Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Pottery Road Trail Damage

This is a sad case of overuse. The mountain biker's use a small informal parking lot at Pottery Road and Bayview Ave. as a staging area to use the bike trails in Crothers' Woods. When they first started using this site they cut a trail straight up the side of a short steep hill to enter the trails. This trail entrance is now showing signs of erosion. There is also a lack of respect for the environment from pictures of garbage strewn through the trees, discarded tires and inner tubes and even somebody's discarded toilet.

The pictures shown on their discussion forum shows all this and can be displayed here. The positive side to this issue is that the biker community is now aware of the erosion issue and are taking steps to address it. The trail maintenance training provided by the city and IMBA has provided them with the knowledge to repair the damage and turn this into a trail that won't erode.

As for the garbage, at least some of the bikers lament the disrespect that some of the bikers show to the natural environment.

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