Top 25 Benefits of Trailshaping 1. Generates what to do from how trails actually function 2. Generates context-appropriate trails 3. Makes trail context explicit 4. Provides more precise language 5. Improves communication about trails 6. Helps build consensus on trail issues 7. Easy to learn, easy to teach 8. Bypasses the Technique Trap which limits thinking 9. Optimizes for sustainable and enjoyable trails 10. Gives physical shape to “aesthetics” 11. Integrates physical sustainability and aesthetics 12. Works for any location or ecosystem 13. Can be better, smarter, faster, and cheaper—at the same time 14. Builds stewardship 15. Evaluates any trail 16. Predicts the future of existing and proposed trails 17. Builds evaluation into every choice at every stage 18. Unifies trail planning, design, construction, maintenance, and evaluation 19. Leads us to consider all needed aspects in the simplest way 20. Forms framework for trails at all scales 21. Works for all types of trails 22. Works for existing trails formed by any means 23. Broadens trail skills 24. Doesn’t depend on hard-to-get resources 25. Works with the new and previously unknown
	About the Presenter Troy Scott Parker is president of Natureshape LLC. He has designed trails and trail systems for the National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, among others coast-to-coast. He authored and published Natural Surface Trails by Design: Physical and Human Design Essentials of Sustainable, Enjoyable Trails, the groundbreaking book which introduces trailshaping. For the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, he authored the natural surface trail portions of Trail Planning, Design and Development Guidelines, a comprehensive planning, design, construction, and maintenance guide for all trail types and uses. He also authored the popular Trail Design and Management Handbook for the Open Space & Trails Department of Pitkin County, Colorado, an internationally used design guide for multiple use concrete/asphalt trails, crushed stone trails, boardwalks, and other trail features. A PTBA member and past president, he is a long-time presenter at trail conferences. Involved in trail research and education since 1985, he has a growing collection of more than 15,000 photographs of all aspects of natural surface and paved trails, trail bridges, boardwalks, and other trail-related features in over 100 categories. The hundreds of photos in this workshop are from that collection.

What do you see when you look at a trail? Learn how experts see a trail in its context in the natural world.

Trailshaping is the world’s most advanced solution generator for natural surface trails. It distills the thought processes of trail experts into 12 relatively simple factors. Together, these factors account for virtually all aspects of trail planning, design, construction, maintenance, and evaluation, and some major management aspects. The factor names make a useful language for natural surface trails.

Trailshaping factors help you to understand or generate any trail for any type of use, from a tiny trail section to an entire trail system. The factors directly integrate our feelings and the physics of trails: the shape of nature itself; how we perceive nature; how trails make us feel; how trail use changes trails; how soils and materials behave; how materials, water, drainage, erosion, and trail use interact; and much more.

The ultimate goal of trailshaping is to enable you to work with trails the same way that experts do, but also to work outside the traditional trail design/construction/maintenance box when appropriate. Trailshaping gives you a much larger box where much more is possible. In this age of high environmental awareness, can you afford not to shape the best trails your resources allow? Can you afford not to have the flexibility to solve any trail problem on the fly with a custom solutions exactly appropriate for your exact context? Can you afford not to see the big picture of how everything relates to everything else?

How Does Trailshaping Work?
Trailshaping goes below trail techniques, below trail types, below guidelines and BMPs. At this deep level, the 12 trailshaping factors address the underlying shapes, forces, and relationships that comprise all natural surface trails.

Any piece of any trail is simply a particular instance of the same shapes, forces, and relationships which underlie all natural surface trails. Every piece of every trail is unique because of its context, and trailshaping encourages more uniqueness, not less. As architect Mies van der Rohe said, “God dwells in the details.”

Trailshaping helps you see everything that matters in a given context (including aspects that most people and some experts miss); understand all of it in terms of shapes, forces, and relationships; and optimize it all to form any trail that these can support. Possible solutions generate themselves directly from the context—solutions you may never have thought of, using aspects of the context you weren’t previously aware of.

Trailshaping is a powerful tool which solves many of the most difficult problems of working with natural surface trails. You can use this system to:

	Understand and work with every type of trail and trail use with a single, comprehensive system, yet still form trails appropriate for any context.
	Plan and work with everything from a tiny piece of a trail to a whole trail to an entire trail system—the big picture to a tiny picture—with the same set of tools.
	See and comprehend everything that’s happening on a trail today—and predict what will happen in the future.
	Predict what trail users want to experience, how they’ll behave, and what impacts they’ll have on the trail.
	Easily understand and predict the complex physical interactions of soils, trail use, water, runoff, grades, slopes, crushed stone treads, and more.
	Optimize trails to limit erosion and tread wear.
	Reduce costs and effort by using physical forces imparted by trail use to form and/or stabilize trail tread.
	Improve trail design, new construction, trail maintenance, user-formed (“social”) trails, trail structures, and trail closure and restoration.
	Quickly and accurately evaluate natural surface trails.
	Integrate and optimize “aesthetics” in all aspects of working with trails and sites.
	Optimize trails and the trail experience—and make the most of any site—by customizing trails to their exact context.
	Go beyond canned trail techniques and generate your own solutions, even for one-of-a-kind problems.
	Greatly enhance communication, learning, and teaching both internally and with stakeholders/publics.

