June 6th, 2006

Pangor Trailday

May 28, 2006

Next to Corkscrew, Pangor is pretty much the most ridden trail
on the Shore. At any time of the year, in any conditions, at pretty much any
time of the day, if you sat beside the trail, you won’t have to wait very long
before someone came riding along. This trail takes an incredible amount of pounding
and needs a lot of maintenance. Sven and Dorothy do an amazing job of keeping
it in good shape, but after rainy winter of being kicked, Pangor really needs
a lot of love. Sven picked the middle section to be worked on since the upper
part got the lovin’ last year.

This trailday was to concentrate on some huge puddles and drainage
although there were a few eroded sections and some huge roots that needed protecting.
Four of us walked the trail the previous Wed night to flag the areas that needed
help the most and ended up putting up 12 markers. 11 of the12 areas got completed
on the trailday by the 60 people that showed up.

At 8AM it was pouring out! By 9AM the rain had pretty much turned to drizzle.
It did come back briefly a couple times during the day but never rally stuck
around for long. The ground was pretty wet which made the puddles very obvious
and also shows the paths that the water follows. Here’s a good example…


This bit was a deep puddle. Its sits in a low spot and collects water
like crazy. Previous attempts at rocking it in only resulted in underwater
rock armouring.

Using some cribbing and some pretty large rocks, this crew built up
the trail so its above the water. A pretty good drainage trench got
dug which will dispurse the water.


This was almost a carbon copy of the previous section, athough not
as deep. Some improved drainage and rockwork to raise the level of the
trail will improve this a lot. I suspect that we’ll be back to this
section in the future to deal with the drainage issue again.

Just to put some perspective on these pics, the roots that Dieter is
walking on are the roots in the foreground of the above shot.


This section had 2 issues. The main problem is the mudpit that forms
on the low line. The other problem is that the skinny line was loose
and was starting to feel pretty sketchy. Again, improving the drainage
by digging a trench to give the water and escape route was the first
thing.

A crib was then built, and rocked in to raise and protect the trail.

The skinny line was supported by adding some rocks as a foundation,
and pounding in some posts to hold it all in place.

I can hear Lee Lau now… “You guys paved my favorite section!”.
There’s no arguing that this drop was classic shore. The problem is that there
is a major seepage issue with water coming from under the roots running down
the slope, carrying the soil with it. The big root that formed the edge of the
drop was taking a kicking and it was only a matter of time before the uphill
side of the root collapsed down the drop.

Dieter saw an opportunity to fire up his new toy so he came out on Saturday
and moved that huge rock that you see in the middle shot into place. Several
other big rocks were shifted to make the ramp that you see in the last picture.
It’s a great fix that isn’t a pave job. The rock ramp is elevated, fairly narrow,
definately not smooth, and still pretty steep. Definately something that is
in character with the rest of Pangor. The roots are protected; the erosion stemmed;
A nice job! This set of photos contains the butt shot, but for a change this
time it isn’t Dieter.


This is the section of
trail that leads up the the drop that I wrote about in the previous set
of pics. It suffered from low spots and was getting really wide from riders
riding trying to avoid the mud. The decrepit old armouring was taken up,
new rockwork put in and the flow to the top of the rock ramp on the other
side was revived.


This section of trail was probably wet before there even was
a trail. Various attempts have been made to dig a drainage
ditch, but the puddle gets deeper and the water can’t make it
over the lip to drain out.

This crew, with the help of the Lester and his saw, rocked in
the approaches and exits, and installed a walled drainage
system. They sloped the trail into the trench so that water
won’t pool and hopefully this problem is gone for good.


OK, no one wants to dumb down
the shore, and I’m sure that we’ll be acused of just that when people
see this. Here’s the problem: The tree on the right is HUGE. Its ancient
and, so far, its very healthy.

You can see the havoc that tires are wreaking on it, tho. In another
half season, it’ll be bashguards that are biting into it, and the future
will start to look not so bright for this big old tree. Sometimes it just
has to be done. Especially on a trail that sees this much traffic.


This is pretty obvious.Big, deep puddle. Bad drainage.

The problem was fixed with big rocks to raise the level of the trail.


Check out the size of the rock that we used to fix this section! Once
again, Dieter’s toy came in super handy.


