Ideally, we want a naturalistic trail that enhances one's appreciation of nature by the way the trail itself respects nature.
|
| By any measure, this is a lot for one day, but then it’s based on over 15 years of research (35 if we push the definition of “research”). This research was not just about what happens with trails, but also in how to concisely teach people what happens. The wide range of material is possible because it’s all based on the same set of fundamental patterns. Come prepared for a lot of fast-paced interaction both with the instructor and other participants. You’ll also need to come with a large, empty, new room in your brain to fill with new ways of working with the fascinating, structured and predictable world under our feet, hooves and wheels. |
How is this different from IMBA's Advanced Trailbuilding School on Feb. 6-8?
This workshop emphasizes how and why things act as they do, as well as what happens. It provides the essential tools to enable you to evaluate existing trails, better predict the future of existing and proposed trails, generate appropriate solutions, evaluate and optimize proposed solutions, adapt sustainable design for any type of trail use from non-motorized to motorized, optimize tread shaping methods for cost savings and sustainability, accentuate the site and engender stewardship. It also provides a system that's easy to learn and share with colleagues.
IMBA's workshop concentrates on basic tread construction and on ways to make non-motorized trails more challenging and fun through sustainable mid-level design and specific types of trail structures, especially mountain bike trails.
The two workshops overlap but not all that much since the approaches (and even the subjects) are quite different. If you're seriously interested in natural surface trail design, take both workshops. |
About the Instructor
Troy Scott Parker is the principal of Natureshape, a trail design and consulting company. He is the author of the popular Trail Design and Management Handbook for Pitkin County, Colorado, is nationally known as a trail consultant, and is the immediate past president of WTBA. His primary interest in trails is learning and teaching ways to optimize the trail experience and sustainability of any trail in its site.
Cost
$150 on or before Jan. 14
$175 after Jan. 14
Includes lunch
|
|
|
|
A New Approach to Trail Design
|
| This workshop uses a new approach that enables you to learn a great deal in a single day regardless of your present level of trail design experience from novice to old hat. Following is a partial list of what you'll be able to learn: |
 |
Thorough trail understanding – Learn how to “read” trails and quickly comprehend their context. |
|
Sustainability with enjoyment – Learn how the same techniques can enhance physical sustainability and visitor enjoyment at the same time. |
|
Improve overall trail design – Learn how accommodating basic forces and using natural relationships can improve many aspects of trail construction, maintenance, planning and management. |
|
Primary patterns – Learn seven primary patterns for natural surface trails. These context-sensitive patterns can be used in many contexts to shape trails for sustainability and enjoyment. |
|
Accommodate any user type – Learn how to generate sustainable trails for hiking, horse, mountain bike, wheelchair, ATV, motorcycle, and off-road truck use based on the forces each imparts, what visitors need from the trail, and what makes trails fun for each usage. (Caveat: most contexts cannot sustainably support some uses, but you'll learn that, too.) |
|
Predict future trail performance – Learn how to recognize and explain what is occurring now on a given trail—and predict what will likely occur in the future. |
|
Tread change over time – Learn how natural surface trail tread will change shape through use over time and how tread can be shaped to remain sustainable as it changes. |
|
Appropriate solutions – Learn how to recognize context-appropriate solutions, as well as how to avoid inappropriate solutions. Also learn methods for using basic forces and relationships to generate context-appropriate solutions. |
|
Trail evaluation – Learn simple, quick, accurate and effective ways to evaluate the sustainability and overall quality of existing trails and proposed new trails. Learn how to determine whether it's better to fix or reroute a problem trail. |
|
Sustainable visitor-formed tread – Learn how to form (at least some) sustainable trail treads with relatively little construction effort. Learn the many benefits of intentionally having users form the tread through use while following your carefully designed corridors and marked flag lines. |
|
Trail "flow" – Learn about sequencing a trail so that the journey is enjoyable for its intended use. |
|
Trail structures – Learn ways to make the most of trail structures so that they actively contribute to the trail experience. |
|
Having fun with no money – Learn ways to make the most of the trail experience on whatever site and budget you have. Sustainability and enjoyment don't need to be expensive. |
|
Closure and restoration techniques – Learn easy, inexpensive, attractive ways to naturalize trail closures and site restorations with or without plantings. |
|
Improved communication – Learn concise, powerful ways to envision, work with, communicate about, and teach about natural surface trails. |
|
Increased stewardship – Learn how trails which make good use of basic forces and relationships tend to increase visitors' appreciation of the site and engender an increased sense of stewardship for natural resources. |
All That in One Day??
