Last season the Muddbunnies Riding Club adopted the trail Slash on Mt Seymour. Since that time, the club has held 4 trail maintenance sessions. Under the guidance of NSMBA trail crew volunteers, the Muddbunnies have been maintaining, repairing, and fixing erosion issues on Slash and surrounding trails.
Slash is a short trail that starts after the exit to Pangor and spits you out on Bridle Path. It’s a fun, challenging line complete with skinnies, ladders, rocks, roots and tight corners.
From the limited history we have, Slash was originally built in the 90’s by Bear – a trailbuilder unknown to the Bunnies at this time. Around 2002 Chris Barker took on maintaining Slash when it was not much more than a giant mud bog. At that time the only built feature on Slash was the log ride about half way down. That log ride was repositioned on a trail day several years ago. At the first trail day this season, the Muddbunnies re-defined the ‘B line’ next to the log ride and blocked off the braided line snaking down the middle.
On Sunday November 7th, members of the Muddbunnies Riding Club hosted their second club trail day of the 2010 riding season. About a dozen Bunnies showed up to fix erosion problems that has washed away parts of the trail.
Club president Dorothy Luebke treated the volunteers to freshly baked, homemade cinnamon buns and cookies and arranged for coffee to fuel us through the morning.
"Yummy Icing Dee!"
Coffee is a must!
At 10am, the Bunnies grabbed tools, buckets and boys and made their way up Empress bypass towards Slash.
Off to work we go!
NSMBA volunteers Chris Barker, Bryan Forrest, Sven Luebke and Steve Sheldon were on hand to lead and direct three specific projects for the day.
Bryan Forrest led a small crew of Bunnies fixing up a badly eroded section near the top of Slash. As pictured below, the ground in this section used to be at the height of the plank. But due to water, wear and tear it has now become a badly eroded path.
Demonstrating the height the trail used to be before water and erosion
Luckily the surrounding area was ripe with rocks, many too large to even dig out. Rhonna, Sophia, Di, Michelle and Tina dug out rocks, and learned how to position them for well-supported rock armour. They filled in the large boulders with smaller rocks to stabilize them then topped it all off with gold – the inorganic soil layer.
Use those Muscles Ladies!
Endless Buckets of "gold"
under the direction of Steve Sheldon & Chris Barker
At the exit of Slash, Dorothy and Susan worked under the guidance of Chris to fix drainage problems on Bridle Path. Water had been streaming down this section of trail. Dee and Susan built drainage humps to help divert the water off the trail. In another section they blocked off a line that was widening the trail and moved rocks to divert riders through the intended line.
Fueled by sugar and caffeine, they may have had a bit of excess energy for a small creative side project!!
Fab Sandcastle!
Sven took Jen, Dar, and Jaclyn to fix up an erosion problem on Empress where the side of the trail was slowly being washed away.  The Bunnies also decided to add to their workload and fix a large mud puddle that was partly causing some of the erosion. They put in a new retaining wall and filled it with rocks and gold. They also re-built the ‘braking-zone’ just after a steep rock roll by inserting some large rocks and digging a new drain to encourage water runoff away from the trail.
Owing to our work ethic, or maybe it was the desire to head out riding in the afternoon, we had these three small projects wrapped up by 1:00.
The Muddbunnies would once again like to thank the NSMBA trail crew for volunteering their time and expertise to guide us through the work. We look forward to more club trail days in the 2011 season.
Meanwhile, we hope everyone gets out to enjoy the new work on Pangor and Slash.
