Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I have been meaning to pull this email together for a couple weeks now, but 
you know how time gets away from you. Well, now seems like an appropriate 
time, especially in light of John Teeter's pointed question, "What is the 
cost of the Trails Masters Program and who benefits?"

2 friends and I decided to go ahead and sign up for the Trail Master class 
when I saw Jerry's announcement of it. Although it was a 12 hour drive from 
TX, we figured it would be worth it. One friend is another endurance rider, 
one is a friend who comes to rides and crews and generally enjoys herself. 
All of us enjoy being on the trails, whether competing or not.  In 
particular, there were 3 things that motivated me: 1] the desire to give 
back to the sport in some way, as it's truly the volunteers that make AERC 
work; 2] I have recently moved to a more rural town, and there was an open 
position on my new city's Trails Committee, and I wanted some qualifications 
to be appointed to it; and 3] in the next few years, there will be a 4 lane 
highway put in through part of our favorite and most easily accessible 
training trail.

The class was taught by Mike Riter of Trail Design Specialists, LLC 
www.traildesign.com, a terrific teacher and wonderful guy, who has worked on 
trail development and maintenance at some of the most prominent trails all 
over the world. It focused on classroom study in the morning and field work 
in the afternoons, using what you learned that morning. Day 1 covered Trail 
Design, Day 2 was Trail Construction, Day 3 was Trail Maintenance, and Day 4 
was putting it all together in practice. Did we learn, and did the 
techniques work? On Day 3 we went to a trail in the LBL forest, and worked 
on some sections of trail. Toward the end of the day it started to rain, and 
it poured rain off and on all night. We went back the next day to finish the 
class up, and checked our work from the previous day. The parts of the trail 
we had worked on were ready to send 50 horses down them. Across the spray 
painted line that showed where our work stopped was 2"-3" or more of sticky 
boggy slippery MESS.

I don't know how much it cost AERC for our 3 spots in the class, but here is 
where the benefit is going so far [less than one month since the class].
1] I have been contacted to join the city trails committee, which plans 
trails throughout the city as well as linkages with other cities.
2] We are joining a volunteer trail maintenance organization this weekend to 
start building relationships to maintain/update that "favorite" trail
3] We are working with the Army Corps of Engineers to re-route a dangerous 
part of that trail, thus opening up at least 5 more miles of trail that are 
now closed
4] We would like to work on marking a different trail system to make it more 
safe and usable and in the re-marking, use our trail design concepts to 
improve the trail itself
5] We are considering trying to start an airport trails patrol program at 
DFW similar to the one in use at Houston Intercontinental

I would highly recommend the class as for us it was a terrific learning 
experience, but more importantly as a the catalyst to proactively creating 
and preserving our local equestrian trails. Thanks Jerry & Mike [& Diane!]

Kristen Fisher, Corinth, TX
AERC # M32770 



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=