|
| Yes. This workshop works because it's based on simple, easy-to-learn concepts that can be combined in countless ways. Some of them are "Aha!" and "Why didn't I think of that?" ideas while others are simple once you've seen them. Everyone goes home with new ideas. Even trailbuilders with years of experience have changed their methods after learning just some of what we'll do here. |
How does it work? Natural surface trails aren’t built—they’re shaped. And that shape has everything in it—sustainability, erosion control, desire to stay on the trail, sense of respect and appreciation for nature, optimization for particular users, enjoyment, fun, and more. Learning about trail shapes, how natural and human-caused forces support and change shapes, and how those shapes profoundly affect our feelings and behavior is the core.
The three levels of trail design
It's helpful to think of natural surface trail design as having three levels as shown in the diagram in the upper left: |
|
Top Level: Trail Purpose and Management. This includes reasons to have a given trail, places to go, places to avoid, boundaries, types and amount of trail use, etc. These can be drawn on maps or described verbally in relatively simple terms. |
|
Middle Level: Trail Construction Techniques. It includes tread formation, cross sections, drainage systems, trail structures, materials, and tools. These can be drawn in specific and quantifiable ways. There are a vast and growing number of techniques for different contexts. |
|
Foundation Level: Basic Forces and Relationships including forces of nature, forces imparted by trail use, shapes and relationships in the site, human psychology, what’s enjoyable and what isn’t, and what increases our appreciation of natural resources. These have traditionally been difficult to articulate, cannot be quantified or drawn as specifics, and are highly relational and contextual. As a result, they're often shortchanged or even ignored—to our great loss. |
The Foundation Level is critical
As the diagram at upper left shows, the basic forces and relationships of the foundation level directly shape mid-level trail construction techniques and top-level trail purpose and management. The foundation level directly relates sustainability, erosion control, desire to stay on the trail, human perception of nature, optimization of sites, optimization for particular user types, sense of respect and appreciation for nature, enjoyment, fun and much more. Yet many problems and missed opportunities are caused at the foundation level and we can't even talk about them because we never found consistent, simple ways to do so! All kinds of mid-level and top-level problems and missed opportunities can be traced directly to failure to accommodate or incorporate the basic forces and relationships intrinsic to natural surface trails.
Yet it's easy to understand the foundation
If something is hard to discuss then we need a better language and/or a different point of view. Over the years, I've developed both. The "language" is very simple, and the point of view includes the idea that sustainability and visitor enjoyment can often be achieved together using the same shapes and techniques. |
| It so happens that there are only a handful of basic forces and relationships at the foundation. In fact, there are only 3 physical forces, 1 primary shape (the shape of nature itself), 3 spatial relationships, and a few simple physical relationships of how aspects of the site and use affect trails. In the trail design levels diagram, the foundation comes to a point because there are so elements which support so many trail construction techniques at the wide middle level. |
| The foundation elements work together to generate sustainable, enjoyable natural surface trails. They help you recognize, diagnose and evaluate existing trails. They help create sustainability and naturalistic, enjoyable trails at the same time. They help shape trail structures to help support the desired trail experience. They're used as an organizing principle at the middle and upper levels of trail design. And they're part of everything in the learning goals list above. |
| In the workshop, using my extensive library of trail photos from around the nation, you'll be able to learn and practice using the basic forces and relationships in a few hours indoors. Even if you have little or no trail design experience, you'll be quite good at it by lunchtime.
Learn how to improve trails at higher levels
You'll also learn seven primary patterns for natural surface trails. These are the essential mid-level trail design, construction and shaping technique that form the backbone of sustainable, enjoyable natural surface trails. |
| Throughout the workshop, you'll see how the foundation elements improve your trail design abilities at all levels. You'll see how simple yet creative use of foundation elements in conjunction with trail construction (shaping) techniques can help bring trails and trail structures to life, shaping a context-sensitive trail experience that helps build appreciation and a sense of stewardship.
Please bring photos
If you can, please bring photos of your trail successes and problems. We'll use them as learning tools for problem solving. We'll view them in small groups so prints or printouts work better than slides or digital files, but we can look at photos on laptops, too. |
|