Stephan and John are amazing. They both show up pretty much every trail
day. They hike the trail until they find the section that needs the most
rocks, and heavy lifting and take it on. Mostly they build berms. Nice
ones! That’s Franco in the red. John is off finding rocks. This trailday
they dug out this whole area, got Lester to cut some cribbing, then rocked
in this huge, smooth corner.

I’ve got photos from many other fixes and projects that came to
fruition. Too many to post in this report. It was amazing how much
work got done especially with the difficulty in finding rocks along
side Pangor. Lots of smaller puddles got fixed along with the big
ones that make it to the writeup.

The support that the trail days have been getting from those in the
industry has been nothing short of inspiring. The Pangor trail day
was sponsored by Cove Bikes and Bush Pilot Biking. Both Smoke and
Barb from Bush Pilot were out… I saw Chaz and a few other Cove
folks… Jay Hoots dug a whole wack of gold and helped us move
some large rocks… Darren from Endless Biking showed up with a
couple of lads…

Again, Karen Gillich showed up with a large batch of cookies,
banana bread, apple squares, and lots of other delicious desserts
for the trail workers. In addition to keeping workers happy with her
home baking, Karen maintains an amazing trail on Fromme, and comes
in from pretty far out to do it. She brought in all that stuff for
the Pangor trailday even after tweaking her knee while working on
her trail. Seriously, when it comes down to helping the cause,
Karen’s up there with the best of them!

Barb Haley and David Langmuir did the barbequing. David is the
chef and owner of “David’s Cafe on Esplanade” and
marinaded some salmon for this trail day that was out of this
world. He runs a great shop and if you ever find yourself in the
Lonsdale Quay area, drop into his cafe at 200 West Esplanade. You
won’t be disappointed. Thanks a lot David!

IGA really came through for us again. The shop at 150 W Esplanade baked all the buns fresh
for us that morning, and provided all the condiments. Its great to have them
support our community.

Along those lines Schneiders Meats provided all the smokies and burgers for the BBQ.
A great contribution, for sure!

Bean Around the World gives us lots of great swag to give away
at lunch, as well as giving us a warm dry place to meet. Oh ya,
there’s the coffee, too… mmmmm. They’re always really
supportive of the Seymour traildays. Thanks Bean!

It has to be said again, Johnny Smoke and
Barb Haley from Bush Pilot Biking can run a trailday! Although
Smoke says its all Barb, they are awesome at getting local
businesses to buy in to what we’re doing. They are super organized
and really hard workers. Bush Pilot runs awesome biking excursions
at a great price. Check out their website at http://bushpilotbiking.com. Its
got great photos and trip reports, but when you get to the photo
that says, “Sometimes you shouldn’t click on all the
photos”, remember the warning. God!! Thanks Barb and
Smoke. You guys rock!

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The Cove bike shop is also
super helpful on the Seymour trail days. They’re another North
Shore bike shop that goes all out in their committment to keep
mountain biking alive and well by promoting the trail day in their
shop, and by putting their muscles where their logos are. I don’t
know exactly how many Cove folks were out there, but there were a
bunch.

Poor Sven. Sven Luebke does a lot of maintenance on
Pangor. Rob, Franco, and PD did a lot of work on Pangor a few years
back, but Sven is about the only one that hikes up these days. Sven
is so old school that he won’t put wire or shingles on steep
ramps or logs, maintaining that they should be ridden in their
natural state. He could only look on in wide-eyed amazement as
section after section of Pangor got transformed from slick, off
camber rooted technical drops to smooth, flowy highways. In all
seriousness though, Sven, Jeremy, Earl, Dieter, Mark and several
others spend huge amounts of time and money maintaining trails and
still find the jam to come out and drive the NSMBA trail days. Huge
props to those guys for making the Shore the playground that it
is.

Sharon Bader and the rest of the NSMBA board of directors work hard behind
the scenes to keep the trails open. Their efforts can’t be
overlooked!

But the biggest thanks of all goes out to everyone that gave up a
day of their life to give back to the trails that they ride. Trails
don’t maintain themselves. In fact, they seem to want to
self-destruct at every available opportunity. Your efforts are
absolutely key to keeping riding alive on the North Shore. Thanks a
bunch. Catch ya at another trailday.

Chin

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