We had a great day of building and teaching in Nanaimo; tons of great volunteers ready to tackle the challenging terrain we had, plus help from the previous Trail Care Crew to supervise other sections of trail. The project consisted of about 150 metres of trail construction and rehabilitating older trail to bring up to sustainable guidelines. In the photos below, you can see some of the obstacles we challenged, including a one metre tall retaining wall to overcome roots and bring the trail grade into an intermediate difficulty level.

 

Slowly excavating the bench, getting past that pesky organic matter.

 

Some engineering was required for this build; lots of mineral soil was needed for the rock retainer and other rock projects. Luckily our trail went right over this large mound of soil.

 

We had a couple of Peavys handy so we were able to move this large and heavy maple to be a nice choke on the trail to slow people down. Simply the easiest way to move logs about.

 

The rock wall! slowly the rocks will be filled with soil for the tread surface, making sure to have enough soil that we get outsloping.

 

Another smaller rock project to protect the roots of the more sensitive pine trees. Not only did we protect these roots, we also ended up with a nice grade reversal to make the trail more sustainable.

 

Rachael contemplating a small section of trail that was rehabilitated during the build.

 

The choke, installed to slow people down as they reach a critical point in sightlines. It was also installed to prevent faster riders from using the root (under the right choke) as a lip.

 

 

The finished trail! Big thanks go out to all the eager volunteers who came out to help. It was a good mix of experienced and non-experienced helpers, and everybody learned a little. See the rest of the photos below.