Winner Yakima’s ‘Take more friends, build more trails’ contest starts digging

IMBA Europe member Pedal from Slovakia won the Yakima start-up grant after a close call with the other two nominees Happy Trail MTB (Italy) and Geländefahrrad Aachen from Germany.After receiving the grant, Pedal immediately started working on their flowy XC trail near Bratislava by organizing voluntary dig and maintenance days. So far they had 3. Thanks to the start-up grant Pedal was able to buy the necessary tools and equipment for maintenance. ‘Nowadays we always provide the tools at the site, so volunteers can come on bikes and don’t need to worry about transportation. This has been greatly appreciated’ says Eva Tinkova, founder of Pedal. ‘During the three dig and maintenance days we had nearly 30 people taking part in trimming the vegetation, adding safety features – netting bridges that get slippery when wet, cutting fallen trees, picking up glass, adding a small table and few grade reversals, armoring streams. All of the fun parts can be safely overtaken by an alternative path so even the beginners can enjoy the trail without any difficulties.’During this spring Pedal crew consulted the local forest director and started planning and mapping a new flow as part of the second stage of their trail project. ‘Shortly after the consultation and project document preparation, we got permission of the forest director. This meant we could start submitting papers with the city council and ministries to get final approval’ thus said by Eva. Pedal hopes to start digging the new flow trail with a length of 2.4 km end of September, when all paper work is reviewed. ‘Thanks to Yakima and IMBA Europe, we were able to quickly get our hands on the tools that we needed, get more people to participate at the volunteer dig days and thus get the trail in a much better, safer and flowy shape. Thanks again!’[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”339″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 680px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]][[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_responsive”,”fid”:”340″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”max-width: 680px;”,”width”:”100%”}}]]