Recently there was some pretty significant trail work done on some of my “home” trails in Pisgah. The main cycling group that works on trail maintenance around Pisgah, Pisgah Area Sorba, has been working on Recreational Trail Project grants for a few years now. These grants have allowed them to hire professional trail builders to do a lot of the “heavy lifting” when it comes to major re-hab work. In Pisgah a lot of these trails were not really constructed with sustainability in mind, the area is a temperate rain forest, and the demands or traffic on the trails just keeps increasing. It seems as though the secret’s out on Pisgah being a great place to ride mountain bikes.

This recent bit of work has been really interesting to me because it re-worked a few trails that I tend to work into a good bit of my rides. The work really centered around Club Gap, even though they really didn’t re-work the Club Gap Trail. Club gap is where the Black Mountain Trail, Avery Creek Trail, Buckwheat Knob Trail, and Club Gap Trail all come together. It’s right there in between Buckhorn Gap and Bennet Gap (the actual gaps not the trails) and is kind of the edge of the “Front Range” trails. The “Front Range” is really where I spend most of my time riding since the access from the house is so easy.

I’ve had the chance to ride the new work a few times now and overall I think they did a pretty good job with what they had to work with. The trails as they were had some pretty significant water drainage issues that were eating away the trail tread. The work was all done by Nature Trails LLC and they did have to take machinery up there so there are some areas of the trails that may take some time to come back to nature a little bit. However that is kind of the case with a majority of the professionally built trails nowadays.

These particular projects really couldn’t move the tread in any significant way so the grades that were there were the grades they had to work with. They did add a lot of grade reversals to shed water, a lot of rock, a few big ol berms, cleaned up some of the sight lines, and really appear to have made some attempt at keeping the general character of the trail while “updating” it for current trends/bikes/riders.

I happened to run into the builders one day while I was out riding and honestly did feel a little more excited about the trails after talking to them. They suggested that there is a lot of rock underneath all that new fresh dirt, so that even when that starts to wash away the trail should continue to hold up and really start to come into its own. They also used a good part of the Club Gap Trail as their “access” to get into the projects every day. Because of that they put in new drains on that trail and the equipment they were driving in did a nice job of re-habbing that trail a little bit. It was starting to become a completely washed out mess.

I do have a few concerns around the new work and by and large some of the “new” work on these classic trails certainly comes with mixed feelings. One of the amazing things about the trails in Pisgah has been there rugged backcountry feel and challenge. With some of this new work things are changing a little bit. Every year tourism seems to grow and we have more “visitors”, which is generally a good thing that a lot of the businesses thrive on. In my mind it’s the catch 22 with outdoor tourism, so much of it is so good with a certain amount of people at a certain skill level or at least willingness to accept a challenge. As the numbers grow that gets challenged, but in order to keep moving forward things have to grow. There are going to be some growing pains.

One of these days I hope to have the time and drive to get myself more involved in some of the discussions, maintenance, and planning of the resources we have. For now I try to do my best to support (donations, etc.) and provide any constructive input to the folks who are sacrificing their time and efforts to keeping our trails open and maintained. I may not always agree with everything they do but I appreciate that someone is out there working hard at it.