Squamish can always use more mountain biking trails, according to Chad Hendren.
He’s behind a plan to put in a new mountain biking trail above Alice Lake, on Alice Ridge.
“I have lived here 11 years now and I have coached a lot and I ride bikes and I race a lot, and it is just one of those things where I have been riding other people’s trails, but I‘d like to give back a little bit and build another one for other people to ride as well,” he said.
Hendren’s goal is to build four trails, he already has approval to build the first, which he says will be unique. It will be a hand-built, straight up single track, he said.
“There is no trail in the Sea to Sky corridor that has been built this way,” he said.
The trail will be as advanced as he can make it, but there will be optional ride-arounds for some of the drops and jumps.
“So it can be a blue trail, it can be a black trail, it just kind of depends,” he said, adding the trail has to be up to provincial code.
The actual process of building a trail involves first walking around and flagging the route, “so you have an idea where the trail is going to go,” Hendren said.
Next, deadfall and stumps have to be cleared, and then a machine comes in to help form the berms and jumps, then lots of manpower doing the final smoothing and forming of the trail.
Normally there is a huge process and bureaucracy involved in building a trail, including getting authority from the province. Luckily, there was land that had been approved for a trail, but not developed. “I just happened to bump into a guy who had two approved and he is working on one,” said Hendren, referring to Mike Nelson, the secretary treasurer for SORCA.
Nelson gave Hendren permission to build a trail on about 1.7 kilometres of the land he and a friend already had permission to develop.
Hendren needs $11,000 for the project, he said, so he started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. As of Monday, he had more than $4,000.
Plenty of bikers have volunteered to help work on the trail, so the money will go towards renting a machine and operator and purchasing some tools.
“It has been going pretty well,” Hendren said of the campaign, but acknowledged with just a couple weeks to go, he is getting a little nervous about reaching his goal.
“We definitely need all the help we can get.”
Ideally, the trail would see its first riders in July, he said.
A spokesperson for SORCA said that while the group isn’t involved in Hendren’s new trail, the more trails in Squamish, the better.
“Our trail network was built over the years on the backs of volunteer trail builders. We are not involved in this particular project, but it is great to see Chad contribute to the Squamish trail network,” Sarah Norman told The Squamish Chief.