Better, Smarter, Faster & Cheaper Results
In the long run, trailshaping provides better, smarter, faster, and cheaper ways to shape sustainable, enjoyable natural surface trails. Even if the planning and design phase takes longer, it pays off later through knowing more about the site and trail up front, reduced maintenance costs (possibily greatly reduced), and potentially reduced construction costs. Other payoffs are making the most of the trail experience, reduced site impact, and increased sense of stewardship from visitors who come to love the trail and site.

Many solutions are low tech and low cost, even free. Trailshaping can harness the forces that form “social” or “rogue” trails to improve both sustainability and trail enjoyment. In addition, trailshaping generates many ways to shape more sustainable and more enjoyable results with less site impact, less cost, and less effort.

Where higher cost is inevitable, trailshaping helps maximize your return on investment, spend time and resources wisely, and do it right the first time. Trailshaping also works for structures such as trail bridges and boardwalks to help maximize their value as enjoyable trail features as well as their utility.

Trailshaping works equally well for trail design, new construction, and trail maintenance, as well as for user-formed trails (“social” trails). Its aesthetic factors can also greatly improve trail closure and restoration results. All of this is done with the same 12 factors

A Very Human & Natural Process

Trailshaping is neither a top-down nor bottom-up system. There’s no flowchart, no rules to follow, no set process, no built-in need for detailed measurements or calculations. There are just the 12 factors and the predictable ways that their shapes, forces, and relationships interact. The 12 factors are all equal with no hierarchy, making them work much like nature itself where everything affects everything else. The system is satisfying to work with because it’s so direct and makes so much sense.

Taking people into account is extremely important for accommodating visitors and for shaping the type of trail you intend. Half of the trailshaping factors are primarily human factors used to tightly weave trails and trail structures into nature; make the most of sites; optimize trail flow and the foot-by-foot enjoyment of being on the trail; establish appropriate safety, efficiency of travel, and playfulness; and harmonize everything as much as possible. The ideal state is contentment where we don’t want to change anything.

You are free to intend any type of trail you want (although not every intent can be supported by a given context). You can use trailshaping to shape the most wonderful, sustainable trail, or an ugly, dull, unsustainable trail. It’s your choice. Trailshaping is designed to optimize sustainable, enjoyable trails, though, and so if you intend for anything less, you must do it with intent.

Volunteers love trailshaping. It empowers them by making sense of the world and engaging their minds as well as their bodies.

Built-in Evaluation

Everything begins and ends with evaluation. Every choice is based on evaluation of the predictable outcome of that choice. Hence evaluating a choice, part of a trail, a whole trail, or an entire trail system is routine. Trailshaping is the first system that can evaluate any aspect of trails at any scale at any time. In fact, because trailshaping is based on prediction and evaluation, even conceptual or proposed trails can be evaluated as if they already exist.

Workshop Format
This two-part workshop introduces the 12 trailshaping factors and gives you outdoor practice in applying them. There’s a lot of information, but trailshaping is designed to be easy to learn. The workshop is based on concepts first published in Natural Surface Trails by Design: Physical and Human Design Essentials of Sustainable, Enjoyable Trails. It goes further, however, including material from an upcoming update as well as future books in the Trailshaping Series.

Part 1
Trailshaping and its 12 factors are introduced indoors on Monday, March 10. Lunch is provided.

Tuesday morning, March 11 (preceding the 1:00 PM start of the main conference) is outdoor field practice using trailshaping in a local park. Park site is hilly high desert with little ground vegetation and will be muddy if wet. We'll return to Atlantis by noon. Lunch is on your own.

Part 2
Field training on Friday, March 14 is optional but strongly recommended for those who want to get the most from this workshop. This is all-day outdoor practice in a regional open space park. We’ll evaluate existing trails and practice designing and flagging new trails using trailshaping factors. We’ll also practice using trailshaping to conceptually plan larger trail systems and other park features. (We won't build anything, but our planning will be so detailed that new flagged trails will fully exist in our mind’s eye.) Lunch will be provided, but bring water, snacks, appropriate boots and clothes, gloves for chilly weather, and other personal items for day hiking on (and off) the trail. Park site is hilly high desert on mostly south-facing slopes with little ground vegetation and no trees.

Average weather on March 14 is mostly sunny with a high of 56°F, low 30°F, 19% chance of light precipitation, no snow on the ground. Weather averages for Reno on March 14.

To provide personal attention and the best possible experience for participants, Part 2 is limited to 12 people.

Note: If you need to leave early on Friday, we'll miss you, but you can leave on your own. The park is on the edge of the Reno area and is only 6 miles (13 minutes) from the airport. The park has a well-established trailhead that taxis can find.

Fees and Registration
Parts 1 & 2: $295 early registration, $325 after Feb. 22. Includes Monday and Friday lunches.
Part 1 alone: $225 early registration, $245 after Feb. 22. Includes Monday lunch.

You can register for Parts 1 & 2 together or Part 1 alone. These are separate items in the registration shopping cart—please make sure you select the appropriate item. The registration page lists the current number of open seats for Part 2. If there is no registration option for Parts 1 & 2 in the registration shopping cart, then Part 2 has filled. Part 1 has no attendance limit and will always be open for registration.

For more information, please contact the presenter, Troy Scott Parker.