NEMBA's Trail School -- Sign up now!

[pk]

New England Trail Building School, May 17-18

Notchs Visitors Center, Holyoke Range State Park, Amherst MA

(Camping available Friday night and throughout the weekend)

Register now for NEMBA's trail school!

This year we're partnering with the Appalachian Mountain Club, the International Mountain Bike Association and the MA Department of Environmental Management to present an exceptional weekend of instruction and hands-on clinics. There will also be mountain bike rides in the afternoon and a party on Saturday night!

Here's the scoop:

The science and methodology of trail design and maintenance has substantially improved over the last decade, and this weekend series of workshops will combine both classroom instruction and hands-on workshops that focus on a variety of techniques.

8) Trail Analysis and Evaluation: what makes for a sustainable shared-use trail and how to improve existing trails

8) Trail Maintenance Techniques: rolling grade dips, waterbars, switchback construction, erosion control mitigation techniques

8) New Trail Design

8) Managing trails for shared-use: balancing resource protection and recreation

8) Developing a volunteer base

We're bringing in instructors for IMBA's prominent Trail Care Crew, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Concerned Off Road Bicycle Association (California) and our own trail experts.

The school will begin promptly at 8:30am, Saturday, May 17th and continue until Sunday at 4pm. Primitive camping is available free of charge beginning Friday after 4pm, and there will be bike rides offered both Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

Cost for the whole weekend: $60, includes tuition, many trail building manuals all food (and beer!)

Download this PDF form and mail it back in by May 1st! Space is limited and will be provided on a first come, first serve basis.

For more info, give me a shout or email me.

Philip Keyes
NEMBA
800-576-3622
pk@nemba.org

[Adam]

I'm in! See you there-
Adam

[hans]

Will this be happening again this year? I'm graduating that weekend.

[Prefect]

I just wanted to say thanks to PK and everyone else involved in setting up this event. It was well organized, informative, and really fun. Great bunch of people, too!

I now feel like I can come to a trail maintenance day and know what's going on so I can make myself a lot more useful.

A few things to note.. My girlfriend and I felt really young! (don't take that as an insult.. you all still kicked our young asses on that intermediate ride on Saturday.. :) ) I'm in my late 20's and she's in her early 20's. It brought up the question/concern: Is NEMBA doing anything specific to recruit younger members? If so, were they just not represented well at the event? We're mostly concerned because we're trying to view advocacy and trail longevity as long-term issues.. and if the staunchest and best-connected advocates disappear in 10, 15, 20 years... Will there be people to carry the torch?

We brainstormed a little... How about stuff like hooking up with college cycling clubs (and possibly offering some kind of sponsorship if they can recruit X number of members or something?), or perhaps discounts or other incentives for college students? Is it possible to take it even earlier? We were both struck by the example given by one of the instructors about the school mountain biking program in B.C... No idea how you could go about getting something even close to that in the U.S., but it sounds great.

The last point had to do with the wrap-up discussions on Sunday, specifically the points about how other trail users stopped and said "wow," or "this must be the bike group." I had an idea: make silkscreened fabric NEMBA-emblazoned 'trail maintenance ahead - slow down!' signs. Attached to two fiberglass poles, they'd be easy to pack in to the site and stick uptrail and downtrail of where maintenance is happening. This would serve two purposes: get people to slow down and know there's maintenance ahead, and also let people know who's out there taking care of the trail they're using. Maybe even somehow slipping in info on how to join, or that it's a volunteer effort would be helpful.

Anyway, that's all for now.. Thanks again for a great time!

[Z]

Great ideas!

We should try to get younger members involved. One problem with colleges is that it's a transient population more worried about their experience in school than long term health of some trails. (I've tried recruiting them before with no success, but that could have been my half-hearted attempts.) Thoughts?

Love the trail sign idea! We've talked about it before but never picked up the ball. Maybe your post will help get our butt in gear on that one.

[Prefect]

You may very well be right about recruiting college kids, but it could be worth a shot. I went to WPI, and they (like many other schools, I suspect) had both a general outing club (rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, etc.) and a cycling club. My general impression was that the "crossover people" who were both into cycling and other activities such as hiking probably would have been good targets to carry the trail advocacy torch. My thinking here is that they already had the right experience to see the value in it: they might hike, bike, and do trail running. They already understand the impacts that one of their activities can have on another.

Maybe it's possible to capitalize on the tendency of some students to "find their issue" when they're in school. Plenty of students aren't going to give a crap, but that may not be all that different from the general mountain biking population. There are plenty of people I've run across when riding that are older than college-age and have no idea that NEMBA exists or that we should even be considering care for the trails that we ride.

I guess it comes down to whether the effort would be worthwhile. While on the one hand it's nice to say that every new membership counts, realistically speaking there would have to be some goal for number of students to recruit. It feels like the sort of thing where if support could be built up at a low-key grassroots level, by one or two really enthusiastic students at several schools, they could generate additional support.

I'd like to think that a program could be set up with fairly minimal effort, with the general hope that schools could become almost like their own mini-chapters (depending on size). I wonder if there are any other regional recreational clubs that try to reach down into colleges to extend their memberships. I know that professional organizations (IEEE, ACM, AES, etc.) do similar things.

I'm curious to hear more about your experiences trying to get students involved. Unfortunately I wasn't biking when I was in college, so I can't really relate any direct experiences.

[Prefect]

Another thought I had, regarding the transient nature of students. It certainly would be a bit disappointing to put a lot of time and effort into recruiting college students who might end up going back home outside of New England, etc.

However, it seems like it's actually pretty valuable to expose them to a really well-run organization like NEMBA, even if they live nowhere near NE. Why? Because, assuming they stay biking, they might go back home and try to either start up a local advocacy group, or at the least, bring with them contacts and ideas that they got through NEMBA. If they leave, it does become a loss for NEMBA on one level, but it could very well be a gain for the sport in general if they go back to their home state and help build up their local organization. We all benefit as we weave a nationwide web of mountain bike advocacy groups.

Perhaps an angle to attack the "transient problem" is to attempt to do this recruiting in conjunction with IMBA. If they become members of both IMBA and NEMBA, they have a larger umbrella which would still be relevant if they moved out of the New England area.

Are there any mountain bike associations with a nationwide scope?