Sunday, April 22, 2012

Official Start of the unofficially named South Park Trail



Every year, the Connecticut Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association likes to hold at least one Trail School and this year we decided to do one for the new trail that I am building at Collis P Huntington State Park.  It's a great way to get people in the area educated about the proper way to build trails and letting them practice what they have learned in the field.



Paula Burton is the primary instructor and she has to be Southern New England's foremost Trail Building authority.  She's worked and trained with a host of outdoor organizations including IMBA, and AMC, and her knowledge of trail building is above reproach.  What makes her an outstanding instructor is the fact that she is also a high school math teacher and she really knows how to keep everyone's attention.



Not only is the training about the Do's and Don'ts about building trails but Paula works in interactive breakout sessions to get the participants to think about trails and what is ideal to them.  Her presentation has many examples of the pitfalls of poor design choices, as well as superb examples of some of the best trail designs.



Paula has traveled all over the country to ride mountain bike trails and attend trail schools and run camps for hiking and mountain biking.



After a few hours of instruction and a catered lunch we headed over to Huntington to start work on the new Shared Use Trail, that will probably be officially called the South Pond Trail, but, unofficially it's already be nicknamed the South Park Trail because of all the fun stuff that's already been found.

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