If you’re a hiker or mountain biker you may have found yourself on mountain biking trails— those ones with built in obstacles and bridges. Have you ever wondered who built these trails? In North Vancouver the North Shore Mountain Biking Association (NSMBA) has a number of dedicated volunteers that work to build and maintain these trails. On Friday October 7th we were lucky enough to join Trevor from NSMBA to help maintain a trail called Floppy Bunny.

We met at the base of the biking trails to gather supplies before heading up. We hiked in all the gear we needed including picks, shovels, a wheelbarrow, and gallons of water with a spray hose attached to it. Once we had gathered everything, Trevor took us up Floppy Bunny to begin the hard work. These mountain biking trails are not closed when trail maintenance is going on and we did come across some bikers. They slowed their speed and thanked us for the work we were doing.

Once on the trail Trevor explained the plan. They had recently built some roller into the dirt path and wanted to create a berm (otherwise known as a banked turn) at the corner just before the rollers. The bikers needed to keep their speed as they approached the rollers but the sharp corner prevented this. To build up the berm we had to collect a special kind of dirt Trevor referred to as ‘gold dirt’— this dirt has a lighter golden like colour and is typically free to debris and rock. Once hardened and packed down this dirt makes for a sturdy surface to ride on.

We dug many wheelbarrows full of this dirt from one portion of the forest floor just off the biking path. While a handful of folks continued to dig, Trevor directed another batch to begin finding long pieces of dead tree or branches to use to build up part of the trail. Volunteers headed into the surrounding forest to collect fallen trunks and sticks, some up to 8 feet long. These were placed where we planned to build the berm acting as a foundation for the dirt.

As we brought over the dirt we would dump the load onto or near the dam we had built. We then got to work packing in the dirt. This is where the water came in. We had large buckets of water you can wear like a backpack each with an attached spray nozzle. We would spray the dirt to make it moist helping to pack in the dirt and build a sturdy berm. We would then take shovels or at some points our feet to pack down the dirt as firmly as possible. Once the dirt is dry it creates a strong base for bikers to use as they veer around the corner. We also packed dirt into a ramp leading up to a wooden bridge just before the dirt rollers. Trevor taught us what they call the ‘builders dance.’ To pack the dirt down we would slowly stomp across each part of the new dirt ramp with small foot movements to ensure we packed down all the dirt. We would ‘dance’ back and forth lifting our foot to place it right where our other foot had been to pack in the dirt.

We had three fantastic companies join us for the day, SALUS, Jane.app, and Procurify. It was a small but mighty team! Thanks to everyone who came out and put in the hard work to help maintain local mountain biking trails 🙌