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Given some of the recent postings on here/news re: trail sanitisation, I was wondering if there's an organisation that represents MTBers. CTC do to an extent (and I am a member) but they've not really got a focus on this (especially given the letters moaning about an excess of effort on one group or another in the mag).
Is anyone involved in IMBA UK? Worh joining?
Andy
don't think IMBA uk are really very active at the moment tbh. Lack of drive/active members/willing candidates for senior posts IIRC its all but mothballed.
6 odd years ago i seem to remember someone on here being an imba rep and trying to drum up support but i think it died a slow death?.
No doubt about it, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to sticking up for ourselves, being heard, etc 🙁 . (I'm nowt to do with IMBA!)
Maybe now is the time to take it out of the mothballs.
Is NBT of this parish still IMBA rep for the Peak District? ( he was in an issue of Privateer a while back)
I was, nominally, the IMBA-UK rep for NW England about 6 years ago but got fed up with mountain bikers continually whining about lack of access and unsympathetic trail restoration (but not doing anything constructive about it) - so I buggered off to Vancouver BC 🙂
Strangely, they got the same problems [url= http://bb.nsmb.com/showthread.php?t=154312 ]here:[/url]
(Only joking - NSMBA are doing a superb job in revitalizing the North Shore trails but they have a much better volunteering attitude as well as industry support in Canada)
I'm a CTC right to ride rep and LAF member which has a lot of momentum now & org support for
MTBs.
I couldn't in all conscience sign up to IMBA some years ago as they wanted you to agree you wouldn't ride on footpaths. That might have changed.
IMBA just sanitise everything to trail-center-style three-rises-before-a-hairpin on a one meter wide bench cut blah-blah-blah anyway.
really bigrich? I ride with the IMBA Australia Honchos down here and ride some pretty ballsy (often 'shared' 😉 ) trails. They love to build that stuff too. But often can't.
It's not that IMBA look to sanitise everything; it's that to get most land owners to agree to trails they want stuff that ticks the 'sustainable', 'insurable' and 'ridable by as many as possible' boxes.
Outside of the ski areas, most of the other land managers don't have the resources to offer much more than the 'trail centre style three rises before a hairpin on a metre wide bench' type trail. So that tends to be what you get by default...
I never said they were not good individual riders; I said the organisation tends to produce sanitised trails.
I think I'll get ride down copperhead, oh-no! I can't, as I fell asleep.
Now they're off to bore up Bright.
the best trails are the ones built by the local clubs with parks Vic help; then the IMBA come along to stick thier noses in, call something blue with aspects of black, and [i]take rocks out[/i].
[EDIT] also, see skyline and the luge at Stromlo [\EDIT]
rant over.