After spending nearly a month and a half traveling throughout the eastern part of Canada, Daniel landed back on the West with one last stop before heading home: Prince George. His charge was to tackle the task of providing the Prince George Cycling Club, along with other interested parties, with a comprehensive workshop on sustainable trail design / construction.

The Prince George Cycling Club has been working closely with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts in establishing a stewardship agreement on a parcel of land known as the Pidherny Recreation Area. Their ultimate goal is to create a trail system which would provide the ridership of PG with multidisciplinary mountain bike experiences. This includes cross country, freeride, downhill, and dirt jump areas with trails tailored to each and every skill levels. It should also be noted that the PGCC is a participant of the SprocKids program and is looking to include a skills park and progression trails which complement the program within the system.

Over the course of the 2.5 day workshop, Daniel ran the crew through everything from large scale planning processes, to the nitty-gritty details of various trail construction techniques. In typical IMBA Canada fashion, the workshop consisted of both theory and hands on portions where, at minimum, the basics are put to practice. With the assistance of various workshop volunteers, a beginner level trail was designed that stems from the bike park location and leads to intermediate trails further in from the trailhead. Grades were triple checked, pin flags were planted and pulaskis set to soil.

Despite dramatically varying weather which soaked the group one hour then cooked them the next, they succeeded in tape flagging the entire trail corridor, pin flagging a good two thirds and building approximately one quarter. They even went above and beyond the basics with some wooden soil retention cribs. Future construction will see the club tackle the construction of two big, beautiful berms, multiple, mandatory bridges and various optional trail obstacles.


"Cribs"

Building in Prince George can prove tricky as mineral soil types vary one meter to the next and materials such as rocks or rot resistant lumber aren’t as readily available as other parts of BC. That being said, the section of trail which the volunteers built looked great.

IMBA Canada is thoroughly impressed with the steps that the PGCC has taken thus far in order to turn Pidherny into the premiere spot to ride in Prince George and looks forward seeing the club put its complete plan for the area on the ground. For further details check them out here: