The trail builders in the province have been pretty busy of late. I have a number of updates that have been piling up in my inbox that I’ve been meaning to post about, so rather than several small posts you get one bigger one.

My very own club the Durham Mountain Biking Association (DMBA) finished our first trail build at Durham Forest, a very popular riding destination in the Greater Toronto Area. 42 volunteers put in 500m of new trail. Reviews so far are positive. Read all about it, including photos of the build, here.

You may recall that Chicopee Ski Hill, in Waterloo, build a bike park last year that included a flow track, jump lines and pump tracks. Well it was such a success that they decided to move the park to a different spot on their property so they wouldn’t have to tear it down and rebuild it each year. Early this Spring, Mark Schmidt was at Chicopee overseeing the construction of the newly expanded park. Check out PinkBike for photos and videos. It look sweet. I’m going to have to make it a point to get to it before the snow flies.

The Ottawa Valley Mountain Bike Association (OVMBA) has broken ground on a skills park. The 2 pump tracks were targetted to be done by June 14th, technical features will be added over the summer in a beautiful dedicated area at the Civic Centre. Kids are already all over the berms. The town has also committed to building singletrack trail on their properties, still in the planning stage, but likely 5 km will be done by the end of summer, including  a short DH trail. The Dept. of National Defense is also on board, with trails on their bordering property along the Petawawa River. Sorry no pics for this one.

Moving down the Ottawa River towards Ottawa, IMBA Canada’s Mark Schmidt took the Tool Trailer to Camp Fortune to do some trail building and build a pump track. Read all about it here. And judging from the feedback the pump track is a welcome addition. But it wasn’t just a pump track that got built. A few wet spots got some improvements via rock armouring. Working with rock is heavy work, but when done properly the trail lasts a long, long, long time.





A big thank you goes out to everyone who helped with all of these builds. It is only with the hard work of our fellow mountain bikers that trails, and bike parks, and pump tracks actually get built. If your club is doing good work building and maintaining trails and you’d like to let the rest of the province know about it get in touch, I’ll be happy to let everyone know about it.

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