Thanks to $11,000 invested by the Test of Metal and Squamish Off Road Cycling Association, racers will no longer have to haul their bikes up the dreadful hike-a-bike that is Rock & Roll.SORCA contributed $4,000 to have a neighbouring, brand new gradual climb professionally cleared in order to speed up the course's northern section, said trail maintenance director Chris McCrum."That hike-a-bike wasn't really that fun, you know, bikes have pedals for a reason," he said. "It used to be a real bottleneck and now people can peddle up the new section and it's kind of wide enough that people can pass too so that will hopefully smooth things out a little bit."Veteran trailblazer Keith Halvorson spent six days on a mini excavator clearing trees, brush and removing earth to prepare the trail for the mass of rubber that will be flying toward Rob's Corners on June 14. And on Rob's Corners itself, the work also continued. Test of Metal invested $2,000 in redoing the serpentine trail along with another $5,000 on brushing, raking and rebuilding sections on the Powerhouse Plunge and other trails.Test of Metal race director Cliff Miller said the 67-kilometre course can no longer be completely maintained by volunteers."It's tough to count on volunteers, we already count on them for so much so we just took the tact that everybody who enters the race we charge an extra $5 fee and we put that $5,000 right back into the race," said Miller."It's the first time we actually paid somebody to do trail maintenance but we just realized the impact on the trails and we can't rely on the volunteers anymore. It has to be a professionally maintained course."Miller is fed up with seeing the mountain bike community take the lion's share of responsibility for the trails around Squamish. He wants to see more district contributions to back up the socio-economic value of the town's trail system."It's sad that you've got the district promoting 'come mountain bike Squamish.' You've got every real estate agent, company and developer promoting 'come ride in Squamish' and nobody is putting up money for the trails and they're just falling apart," he said.Miller wants to see a set fee for events that use the trails in order to help maintenance.But parks and tourism director Bob Kusch said that while mandatory event fees have been considered, they are difficult to impose because the majority of trail land is not owned by the district."It's very difficult for the District of Squamish to charge a fee for somebody to run an event when 90 per cent of it isn't on District of Squamish land," he said. "It's on crown land or private property or things like that. So it's hard for us to step up, charge a fee and collect revenue when something is on somebody else's land."The district doesn't have the means to employ more staff on top of the $15,000 it contributes to regular trail maintenance and the $12,500 it recently agreed to match the Squamish Trails Society, he said. "I sympathize," said Kusch. "I wish I could help them but I can only do what I can do with the budget I get from council." In the meantime, the trails depend greatly on volunteers' hard work. Test of Metal is running two more trail days May 25 and June 8 and SORCA has more scheduled over the next two months. Visit www.testofmetal.com or www.sorca.ca for more information.
