Trail Fund’s annual conference shed light on upcoming mountain bike-related guidelines for guiding, instructing and trail building
Held in Rotorua, the annual Trail Fund Conference again provided attendees with a chance to ride together, dig together and find out more about what’s going on in the trail building space around the country. It was co-hosted with the newly formed NZ Professional Mountain Bike Association.
After a morning spent riding the Whakarewarewa Forest, almost 50 attendees from varying trail building backgrounds came together for a series of ‘lightning’ talks.
Andrew Wilson from Rotorua Trails Trust kicked off the conference with a summary of the economic impact study conducted on trails in Rotorua. Jamie Mead from Skyline Bike Park, who is part of the recently formed New Zealand Professional Mountain Bikers Association, discussed the association’s reason for being and the adventure safety guidelines that would be created for mountain-bike activities.
Other topics included an update on the Backcountry Trust, an overview of the new mountain bike instructor and guiding qualifications being developed and a presentation from Taupo-based engineer Michael Robertson about the regime for inspecting trail building structures.
The evening’s most discussed presentation, delivered by Trail Fund chairperson Russel Garlick, was an update on the work being led by NZRA in developing national trail construction guidelines. Sign up for Trail Fund’s e-newsletter to stay up to speed on information in this space.
After dinner, there were a number of trail talks from volunteers around the country, before concluding the evening with the annual Trail Fund debate, which was as heated and hilarious as expected.
On Sunday, Trail Fund led trail builders from around the North Island through its Trail crew and Trail Leader courses. To learn more about these courses or to host one for your trail building group, get in touch with Trail Fund on trailcrew@trailfund.org.nz .