the season. CeMBA hosted a MTB conference in Trutnov which included a trail design course by Trail Solutions and a workshop by Tom Prozacka. One of the successes of this event was the partnership between CeMBA and Czech Republic Forest.[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”509″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 680px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]]Next stop was Poland where our member organisations POMBA coordinated a trail building course forest rangers and managers. Trail specialist Mark McClure run the 3 day course and taught the Polish forestors the principles of sustainable construction of mountain bike trails. [[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”510″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 680px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]]Late October, NOTS Oslo celebrated the opening of their pioneer project in Ostmarka. It’s the first, purposed built mountain bike trail in this forest region east of Oslo. One of the goals to start this project was to minimize social conflicts and create a challenging trail for mountain bikers. Here’s the video of the opening weekend.[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”511″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 600px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]]Denmark and The NetherlandsIs there any mountain biking in the low countries? Yes, there is. Danish member Spor og Natur/DCU and Dutch member NTFU showed that the number of mountainbikers involved in trail buildling and maintenance is rapidly growing in both countries. Spor of Natur hosted their 2nd Trail building conference which attracted over 100 participants. The combination of plenary sessions and presentations on day 1, follwed by trail building sessions on day 2 was once again succesful. As a result of the 2014 and 2015 conferences, DCU create an online data&knowdlege resource on their website, NTFU followed the example of their Danish colleagues and organised their first event for MTB trail care groups during the annual ´work in nature day´.  A morning program that covered themes like liability, the trail development proces in the Netherlands, basic trail building rules, fundraising and volunteermanagement were followed by some practical trail mainentance workshop in the afternoon. A first initiative that definitely will get a sequel in 2016. [[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”512″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 640px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]] Denmark[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”513″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 599px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]]