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Trail Maintenance
I'm new to NSW and am shocked by the amount of erosion, bog holes and water sitting on the MTB tracks around Sydney metro.
I’ve been involved in repairing and building legal tracks in WA, where a Department of Environment Officer is part of the team. Most of the problems facing the Sydney walking and mountain biking tracks seem to be related to reducing erosion. This is fairly easy and cheap but needs a bit of labour.
Now I have moved to Sydney I would like to help with track maintenance so that I can ride on good tracks in all weather.
Is there a track maintenance group who do busy bee weekends, or do we contact NSW environment?
Sumpy
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you will need to be a bit more specific as sydney is a bloody big place, what area do you live in or what are the local trails
Newcastle as we can always do with more help up here-look up GTA
will point you in the right direction
www.trailcare.com.au
As you've seen, Sydney is a long way behind the rest of the country in its officialdom's attitude to mountain biking. On our ride today and my walk on parts of Manly Dam yesterday, it was painfully obvious the last month's rain has done tremendous damage to most trails in the area and the siltation runoff can't be remotely good for local waterways and the wider environment.
There has, I'm pleased to say, been something of an epiphany in the last two years in NPWS and OEH circles, but these things take a little bit of time to work though government processes so that no stakeholders have a legitimate excuse to whinge "we weren't consulted". This is underway, but we ned to keep up the pressure to perform so that it doesn't get forgetten in the face of the current urgency.
So continued letter writing politely enquiring where things are up to helps ot provide a useful little prod every now and then, although it also pays not to overdo it so that the people charged with doing the work don't get diverted from the work we want them to do.
We'd love to have you on board at Trail Care. Take a look at www.trailcare.com.au and see how you can help, and what's in it for you. For the price of a take-away lunch you can become a paid-up member and help us keep the pressure on.
Some of us locals here in the Blue Mountains started working with Council back in late 2009 only to be shut down by the NIMBY party. I've found a history of this happening in the area over the last decade. So it's not from a want of trying. This time we have had a positive result at Knapsack Reserve for DH & XC and we are now planning our way forward.
We have also been making good positive ground with the local NPWS staff and trail maintenance has been slowly progressing on the Oaks single track.
So the good news is that we are moving forward in many areas.
I'm in the Northern Beaches area so Manly Dam, Oxford Falls etc. I rode Manly Dam on Saturday and noted one very bad bog hole and a soft spot in one of the sections of drop off's. Both of which could be fixed very easily and I would be happy to do this before the track gets shut down because of the damage being caused. I also rode Oxford falls and found quite a bit of good track, although understand that some of it is off limits. Much of the track was over grown and under water or very badly eroded..... No wonder us mountain bikers have a bad name. Again very easy to fix with a shovel and a pair of shears.
Thanks for the leads on how to get involved.
Sumpy
-Royal National Park - Maintenance Days held 3rd Saturday of the month meeting at the Rangers office on Farnell Ave, Loftus at 9am (generally goes to 12pm). These maintenance days are generally posted on NOBMOB so keep an eye out. You can also get on the Rangers mailing list as well - contact Grant Miller at Royal National Park office
- Appin - Grant is now running maintenance days for this excellent track south of Sydney - held 3rd Saturday of the month. Grant usually posts the maintenance days otherwise check out trailflix for the details
With all the rain we have had many of our trails have been damaged. Yellomundee at the base of the Blue Mtns suffered a bit and the crew at Western Sydney MTB Club have put in many many hours working on the trails and are now working with NPWS to repair the recent damage. They are always looking for extra hands to help out, so check out the WSMTBC website or Facebook page for maintenance days. Ray (VP of the club is also on NOBNOB) will probably post these days on NOBMOB as well. Yellomundee is a great track and it would be awesome to see those who ride it lending a hand to get it back to how it was, if not better.