Mountain Biking: Trails dominate club thinking

A few weeks ago, I asked Rotorua Mountain Bike Club president Gregg Brown what would be in his report to the club's AGM tonight. He told me to have a look back through the Club's Facebook page for the last 12 months. So I did.

It's a real snapshot of the year and is a good way of communicating with club members and those interested in that wonderful trail network of ours.

If there was one thing that dominated the club's agenda in the last year it was trails - maintenance, rebuilding of trails in the areas logged recently and development of new trails. Rebuilds and new trails take time, even before the first shovel is swung.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first is the mixed-use model - the combination of operational forestry with recreation.

The second is that the land is owned by local iwi and managed by Timberlands. The Rotorua District Council also has input, especially about the Tokorangi Triangle. That's a lot of people to deal with and so there is a lot of negotiation to take into account. Although most of the trail work is now funded, volunteers from the club still have to put the time into the planning.

Sometimes this can be short cut. When a weather bomb hit the Moonride in May there was a lot of damage to trails.

The decision-making process, managed by Julianne Wilkinson from the Redwoods Information Centre, was fast tracked. Trails affected would be repaired immediately. How it would be paid for could wait, though the Moonride organisers were committed to helping. In the end a lot of the work was done by Red McHale and the Department of Corrections crews, who tidied up parts of Creek track while they were at it.

Ultimately, it was all pretty easy and straightforward. And a good example of how different stakeholders get on with what needs doing.

While trails were the main item of work for the club, two tragic events dominated the local MTB community and that Facebook page over the last 12 months: the untimely deaths of James Dodds and Patrick Avery. Dodzy and Paddy ... still hard to believe.

The club is playing a central role in getting the James Dodds Memorial Fund up and running. This will pay for maintenance of the Jumps Park being built by the club in his honour.

The club is also organising new signage for the trails. As part of that, the A Trail, built by Murray Avery, was renamed Paddy's Run.

The first Patrick Avery Cup will be awarded to the most improved rider of the last year at the AGM.

That's just part of what the club's doing. If you want to know more you'll have to get along to the AGM at the Pig & Whistle, 6pm tonight. Everyone is welcome, but only members can vote or be a committee member.

And joining is easy: rotorua.mtbclub.org.nz. If the 2800 or so people who 'like' the Facebook page would join the club, it'd have a lot more money in the bank to continue the good work.

The second race of the Galaxy Travel Winter MTB series is this Sunday, August 4. Everything you need to know and online entry is on the Nduro website: www.n-duro.co.nz