The end of August saw IMBA Canada’s resident trail specialist Daniel Scott head to Fundy National Park on the south shore of New Brunswick for three weeks of trail design and layout. He was given the task of redesigning one of the Park’s more popular trails, White Tail, as well as redesigning the East Branch trail and laying out a new trail at Wolfe Lake to coincide with the proposed campground.
With the assistance of fearless summer student Patrick, Daniel tackled the thick understory, steep side slopes, and one nasty hurricane in an effort to create a more sustainable, more cycling friendly line. With two deep drainages to cross and a lot of elevation to cover the task took multiple days, but in the end, the exercise proved successful.
Hundreds of meters of fall line trail were eliminated along with suspect water crossings and replaced with pumping sections of rhythmic singletrack linked by big sweeping turns and easily approached water crossings. Some of the existing sections proved sustainable and will remain, including one of Daniel’s favourite sections nicknamed “Kamikaze Run.”
Kamikaze is a section of old road bed which has narrowed down to a meter or so in width running at fifteen percent grade for a few hundred meters. Due to the tread mixture it has survive nearly a hundred years with little to no degradation, despite the lack of grade reversals. But be warned, she’s a brute of a climb or a white knuckled of a descent!
Similar techniques were used to enhance sections of the East Branch trail which, aside from a somewhat obscure location, proved to have stunning atmosphere and some really great trail. Combining the upgraded singletrack portion with some of the newly learned road to trail conversion techniques that the Park crew now have (courtesy of Mark Schmidt), and the Park is gearing up to have another awesome half day romp through the woods.
Please note that the projects are still in the planning stages and, while IMBA Canada Trail Solutions has completed the designs, construction of all of these cool new upgrades has yet to begin. In the meantime, White Tail is still a HIKING ONLY trail and we ask that you respect the Park’s rules and regulations.
Between those three projects and the infamous Green Snake trail just outside the Park boundaries (designed in part by IMBA US trail specialist Rich Edwards) and Fundy National Park is making a big push to provide Park visitors with some superb mountain bike offerings to compliment the rest of the their fantastic outdoor amenities.