What a couple of workshops hosted by SBMTV! Inga Beck and Jason Van Horn, Trail Care Crew members from the International Mountain Bicycling Association (I.M.B.A.), were in town over the weekend of March 27th to present two great (free) workshops to the Santa Barbara Community. On Thursday 3/26, Inga and Jason held a "Club Care" workshop, which outlined many of the techniques used by nonprofits / advocacy organizations in order to support their group's mission, goals, members, and boards of directors. Attendees came from Santa Barbara, Goleta, Lompoc, Ventura, and as far as Thousand Oaks! The "Sustainable Trails" workshop, a two-part, full day event, was led by the TCC crew on Saturday 3/28. Twenty eight people attended, including participants from SBMTV, LPFA, the Sierra Club, MTC, and staff members from the Forest Service, City, and County. We also had participants from Ventura and Newport Beach! The first half of the workshop was four hours of in-class instruction at the Davis Center, where Inga and Jason covered the details of building sustainable trails with an excellent presentation, which included: * Fall line trails and why they unsustainable. * Causes of erosion, user created trails, and conflicts. * Trail Grade: the half rule and maximum sustainable grades. * Building and maintaining switchbacks and climbing turns. * Erosion control: Rolling contours, grade reversals, dips, nicks, rock armoring and out-slope. * User routing: Anchors, corrals, chokes,and points of interest. * Trail reroutes and recovery (re-vegetation). * Signage and trail management. After the in-class instruction, Jed Hirch of SBMTV held a pop quiz for participants and correct answers (or close) were rewarded with various prizes, including IMBA socks, coozies, a helmet, a Sierra Club backpack, hats, and more. All participants were rewarded afterwards with an excellent lunch of BBQ chicken, rice, beans, and salsa, generously donated by the Santa Barbara Chicken Ranch. For the second half of the workshop, the class carpooled to the Jesusita trail head and regrouped. Inga, Jason, and Chris continued with the instruction and on-trail demonstrations including: * Tool use and safety precautions. Participants were taught how to use & safely carry McLeods, Polaskis, and shovels; Potential trail hazards--poison oak, bees, snakes, etc. were discussed, as well as what to do in the event of an emergency, and volunteers with first aid certifications were identified. * Inclinometer Training. Participants were taught how to use an inclinometer and were given the opportunity to experiment with it to measure the grade of a trail to check it's sustainability. * Rock armoring, a technique used to make an over-grade trail section more sustainable, was demonstrated by the TCC crew, who in turn, recruited a number of the workshop participants to complete the job on a six foot section of the trail. After the safety talk and demos, the participants then broke up and worked in small groups on several sections of the trail practicing water control techniques by modifying some of Jesusita trail's outdated water bars into nicks and dips, and adding proper and strategically placed water control structures in several locations. Saturday ended with pizza and ping pong at the Neighbor hood bar. On Sunday 3/29 a small peloton of participants gathered at Ellwood Mesa for an easy social ride around the area. This was great fun and included some on bike skill building too... Thanks to all for your participation and hard work and to all who helped to make this workshop such a success! A special thanks to all the High school volunteers from the Santa Barbara Dons bike club who--in addition to participating in the workshop--provided room setup and break down at the Davis Center. And a thank you also goes out to the Santa Barbara County Trails Council for supporting the event and the Los Padres Forest Association for supplying extra trail tools! * Pictures of the event are viewable here: Chris Orr Trail Advocate